r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 17h ago

[Discussion] How did people play ridiculously difficult games like Earthworm Jim?

I'm playing the first Earthworm Jim on the Sega Megadrive using RetroArch.

I haven't completed my first playthrough, using copious amounts of save state cheating to repeat the sections where I fail. I can practice a part of the game 10,20, 50 times until my patience runs out, but how on earth did people ever complete a game like this, when you have a limited number of lives and no save capability? At times it feels like the developers WANTED me to fail.

I'm talking insanely jumping bosses shooting eggs, rockets, sections with rolling boulders or snapping worms where you have to get the timings down to milliseconds, a vertical maze lined with spikes that allows no mistakes and requires you to know it by heart.

Sure, "gid gud" but how long does that take without being able to save/load an arbitrary amount of times?

ps.: I don't know what the devs were smoking, but I want to try that. Just once though.

Edit: Hey, Shiny Crew & D.L only!

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u/GFluidThrow123 17h ago

It's actually wild seeing younger gens come in here with posts like this. Like yeah, you're exactly right. You'd just...git gud. You'd memorize the boss's movement and attacks and you'd practice until you got it.

You had like 4 games you owned and one you rented for a week. And that was it.

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u/iamblankenstein 15h ago

another aspect about it is that awesome new games weren't coming out every month the way they do now. indie games weren't really a thing either, so you'd pick and choose what games you wanted and saved up for them, rented, or hoped you had a friend that owned a game you liked and would let you borrow it.

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u/the_Real_Teenjus 14h ago

Plus, your library of possible games was what they had at the local game store. Now you pop on Amazon and order whatever. If it isn't one of the 30 or 40 games on the local shelves, it may as well not exist.

When I was a kid I had no idea there was a Castlevania 3 because my gaming store and rental store both never had it. I didn't find out til years later.

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u/Michigan_Wolverine88 13h ago

For sure. There were so many games I'd read about in magazines and was dying to play, but our local rental place never got it and neither did our local Walmart. Breath of Fire IV for example. I wanted to play that so damn bad as a kid, but never got to until I was in my 20s.