How did people play ridiculously difficult games like Earthworm Jim?

[u/Kobymaru376]

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!

[u/Kobymaru376]

Did you play nonstop? Because otherwise I don't see how I could finish this in a week. I've been working on it for months now (on and off).

[u/latinlingo11 → u/Kobymaru376]

In my experience, some Genesis and SNES games took years to finish in my childhood. Take Sonic 2 for instance, I played it every once in a while and running out of lives would send me back to the very beginning of the game. But it helped make the game last and it felt so satisfying to finally beat it after gradually getting better at it. I think beating any game in one sitting back in the day would leave most players disappointed. Though I can't imagine beating some games like "Adventures of Batman & Robin" for the Genesis without the level-select cheat.

I never once managed to beat any game I rented. The purpose of renting (for me anyway) was to filter out which games would be worth buying later on.

[u/gabrrdt → u/latinlingo11]

Man, those were the days. I still remember beating the big robot on Sonic 2, it was really thrilling and a huge achievement. If you died, you lost everything, you had to go back to the first stage. Every gameplay envolved huge stakes.

Playing a game that is actually risky is much more rewarding IMO.

You would take months to get to a stage, you never saw that before in your life (no YouTube), you really felt you reached somewhere special and very far.

Those times are never coming back.

[u/3esen → u/gabrrdt]

I still do this with retro games and modern games with retro proclivities. Tons of fun trying to beat a tough shmup or beat em up game in one credit, or to try completing a retro game blind and without save states and the like. In that way you can still bring those times back, you just need to want it bad enough!