James Rolfe / James D. Rolfe / Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) / Rex Viper and Cinemassacre / Screenwave - Now with not much grieving about a 41-year old man still making videos on YouTube. We're the balls on the dick.

[Pissmaster]

There are games that are too hard and objectively have bad game design. Battletoads is one example of this.

Oh, I'm not defending it, that's absolutely true. So, you, as a kid who bought something like

because the cover was cool, only to get absolutely curbstomped within a minute because the game is really bad was just a common thing back in the day. Most stores wouldn't let you return games, so, it was easy to get stuck with something like that.

So why the hell would anyone want to relive that? Not to mention, making your game NES hard and implying your players should git gud falls a little flat in the modern day when we've all got access to the back catalogs of everything via emulation, and countless cheap & free games on every platform.

At least the AVGN titles are complete games, not freemium cash grab shit, and they're not... terrible, just, uh, alright. The levels have an amateur quality, like they were made in a level editor for another platformer - Mega Man Powered Up comes to mind. Making them unfairly tough, though, just, no.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Oh, I'm not defending it, that's absolutely true. So, you, as a kid who bought something like
View attachment 4214295 View attachment 4214311 View attachment 4214324 View attachment 4214347
because the cover was cool, only to get absolutely curbstomped within a minute because the game is really bad was just a common thing back in the day. Most stores wouldn't let you return games, so, it was easy to get stuck with something like that.

So why the hell would anyone want to relive that? Not to mention, making your game NES hard and implying your players should git gud falls a little flat in the modern day when we've all got access to the back catalogs of everything via emulation, and countless cheap & free games on every platform.

At least the AVGN titles are complete games, not freemium cash grab shit, and they're not... terrible, just, uh, alright. The levels have an amateur quality, like they were made in a level editor for another platformer - Mega Man Powered Up comes to mind. Making them unfairly tough, though, just, no.

I'll defend Silver Surfer though. But otherwise I agree. And before a faggot appears saying "You guys are just bad at vidya!" No. I beat Super Meat Boy, I beat the Pink World and The Kid levels. I have beaten Blood on Extra Crispy so suck my nuts.

 

[Pissmaster]

I'll defend Silver Surfer though.

your showing you're rapid fire controller privlege sweaty

No really, Silver Surfer's probably the most frustrating bad game I know of, because even I could turn it into a good game with about two minute's worth of coding if you just stuck me in a time machine and sent me to the development studio. Implement rapid fire, give the player 3 HP, and suddenly the game could be palatable. Asking your players to either buy a rapid fire controller or tap their buttons forever, alongside having everything be a one-hit kill is nasty.

But otherwise I agree. And before a faggot appears saying "You guys are just bad at vidya!" No. I beat Super Meat Boy, I beat the Pink World and The Kid levels. I have beaten Blood on Extra Crispy so suck my nuts.

and I've beaten my share of retarded hard shit like StarTropics and Spelunky. Those games were actually good, and gave us enough motivation to keep going. Making a hard game is difficult, you gotta make damn sure you've got a solid enough gameplay loop on your hands that your playerbase won't just throw in the towel.

 

[BrunoMattei]

your showing you're rapid fire controller privlege sweaty

No really, Silver Surfer's probably the most frustrating bad game I know of, because even I could turn it into a good game with about two minute's worth of coding if you just stuck me in a time machine and sent me to the development studio. Implement rapid fire, give the player 3 HP, and suddenly the game could be palatable. Asking your players to either buy a rapid fire controller or tap their buttons forever, alongside having everything be a one-hit kill is nasty.


and I've beaten my share of retarded hard shit like StarTropics and Spelunky. Those games were actually good, and gave us enough motivation to keep going. Making a hard game is difficult, you gotta make damn sure you've got a solid enough gameplay loop on your hands that your playerbase won't just throw in the towel.

I've beaten Silver Surfer without save states so...

 

[demicolon]

@BrunoMattei have you beaten I Wanna Be The Guy?

 

[BrunoMattei]

@BrunoMattei have you beaten I Wanna Be The Guy?

I played it and got to a certain point but it kept crashing so I never finished it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The AVGN game is alright, better than most indie platformers. It's not crazy difficult but excessive enough in some aspects to be a challenge. The levels are alright and once in a blue moon a joke lands.

 

[demicolon]

OST is the best part of the first AVGN game.

 

[JackoVerde]

the hard R gets dropped in the AVGN movie in a deleted scene.

r/TheCinemassacreTruth - The only deleted scene from the AVGN movie.

63 votes and 52 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

Here's the archive in case it gets taken down.

 

[Kulee Baba]

"It's hard because NES games were hard and it's not bad game design, you just need to git gud!"

while totally ignoring the fact that NES games cost a fortune, had little competition, and most kids only got 1-2 a year, so you either had to git gud or you didn't get to play video games at all

Gotta also point out the majority of kids never actually beat those bullshit difficulty NES games.

Yes games had passwords and Zelda let you save your game but I think most kids would just start at the beginning of Mario and play till they got bored. Besides exceptions like Final Fantasy the NES era was still running under the principles of Arcade game design, easy to pick up and infinite replay value.

I never beat Final Fight on the SNES. But I know the first two stages like I know my favorite pop songs.

 

[Quijibo69]

I'm listening to the book at work, I'm about half way in. Things I've learn so far:

Spoiler

James went to tard school until high school and he bitches about filming a crime spree at a collage. He gets suspended for a year and wonders why because he's a tard.

Edit:

Spoiler: This is not the book

https://mega.nz/file/V902GLYI#OtRFgTp1kfVvcxeB4RkK6tzQF_RMMJKWujJCCjJLKCM

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Him complaining about cars being a death trap means so much more after finding out how much of a shit driver he is thanks to his book.

lmfao left turn on red, what a retard

 

[thegooddoctor]

There are games that are too hard and objectively have bad game design. Battletoads is one example of this.

Hasn't it been said somewhere in this thread that Battletoads is mathematically impossible to complete and was made as a troll game because Nintendo at the time got the negative reputation of making games that were not challenging enough? They made the game virtually impossible to beat on those principles.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Hasn't it been said somewhere in this thread that Battletoads is mathematically impossible to complete and was made as a troll game because Nintendo at the time got the negative reputation of making games that were not challenging enough? They made the game virtually impossible to beat on those principles.

Wrong. The games were made intentionally more difficult in America and elsewhere so kids couldn't rent the game and beat it in a weekend. It was also a way to artificially increase the time required to beat the game and I'm sure there was some spite there too.

The interesting thing is that in Japan the games were easier and had infinite continues/passwords or more generous enemy spawns and all that. And that includes Battletoads. The reason why Japs got easier games is that -I think- it was illegal to rent games over there.

 

[Travoltron]

They should have made two versions of the games. Games for rental that were hard and retail versions that were easier.

Arcade games were also extremely hard and unfair to get kids to keep pumping quarters into the machines. And then those games were ported to home systems with that same punishing arcade design.

Thankfully, people are making romhacks that fix the problems with these old games and make them fun instead of frustrating.

 

[JackoVerde]

Arcade games were also extremely hard and unfair to get kids to keep pumping quarters into the machines. And then those games were ported to home systems with that same punishing arcade design.

did fighting games have this problem. were arcade street fighter and mortal kombat made to be hard to charge more for fights
i think the arcade and console versions were the same difficulty
maybe the games were intended to start that way on arcade, but since fighting games are in theory skill based, there was no point in making the home console version easier to beat

 

[Travoltron]

did fighting games have this problem. were arcade street fighter and mortal kombat made to be hard to charge more for fights
i think the arcade and console versions were the same difficulty
maybe the games were intended to start that way on arcade, but since fighting games are in theory skill based, there was no point in making the home console version easier to beat

Some fighting games seemed much harder than others. I know that the arcade owners could set the difficulty of each machine. But I would do well in Street Fighter, but would just get pummeled in Mortal Kombat. I remember the bosses in SNK games being just brutal.

 

[Tism the Return II]

did fighting games have this problem. were arcade street fighter and mortal kombat made to be hard to charge more for fights
i think the arcade and console versions were the same difficulty
maybe the games were intended to start that way on arcade, but since fighting games are in theory skill based, there was no point in making the home console version easier to beat

Back then it was pretty common for SNK bosses to brutalize unsuspecting players to keep 'em pumping coins into the game. Those fuckers don't mess around.

 

[Dom Cruise]

So I've been rewatching all of AVGN chronologically and what I've discovered is that the moment he fell off is Bible Games III. Some time in between Dark Castle and Bible Games III he was replaced with Soulless Robot James.

It's pretty apparent. We've never got the old James back.

I always thought 2011 marked the end of the golden age, but he remained solid for another handful of years with some standout episodes like Hong Kong 97.

It's only the over the last 6 years has he really started to get stale, but yeah, 2011, even without the movie he had been doing AVGN regularly for half a decade by that point and it was bound to start to lose some luster.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

did fighting games have this problem. were arcade street fighter and mortal kombat made to be hard to charge more for fights

I can't speak for Mortal Kombat. I only played the 1st and 3rd game on the genesis as a kid, then made the witch to Street Fighter permanently once I got Championship Edition. I saw Vargskelethor Joel play the Arcade Collection and he DOES have a point when he says the CPU just flat out prevents you from winning majority of the time.

Street Fighter, specifically any and all of the II versions out there, is more easier to beat because in my experience the CPU tends to follow a strict set of patterns that become more obvious in the later stages when the CPU gets aggressive. Stages 1-2 (and sometimes 3) they will just stand there and wait for you to move, and even then they will just take a punch/kick to the face to make it look like they are retarded. Anything after that, and it's basically a game of memorization.

Examples:

• Ryu - You can walk towards him at the very start of the match, then either try to throw him or low kick him (that's assuming your character doesn't have a WIDE hurtbox to where he will sweep you first). Majority of the time he will throw 1 set of 2 fireballs. Otherwise he will mix it up with either Fireball-Tatsu-Uppercut, or Jump HK-Croutch LK 5x/6x-Croutch HK (those being the two more obvious patterns) and then when his health is low, that's when he will throw out Uppercuts majority of the time, half of those times by standing still for like a second or two because he's waiting for you to make a move.
• Ken - More jumpy than Ryu. Has a pattern where he jumps 2x straight into the air, then once forward, and once back. You can attack him during this pattern if you're fast enough. if he does one jump backwards that means 2 fireballs are about to come out. Also has an obvious pattern of either Tatsu-Tatsu-Uppercut, or Tatsu-Uppercut-Tatsu-Uppercut. Will also throw 3 HP uppercuts in a row randomly. Also has a jump in combo of Jumping HP-Standing Close HP-Uppercut.

Other characters, such as Boxer and T-Hawk, are piss easy and you can go ham on them with little to no issues.