Why are older video games so hard?

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BigAltheGreat921

BigAltheGreat921

kiwifarms.net
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Feb 3, 2013
The title speaks for itself. I'm of course talking about games for the NES, SNES, and other systems of that era, many of which are notorious for their extreme difficulty. Did Nintendo and other game makers tone things down as VG technology marched on? What are your opinions?
 
I don't have an answer, but having been around and gaming in that era I'm interested in the answer as well.
 
I think it's due to the crude (by today's standards) technology. There wasn't any game mechanics other than "throw a shitload of sprites on the screen until the hardware starts glitching".
 
Part of it comes down to how much people would be able to get out of their game I suppose. Games were a lot shorter back then, so they needed some way to make it worth the money despite being only a few hours long (shorter in many cases) so high difficulty could've been a way to artificially lengthen the experience. Either that, or it's just the move from arcade machines, which were hard in order to take quarters from people, to consoles... Or it could be a completely different thing. I'm actually just listing some theories. I don't know if any of them are actually true.
 
Sometimes I think the answer is just broken gameplay. Which could be just because games were shorter (perhaps moreso than normal), but they jacked up the difficulty too much.
 
Maybe because the newer games focus more on the graphics, music, gimmicks etc. rather than the gameplay and its difficulty?
 
Because lack of saves and checkpoints and lives and testing the game.
 
Rio said:
Part of it comes down to how much people would be able to get out of their game I suppose. Games were a lot shorter back then, so they needed some way to make it worth the money despite being only a few hours long (shorter in many cases) so high difficulty could've been a way to artificially lengthen the experience. Either that, or it's just the move from arcade machines, which were hard in order to take quarters from people, to consoles... Or it could be a completely different thing. I'm actually just listing some theories. I don't know if any of them are actually true.
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Pretty much this. You may be throwing out theories but you're bang on.

Back then, game mechanics were based on arcade sensibilities and they needed a way to keep you pumping in quarters. There's also the high score aspect that drove people to play the games again and again. Being able to finish a game was one thing, but being able to play it well was often the aim.

If you actually look back, most games could probably be finished in under an hour if you sat down and played right through it. But of course, the arcade scene's pretty much dead now and games have evolved to fit in with the more leisurely pace of playing at home. There's also the fact that the customer has so much more choice available to them, so if they get a game that they find frustrating they'll just trade it in for something that they find more rewarding.

Developers have cottoned onto the fact that as long as the player feels that they are being rewarded for their efforts, then they'll keep playing. Chris' obsession with Guitar hero is a good example. When he's got that plastic guitar in his hands, he feels like a rock god and genuinely seems to believe he's displaying skills on par with playing a real instrument.

Does anybody remember when you used to talk about a game and would say "what bit can you get up to" or saying that you can complete a game was a genuine boast?
 
Because video games didn't like you.
 
I also think fewer people today really want a challenge. The average customer doesn't want a Ninja Gaiden or Contra, where it may take months or years to get really good at the game. (For the sake of time, we won't even get into Battletoads). People today want a game that they can play through and move on to the next.

I think a lot of it is that games today don't have staying power like they did in the 80s and 90s. A lot of this is by design of the game publishers, who believe it's more profitable to sell a new game every year for five years, than find one game that can sell for five years straight.
 
It's also worth pointing out that there are now far more ways to make a game and different genres for a game to fall into.

There was a time when the primary goal of any game was just to be good at it. Now we have games like Journey where the aim is just to provide the player with an experience, or far more narrative driven games where the medium's used to tell a story in a different way then films or books.

Things may be a bit stagnant at the AAA end of the industry, But elsewhere I feel it's an exiting time to be a gamer.
 
ChurchOfGodBear said:
I also think fewer people today really want a challenge. The average customer doesn't want a Ninja Gaiden or Contra.
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I think nobody, specially little kids want those, well I loved Ninja Gaiden when I was playing it as a 6 years old but... the pain, the PAIN.

Anyway nowdays there are some games (albeit most indie ones) that are pruposely too hard, like IWBTG, just finishing it gives you rights to brag about while doing it in the hardest difficuty automaticly makes you a gaming god.
 
ChurchOfGodBear said:
I also think fewer people today really want a challenge.
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Personally I find the greatest challenge of all to be PvP based games like Eve Online or Warhammer Online. I also find them to be the most enjoyable. The learning curve on PvP based games is an absolute hell though.

Although the earliest games were PvP, since it remedied the problem of having to program an opponent using primitive computers.
 
Well, it's all about the fun and the challenges on it. Contra 3 is fucking hard, but it's a satisfying moment when you finish it.
 
homerbeoulve said:
Well, it's all about the fun and the challenges on it. Contra 3 is fucking hard, but it's a satisfying moment when you finish it.
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Yeah theres nothign as satisfying as finishing a hardass game is your childhood just to recive an "a winner is you!" message and nothing more.
 
I'm unsure if this is entirely true, but it's rumored that many older games were difficult because of shit like game rentals at Blockbuster.

An example, Battletoads was WAY easier in it's Japanese release; it was made far more difficult in the US/UK releases so that when people rented the game, they couldn't beat it in a weekend, so the thought process was people would buy the game.

I just think games back in the day SEEM hard because gaming nowadays is far more interested in holding your hand as opposed to throwing you into the action and allowing you to figure it out for yourself.
 
Eh, Japanese releases actually tended to be harder than their American counterparts.
 
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