Yeah I remember the demo seeming like a cool concept but really struggling with the controls and momentum of the thing. I bet if you can internalize them it’d be swell!
3 Likes
I remember the phrase “Nintendo Hard” showing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, when even action games and platformers would let you save your progress. Something “Nintendo Hard” just dropped you back at the title screen when you lost.
Interestingly I can only find one instance of the phrase being used in a games magazine, which is from Gamepro in 2011 and it’s about, well, I’ll just quote it:
Angry Birds
Angry Birds is now a cultural
touchstone for mobile gaming
(hey, you’ve hit mainstream when
the New York Times runs pictures
of people in Angry Birds outfits).
While Angry Birds may be a
phenomenon, they’re not talking
about the most important aspect
of it: It’s #%&#$ hard! Nintendo
hard, even. I’ve been stuck on the
last stage of the first level for two
weeks, and I’m still no closer to
solving this geometric puzzle than I
was the first time I encountered it.
Angry Birds is a great game, no
doubt, but it’s also one of the
most frustrating titles I’ve played
in years. It recalls the classic
challenges of the 8- and 16-bit
eras. And I can’t think of a greater
compliment than that.
-Jason Wilson
8 Likes
There’s this which is both also dated 2011 but says it’s from the 15th anniversary of the NES (2000-2001ish depending on when you’re counting)
I think my first exposure to it was via everything2, where its article is dated 2003
But it always felt off to me for reasons folks have mentioned above (quarter munching arcade games being a norm in the NES era, Sega vs Nintendo console war stuff falling shortly after). To further muddy the waters everything2 encouraged this sort of baulderdash style “node shell rescue” where people would plausibly fill in entries for oddball phrases that popped up in other records.
7 Likes
this is entirely anecdotal, but to me as a kid, the big difference between nintendo and sega games was that saving was pretty rare on mega drive, but very common on both snes and game boy.
like, the only md games i had with saves were soliel and light crusader (and sonic cd, but that was a special case, obviously). while on snes, there was sim city, zelda, and even platformers like super mario world and donkey kong country had saving.
8 Likes
Yeah, my impression of “Nintendo hard” is that it is an entirely American perception and I’m often a little bit rattled by how the idea of what games were, what was popular, what was the vibe in the 80s has been largely colonised in this way.
(I’m also a little bit rattled by Probotector chauvinism. I don’t like just-so cultural narratives I suppose. I’m a citizen of the world.)
4 Likes
Last night during electrolysis I beat the Dodongo cavern and got the element of fire in Ocarina of Time 3DS. It felt nice.
6 Likes
Terminator 2D No Fate, I’ve finished the first run so can start changing the plot.
It’s good, weird structure in that the majority of bosses are all in the first couple of levels - when you follow the movie plot anyway.
John Connor remind me of the Terminator 1 game for the Megadrive, which having no played in about 3 years I am going to call underappreciated. This game feels like a fleshed out version of that but with 2 - shame on any of the reviews I’ve read for this game not realising this and just going ‘arcade games’ in the 90s’. The actual T2 arcade game nor the Megadrive port are nothing like this.
Another half remembered megadrive movie game I am just going to say is good Ghostbusters.
In fact, throw Dick Tracy in there too.
Feel like some old man reading a Pitchfork review of a Jazz album. Sad!
13 Likes
In fact yeah, MD T1 is absolutely the well spring of this.
Of the four (!) levels in that game, the first is future war (in no Fate with grenades as per 1), Tech Noir (which is like the Sarah levels in No Fate, you get the gun they use in the movie so shotgun in 1 with no pick ups), the police station (which is you fleeing and trying to slow down the terminator, again directly in No Fate) and the Factory (including fleeing from the legless Terminator).
Good job on having decent taste in 16 bit games I guess No Fate devs.
8 Likes
Playing through Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth again. I finished it probably in 2010 or 2011. I remember how this game kind of falls apart. But if I appreciate it more as Pulp Cthulhu than anything, I find that perfectly fine in theory. Though the game is buggy and obtuse in some slight enough ways that I think, in actuality, I won’t end up as in love with this game at the end of it. But for now, in the early parts, escapin the fish men of Innsmouth is really fucking cool. God. The textures and lighting and the FOV and the sound design in this game are just gorgeously executed. I was right to play this after Thief 2. Very similar games, at least in spirit.
11 Likes
The escape from innsmouth truly was where this game peaked. I don’t think I ever finished it, guns kinda ruined the experience
6 Likes
Replaying Code Veronica for the first time in decades, currently at the Dreamcast version equivalent of the start of disc 2. Is there a game with a wider gulf between the praise it received from mainstream outlets upon initial release and its actual status as a genuine fiasco? What explains the rush to exclaim as a masterpiece this broken/confused/tedious piece of shit other than being the first established series out the gate in sixth gen of consoles?
4 Likes
Finally found something that the new tomb raiders have in common with the old one besides lara being the main character: lara is still tiny
10 Likes
At least when you get a gun you can play it like a Resident Evil survival horror game, which, while different than a Lovecraftian investigative horror experience, still invites you to play a pretty delightful tug of war between exerting power and having it ripped away. But yeah this is when the game is at its most tense, for sure.
3 Likes
80% of people who played that game on computer after Windows XP didn’t finish it either because they’re still on that boat in the devils reef not knowing they’re soft locked
4 Likes
yeah I had a problem when finishing it back then that a boulder would fall on me before I crossed a threshold that should trigger the final cutscene. i remember spending hours fixing this with the help of forums, only to be treated to an ending cutscene that was not really memorable in the slightest
that experience has helped me to walk away from so may games in my life
5 Likes
Yeah I had the boat softlock and then the boulder one at the end of the game lol
4 Likes
Made it to world 8 in SMB. 8-2 is going to be a problem.
16 Likes
getting softlocked because a boulder keeps falling on you is very funny. fuckin Wile E. Coyote ass glitch
this week ive played nothing but the shortstack furry MMO (atlyss)
i cleared out all the available content way back at the beginning of the year but it just got a phat update adding controller support, a new dungeon and a bunch of new NPCs, completely changing the map layouts, and your standard little rebalances and tweaks – i started a new character to see how the early game differs and the most noticeable thing to me is the difficulty ramps up a bit more slowly, though with my highest level fighter (pictured above) it’s reached the point where it’s just about unfeasible to play single player heheh (hint, hint!!)
ive never been an MMO gal so this kind of ongoing evolution & in some places complete overhaul of the game is an interesting new phenomenon for me. like ive read about how early WoW and later versions are almost completely different beasts and i guess im getting a taste of that. The new maps are the coolest change, the old ones were kinda charmingly sparse & simple but theyre unquestionably better now, feel more likely actual locations than placeholders. It’s really impressive that this is a labour of love from a single dev
love that the story is like youre an angel in a Soulsesque purgatory world where your immortal soul is summoned to fight evil sorcerers who do grim mad science experiments on people (that is explicitly the lore of the new dungeon) and but everything looks like a Ragnarok Online chibi squee plushie thing. Thats my jam
it’s also still funny to me that one of the races (the bunny/fox esque ones) are called “poons” which means one of my characters is a Lv. 12 Poon Bandit. like i know this was originally planned to be an H-game but cmonnnn. the residual horniness is generally just amusing to me cuz it’s totally in surface level character design, like the 3 main questgivers are 2 big mommies and a strong daddy, your first boss is a sexy slime witch who fires minislimes out of her boobs, and even if you go easy on the boob/butt sliders your characters are hilariously jiggly. it’s cute though not gross (i mean, ymmv obviously but it doesn’t ping my grossometer. but im also a perverted furry sooo)
11 Likes
I have been compulsively playing what was a flash game and now runs on something else. It is extremely danger game and I refuse to name it for fear that I will waste another person’s precious time on this earth. Remind me to never enter a casino.
8 Likes
yeah spank the monkey rules
4 Likes