I just finished Metroid Fusion on the Wii U VC. It's nothing to boast about, because I made heavy use of save states to keep myself sane. Those bosses. Aargh. I realize now that I'm just not cut out to be a retro gamer, at least for action games. The difficulty level is so high that I stop having fun at some point. I had previously played and abandoned Super Metroid and A Link to the Past when playing on the Wii VC, where there was no save states.
I suppose the need to lengthen the play times of cartridge games made it necessary to make such games harder in the past. I don't have problems with old school RPGs' difficulty-wise, but those types of games are already pretty lengthy anyway by their nature.
Anyway, even though I will never really appreciate many retro games in their original form, I do want to say that the Wii U's VC opens up another world for those of us who are less hard core. Those save states makes crazy-hard games bearable, and even enjoyable.
Out of the series, Fusion is the one that sticks out to me that holds your hand through the whole thing.
None of these games are long, 4-6 hours tops. It sounds like you just might have an issue with open world exploration and knowing where to go next. Bosses might have seemed challenging because you weren't "leveled up" enough with missiles and energy tanks.
The thing about Fusion is that, not only does it have hand-holding to tell you were to go, backtracking is very limited (that is the one thing it does that really goes against the Metroid formula IMO) so if you skip over too many hidden upgrades you could be in real trouble in some spots. (in the other Metroid games, if you miss stuff you can always go back and look around)
I mean, really there's an entire region of Sector 3 that if you miss something, you can't go back for it until before the final boss. That is the most extreme of anti-Metroid design that it does.
@cwong15: I wish all games had a 'save anywhere' sometimes. Life as a parent is so busy that it's rare you get the time to persevere with a challenging level, so if you have to start from square one each time it puts a real blocker on making any progress, and even puts you off even trying.
However, I do remember the first time I played a game where you could quicksave at any time - I was quicksaving every time I shot another enemy and quickloading every time I took any damage - took the fun out of it somewhat.
Finding that balance between enforcing a challenge but keeping it accessible is tough.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
There's nothing to be ashamed about by 'abusing' save states. As a rule, a significant amount of games pre about the late 90s only served to waste players' time and extend their length with cheap difficulty and difficulty spikes requiring a lot of grinding. That has generally been replaced in most games nowadays with the humongous amounts of nebulous side-quests, but whether it's older games or more recent ones, if you're not having fun playing them for either of these main issues (or any issues at all really) you should not feel guilty at all about 'abusing' the game with save states. If even that doesn't help matters, then just drop the game entirely, I know I have with many games that just take the * rhymes with kiss * as far as what they think is a reasonable request for the player to do.
Another key point to mention- there is no 'wrong way' to play games, if you need to use save states, infinite lives cheats or the rewind feature in Rare Replay in order to enjoy something like Battletoads then that is A-OK, and don't let anyone say otherwise.
Like others have said, there's no shame in save states. I was around for the NES and I love retro games, but save states have increased my enjoyment of them tenfold. Some of those oldies are downright masochistic; save states help me experience whole of the game without hating life. You do you.
There's nothing to be ashamed about by 'abusing' save states. As a rule, a significant amount of games pre about the late 90s only served to waste players' time and extend their length with cheap difficulty and difficulty spikes requiring a lot of grinding.
That was probably when games were still designed in the arcade area (where you'd lose over and over and have to pay to try again).
Aside from sucking quarters, some could argue it forced players to really "learn" the game mechanics and such.
But if save states and such increase your enjoyment, then that's better than never playing the game. There always the option to replay the game "hardcore" later if one cares to.
@KingMike: Yeah I mean, I couldn't imagine playing Earthbound, one of my favourite ever games, without the Wii U's suspend feature. Being able to 'save' in effect anywhere and particularly right before bosses made the game so much more accessible and enjoyable and made the few losses I had against bosses (great rhyme there) much easier to bear, as I didn't have to go alllllll the way back to the last phone save. As I said, whether intentionally or just down to the restrictions of that era, a lot of games just waste people's time with little justification for it. If you gain a sense of pride by beating games the 'proper' way then that's fine I guess, just don't belittle others if they can't do likewise would be my message to these 'hardcore gamers' who look down on cheat codes, optional difficulty settings and save states.
Oddly enough, I always felt that Fusion was the hardest of the 2D Metroid games. Barring maybe the original, which I chalk up to lack of polish. And self-imposed challenges, like Zero Mission with <15% item completion.
On the larger matter, you're looking at it wrong. The first games were all about progressive difficulty, because they were a simple iteration of the same pattern. Then you got arcade games with a full story, which were designed to eat quarters - the first stage of unfair difficulty. Then you got the console versions, which were initially just ports of the arcade games, often with a brutally limited number of credits (but often easier). Gradually, developers got a sense of what was reasonable, and we got more playable games.
Of course, as kids growing up, we didn't have any of that "context" nonsense. We got a game, and it was maybe 1 or 2 new games a year, so we played those games until our thumbs bled. I can say with 100% certainty that 5-year-old me was hardcore.
But, at the same time, there are games that I was never good at until recently. It really comes down to that bit of wisdom from Jake the Dog: "Dude, suckin' at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something."
I think my problem with retro games is not just the difficulty itself, but the punishing cost of failure. As gcunit also complains, it's the lack of a good game save facility. I don't mind failing in most cases if I can easily retry again. Arcade games can be brutally difficult, but as long as I have quarters in my pocket I can resume from a Game Over almost right where I left off. Not so with many console games. In many such games, I have to slog for a while just to get to that same point where I can retry a tough boss fight. I mentioned a Link to the Past for that reason: it's not Metroid-hard, but without save states it became so tedious that I realized I wasn't having fun.
I did not have Wii U's save states when I played ALTTP and Super Metroid, or I would probably not have given up on them. That's probably how I will play many VC games. With save states, I could refight the same Metroid Fusion boss 10-20 times in a row. I'll probably never want a "real" retro console for this reason. I just don't have time to be truly "hard core". For me, the Wii U VC is the best way to play older games, and for that I'm grateful.
I don't remember having much difficulty playing Metroid Fusion, except for that really annoying spider boss.
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