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Topic: Why were kids in the 80s so good at playing games while kids today are so poor?

Posts 81 to 98 of 98

Caryslan

8BitSamurai wrote:

KingMike wrote:

8BitSamurai wrote:

The Ninja Gaiden trilogy also had major problems with cheap, respawning and glitchy enemies IIRC. III barely even had any continues.

That is a localization issue. The Japanese version of III had unlimited continues (and even passwords) but Tecmo thought Americans wanted games that kicked their butts.

Weird. Some publishers thought America needed their difficulty dumb downed, and some thought we needed the games harder.

Alot of that was due to stores like Blockbuster. After Nintendo failed to stop them from renting out NES games, companies like Tecmo made their games harder in the US to ensure people would not get through the games in a weekend. That's why Ninja Gaiden III is more difficult and has fewer continues.

This was not exclusive to the NES era, games in later generations had this as well. The US version of Resident Evil 1 had fewer ink ribbons and auto-aim was disabled to keep people from beating the game in the weekend.

Caryslan

8BitSamurai

WaveBoy wrote:

I have ZERO Nes-nostalgia when it comes to Castlevania. None, naddah, zip. The series somehow managed to escape me. The first time i experienced a Castlevania game(being the NES original) was 4-5 years ago on the Wii's VC. So much for your Rose tinted glasses theory. I fail to see how Castlevania I and III have bad controls. Those stiff controls and non controllable air jumping were intentional me thinks. either way, i really liked them. They made you feel vulnerable 'in air' especially. It was all part of the design. BTW, i've beaten all the classicVania games. I, II, III, IV, Rondo, Bloodlines, The Adventure, Belmont's Revenge and ReBirth. I skipped the SNES version of Dracula X/Rondo. just don't see the point.

Also, i don't feel like Ninja Gaiden's Difficulty is insane....(Ryu's father and one of the last few stages were the real nasties imo)....I've played harder games on the NES like Adventure Island, Castlevania III is even tougher i'd say, along with Blaster Master and maybe LifeForce ect. Also, i didn't own a lot of NES games growing up, i mostly rented them at my local videostore and 90% of the games i played went unbeaten because of the limited amount of time i had with them.

I'm the type that prefers a short yet sweet Challenging game, rather than a drawn out easy breezy one....There's no honor in telling your friends that you just beat Wind Waker for ex.lol But when you say you just 100%'d wario land Shake it!, beat Mega Man 10 on 'hard' mode or Completed all 3 NES-gaiden games you will have them on their knees.

anyhoo, one thing you will never see me spending my precious gaming time on anymore is Professor Layton. I cherish the time i had with The Curious village back on the DS. but when you're throwing in 2 hours of game time after a hard day at work and you're not solving any puzzles day after day then it's time to throw in the towel. that's a different type of challenge that gets me all together.

I don't care about bragging rights, gameplay should be rewarding in and of itself. I feel you on the drawn out games though. Not to say I think games are too long, but I think there's some room for shorter games like what was found in the arcades of old, especially with flexible prices now and stuff.

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unrandomsam

I don't care about bragging rights either I do respect stuff I think I will never do (Or even couldn't ever do).

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SCRAPPER392

I actually didn't think Mega Man 9, & 10 were all that hard. I think the older ones were alot harder, because sometimes the stuff that happened on the older ones didn't really make sense. The first game, for example, had platforms that didn't even register that you landed on it if you were too close to the edge, so you had to make sure to land exactly in the middle. Good games, otherwise. I've beaten 1, 3, 4, 8, and 9. I'm currently playing 10, actually

Games like Ghosts 'n Goblins were ridiculous, though. I don't think I'd ever have the patience to play that game without restore points. Most of the NES games were pretty fair, actually.

Qwest

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SCRAPPER392

WaveBoy wrote:

SCAR392 wrote:

I actually didn't think Mega Man 9, & 10 were all that hard. I think the older ones were alot harder, because sometimes the stuff that happened on the older ones didn't really make sense. The first game, for example, had platforms that didn't even register that you landed on it if you were too close to the edge, so you had to make sure to land exactly in the middle. Good games, otherwise. I've beaten 1, 3, 4, 8, and 9. I'm currently playing 10, actually

Games like Ghosts 'n Goblins were ridiculous, though. I don't think I'd ever have the patience to play that game without restore points. Most of the NES games were pretty fair, actually.

Aside from Mega Man & Bass, i found 10 to be irritating. Are you taking down the robot masters with your plain old buster shot? Because that's what i did. Their patterns were a lot more difficult and trickier to master. Nitro and Solar man were a huge pain. I also managed to finish it on Hard Mode. That was pure hell. Also finished Ghosts 'n Goblins......Extremely challenging, but i still felt that Ninja Gaiden III and Castlevania III(just two examples) were surprisingly tougher. Perhaps it's because Ghosts 'n goblins is a little on the short side. Took me longer to finish Dracula's Curse.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

I use a life or 2 to figure out their strategy, then once I figure out the strategy, I use their weakness weapon. As far as I can tell, Sheep Man, Strike Man, and even Blade Man are fairly easy. They just shoot wherever you currently are, so I jump and they shoot there, then I shoot them.

So when Blade Man is jumping around I jump and he shoots his tri blade there, and by the time I land the jump, it's easy to avoid. I've been playing it off and on, so I don't remember anything before Blade Man. Sheep man jyst has his clouds and the last one always shoots bolts through the floor, then sometimes he'll throw a lightning at you which is fairly easy to dodge.

I just wish Mega Man had his slide back. That made it fairly easy to dodge some stuff. Otherwise I don't find the games tat hard. I usually get a game over the first time I reach a boss, but the second time around is always easier, but I play something else until I decide to go back. I didn't find the Ninja Gaiden games all that hard. All those NES games always force you to be really careful, so it's more about patience and not trying anything too crazy. That one ninja game on Turbo Graphx was way harder, IMO.

EDIT: It also has alot to do with taste in games. I generally play the games in the series that I like the best. Mage Man is mainly the same game, and that's fine. I just found a few of them to bit a bit harder than others, aka, the ones I didn't beat. I beat Catlevania IV with the restore points, though. That games pretty hard right at the end, but I know the strategies now. Dracula was even easier than his minions, IMO.

Edited on by SCRAPPER392

Qwest

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micronean

I think the skill level of kids (and I mean from 0 to 16) is basically the same. The best ones are just found online these days.

micronean

Action51

1) Arcades and the coin-op model meant games were designed to be sadistic and gobble up quarters while still delivering a thrill

2) games and file sizes and memory capacity was smaller, so games were generally shorter. Games were stretched out by making them harder

3) gaming is now a full mainstream industry and the big titles must be designed around hooking the lowest common denominator without challenging them much

Action51

SCRAPPER392

I just don't think there has been a learning curve for games as much as there used to be. NES games were generally pretty hard, then they got a bit easier on SNES(for the most part). I think the transition to 3D was a learning curve, then 6th gen made things a bit more complicated. I don't think we've really been challenged all that much since 6th gen.

I'd say some games are pretty unfair, though. From what I recall, the Gears of War 3 campaign was pretty brutal on insane mode, but the game wasn't nearly as fun to play as the first 2 games. It wasn't really fresh anymore(fortifications in Horde mode were cool, though), and RE4 basically setup the scene for newer RE games, so things haven't really changed much, if you ask me.

Edited on by SCRAPPER392

Qwest

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CM30

Probably because older games were just plain difficult, so you had to be pretty good just to get past the first level or two. Let alone anything like Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden or Ghosts n Goblins...

That might have made the average amount of skill a player had higher, since more effort was needed to do even remotely well in some of the overly brutal games of the NES era.

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Tapeworms

Haven't read all the pages but a number of them so I apologize if this has been said already...
It's all about the MONEY MONEY MONEY. I grew up in the early 80s playing everything Sierra online, melbourne studios , Virgin games, etc ever made. Never was really into console games because they lacked depth. Although I did play mega man, but never thought it super challenging, but looking back and comparing to games made today of course it was!

Anyways, onto my point about MONEY MONEY MONEY. These AAA studios want to make money for their board of directors, otherwise they get fired. So, in order to do that you make games and market them to the masses (jocks with technology as I call them instead of true nerds) You know. ..the CoD fans, who all think graphics is what makes a game. To me, its mechanics. But, the more sales the better for the devs, regardless of quality of product. So over the years, since around...2003 they started dumbing down and streamlining games, like REALLY dumbing them down (Xcom is a great example). Take Bioware for example, Bioware made EPIC games before EA bought them out: Baldurs gate, Knights of the old republic? Mass Effect 1 (not 2 or 3 after EA got ahold of them) need I say more? Now since they're run by EA they make crap games that are designed to be easy, graphically intense (roughly 90% of gaming budget is artwork) and shorter with far less 'tedious mechanics', recycled dungeons (Dragon age) etc. So people who aren't true nerds will go out and buy them in masses. As gaming in general (mostly console unfortunately) became less 'nerdy' and more 'cool' with non-nerds they've capitalized on that. Take Call of Dooty, or the GTA series (gta3 and on) for example, same engine, same plain goldfish retribution, new story and skin, bout it, Each time it comes out with a new copy it has record sales. RECORD sales, this makes the board of directors happy so they say, keep making that crap, its making us BILLIONS! (literally)

Look at World of Warcraft, another great example, it used to be hard, back in vanilla and even burning crusade, but now its such a joke, they just give you all this stuff for practically free (compared to how hard you used to have to work for it) and business couldn't be booming more. It's all about the money, and the sad fact is there are more 'jocks with technology' out there playing games in the last 15 years than there are nerds, so the game devs are going to cater to the larger group = more money.

Sorry if I was a bit redundant, I tend to do that..

Edited on by Eel

Tapeworms

Sample_Text

IMO there really isn't an objective way to compare it, for multiple reasons:
1) Games back then generally had to be harder and with less checkpoints to give it a good lifespan. Lots of reteo games have to few check/save points. Games nowadays have to be easy to beat so casual payers can have fun, so the challenge is usually optional onstead of mandatory. A good example are the Mario games (for both eras).
2) Games were a lot more expensive back then, so if you got a game, you were more or less stuck with it, so you might as well try to master it. Gamers today have a lot more options, so they may only play a game a little or only when friends are around, thus making the player less skilled at it than if they played it a lot. A good example is LoZ (previous era) and Mario Party (current era).
3)Games back then were a lot more niche than they are today, so most of them appealed to a narrow demographic compared to todays gamers (this is why Metroid was mind-blowing). Nowadays lots of games try to appeal to a variety of demographics, and many of them include less skilled and casual gamers (think Flappy Bird).

The point is that there are more challenging games and gamers than there ever were in the 80s, but there are even more casual gamers and easy games.

Also, if this is some sort of challenge, I will gladly slam you in Smash 4 or MK8.

Not much to say here. I like Nintendo. That's about it.

SuperWiiU

It's all about experience. Most kids these days just play casual mobile games and aren't very good at normal games because they never get to play them. The kids who do have a console or gaming PC at home and play games almost daily are much better at it and can also easily handle the original SMB.

KingMike

Sample_Text wrote:

IMO there really isn't an objective way to compare it, for multiple reasons:
1) Games back then generally had to be harder and with less checkpoints to give it a good lifespan. Lots of reteo games have to few check/save points. Games nowadays have to be easy to beat so casual payers can have fun, so the challenge is usually optional onstead of mandatory. A good example are the Mario games (for both eras).
2) Games were a lot more expensive back then, so if you got a game, you were more or less stuck with it, so you might as well try to master it. Gamers today have a lot more options, so they may only play a game a little or only when friends are around, thus making the player less skilled at it than if they played it a lot. A good example is LoZ (previous era) and Mario Party (current era).
3)Games back then were a lot more niche than they are today, so most of them appealed to a narrow demographic compared to todays gamers (this is why Metroid was mind-blowing). Nowadays lots of games try to appeal to a variety of demographics, and many of them include less skilled and casual gamers (think Flappy Bird).

The point is that there are more challenging games and gamers than there ever were in the 80s, but there are even more casual gamers and easy games.

Also, if this is some sort of challenge, I will gladly slam you in Smash 4 or MK8.

I remember around the time of the NES anniversary, somebody posted an old ad. I think it was from Macy's, that priced Super Mario Bros. at $34.99 upon release. Take inflation into account and you're probably at or over $60. So about the same price as a Wii U game.

While games then indeed had limited memory so they couldn't put a whole lot into the games so they made them harder to compensate. But designers then were probably just still in the "arcade" design mentality. With arcade games, you had to make the game hard so players would keep dropping change to play again (though it was still a bit of balancing act as you didn't want to make it so hard the player would feel they're being robbed ).

KingMike

iphys

We had to play the same short games over and over so many times that we eventually mastered them. It always kind of scares me when I go back and play one of the games, and I somehow just instinctively jump even when I don't remember that I need to, or I magically navigate my way through Bowser's Castle with no real memory of what way I should go.

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jedisquidward

Oh my goodness this thread. How about everybody stop patting themselves on the back for one second? The only point of threads like this is so the older "gamers" can have some BS high horse that they are better than "kids today" because games had to be difficult back in the day. When have any of you actually seen a kid do bad at a game nowadays? You don't really see that that often, and when you do, its for a good reason. Those people aren't "gamers". The market has expanded. There were just as many kids back in the 80s as there are today who don't have the "skill" that these people are referring to. The thing is, you don't ever see those people. Games had to be programmed to be difficult back then to increase the value of it, and if you weren't part of that niche market who had the dedication to put that time in, you wouldn't be playing games at all for the most part. Today, the market has expanded, and for good reason. And it's not just "casual" stuff, either. Kids today still like a challenge, and most of them know about these old franchises. It only seems like those franchises are niche now because the entire industry has grown so much. There are just as many kids today who play hard games and are good at them as there were back then, and threads like this only make the people posting them look like bitter old men and women with a sense of accomplishment for being part of a crowd that hasn't actually changed or gotten easier or harder, and the more that we make dumb stuff like this, the more that new audiences will be turned away from traditional gaming.
GAME SET

Edited on by jedisquidward

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cloudrunner64

Everyone pretty much has this topic covered. In the early 2000's games started becoming shorter and easier because they were now catering for non gamers. (I blame Sony for all of it still)

Another point though is can you imagine how hard games would be now if the system had stayed the same? Anybody that had never played games would never play one now if you basically had to have played the Nes, snes etc. etc. just to experience it.

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RegalSin

1. your imagination takes over.
2. People back then did not play games as often,
3. People were having more normal encounters with the opposite sex. No bs from spinsters or finsters. Interacting with people is healthy.
4. As with "SailorMoon" the less you play the more better your able to play an videogame. Meaning the less time you spend playing games the more simpler they are. People who play games too many times get lost in the atmosphere of the game itself. That is why people get upset or unhappy over videogames when playing them.
5. People today are introduced to family games that are meant to make everybody an winner. No over dramatic scenario.
6. It was so complex ( normal) that executing super moves was something to be learned. Not just button mashing to the next level.

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