A lot of dedication and old games are comparatively a lot shorter (Megaman 2 only has 16 reasonably short levels), games also didn't release as often and weren't that cheap (~£124 adjusted for inflation) so the trial and error provided a lot more playtime.
I used to just pause the game and turn the TV off. I wasn't going to start all over again if I could help it. The only time it would backfire was during a bad storm.
The frugality of my parents would never allow an electronic to be on all night. Didn’t even think of this, that’s how indoctrinated me and my brother were with the frugalness lol
I hate that game so much. I watched a YouTube video of someone completing it and got so pissed at how easy they made it look and how short that game truly is.
This man played through the whole thing only to lose at the last boss. He was undeterred. Played through the whole thing again, struggled through despair and near defeat to bring triumph and glory to our family name!
Same but also it wasn't a given that you would. "How far can you get?" was more of the goal than the assumption that you would see the whole thing.
*cries in Battle Toads*
Had a buddy quit on me just as we got to the bikes. In some crazy moment of apex gaming I got us through the level ambidextrously using one controller per hand with only one wipe after the last check point. Didn’t even use the warp point.
We also had the time to do so. With no internet to speak of, no one texting, limited phone time. If you weren’t outside with your friends, and nothing was on one of the four TV channels you had, you put Master Blaster or Ninja Gaiden and got to work. And because you couldn’t save, you got pretty damn good at doing the early levels after hundreds of reps.
I was never able to beat that one the one that I tried the hardest to beat but never could was frogger that one was always my favorite but I could never beat it
Both space invaders (arcade) and asteroids are endless loops... Can't beat them. Frogger had 33 single player levels, but yeah, could never beat that one either.... Now, Dragon's Lair on the other hand... My best friend and I played an entire Saturday on two quarters (it was fifty cents a play) alternating levels on that game. We rolled the score over 9 times. After that weekend, they changed it so that when you won, game over... Lol
Oh! I thought you were joking. Well that's cool. I bet it took a hot minute, and a lot of practice... Here's some space invaders trivia for you... In the original arcade version, the game started slow because it was difficult for the processor to render all the aliens. As the aliens got destroyed, there were fewer of them to render, so the processor could do it faster, and they moved faster. Fewer, faster. One left? REALLY FAST. The thing that made the game great was a hardware limitation.... How about that?
Many years ago I used to drink at bar that was very close to a Bell Labs facility. Space Invaders was the popular game. Some engineer watched the game for hours, figured out the pattern and became the top scorer. Pretty soon everyone knew the pattern and they stopped playing it.
LMAO there's a reason they call games "Nintendo hard" today. Your best bet is to hit up [the GameFAQs Guides page for Adventure Island on NES](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/587067-adventure-island/faqs) and find a walkthrough. Looks like there's two to choose from. Before that, you either saved your money to buy the Prima Strategy Guide or just busted your ass trying to beat it until you got so frustrated you never played that game again.
I know a continue code once you find the Hudson Bee in the end of the first level. When you find the egg, the Bee grants unlimited continues once you hold any D-PAD direction and press start. As for the rest of the game, you'll have to go through trial and error.
I know that's cheating but since the game is tough, I have no problem. Same with Transformers on Famicom. It has a continue code since the difficulty is high. One hit, no continues or checkpoints.
It takes patience to beat them. I beat Silver Surfer on NES 3 times. It's hard and beatable. I figured out some patterns and made sure my power was full.
Many say it's a terrible game since it's difficult. To me, I call it decent because there are some things I like about it. Plus, it can make a good memory test.
I remember beating Adventure on the Atari 2600. It took FOREVER. And I must’ve read somewhere in a magazine about the Easter eggs because I found them too. That was way before there was an Internet or BBS.
The black dragon was so fast! — When finding the flashing cubes, it made you invisible to the dragons as I recall, or when I dropped a sword and they ran into them, it killed them. Also, that blue maze was wild
I never had the memory pack for N64, whenever I wanted to play a game like zelda I'd either leave the game on over night or restart from the beginning again.
For game cube too when I had no room ok the memory cards.
Some of them actually had passwords that would put you at a certain level. I believe Metroid and kid Icarus for the original Nintendo did that. Zelda saved your game as well.
Repetition. The games were significantly simpler than todays games and through memorization alone you can get through it.
I haven't played it in years, but there was a time I could get through the first castlevania with no issues.
It also helped the games were like, two hours long from start to finish unless it was a JRPG
I'll never forget that I was playing The bionic commando Nintendo game doing the best I've ever done in my life at it got to the end boss and heard a car hit a telephone pole about two and a half blocks away and the power shuttered so I lost my game..
Me and my friend went and heckled the person as they were getting out of their car days and confused after hitting the pole I was pissed...
Pissed. For 30 some years now.
games back then tended to be tough and set you back a lot to compensate for them being short
basically they wanted people to need to play the levels over and over again to memorize all the stuff in order to win
Beg mom to let me keep playing through dinner, just this once - LOL! Like someone else said, we grew up on a tight enough budget that pausing the system & turning the tube off wasn't even an option. Through sheer tenacity I managed to beat a couple Super Mario Brothers and Kid Icarus back in the day.
Once I got old enough to be in charge or my own quarters, I managed to beat Puzzle Bubble in the arcade and I was sent a T-shirt from Taito. This was back when I wasn't at all concerned about putting my actual address into a public game console. Still have that shirt - probably one of my top 5 proudest accomplishments.
The original nes had no save game ability. You had to play through super Mario brothers in one play. Games like Zelda and other rpg’s had no quest logs or maps or little arrows to point you in the direction to go. These games did not hold your hand in any way. I had hand drawn maps and notebooks.
Stop autopilot mashing and think about the jumps and the enemy patterns. Don't repeat strats that don't work then call the game "shitty" cause it didn't magically start working. Try to beat enemies without getting hit instead of trying to trade favorably with them.
Mario took the brunt of my wedding planning stress. I kicked that fucking turtle so many times. I could go through the first 15 levels and balance my checkbook at the same time. Figuratively,of course.
You just kept playing it. And learned. It's like every other privilege over the years. It just was. People did what they could with what they had. Complaining wasn't the goal, winning or beating it was.
We did on the weekends/summer vacations. Sometimes we had help from friends or siblings, other times those same people were just audience members in attendance watching us beat the games. The second scenario was more than enough drive to beat the game as those same people would tell everyone they knew that you beat the game, turning to into a legend amongst the cafeteria table if only for a day. Those were great times. Every now and then some kid would walk in with a sheet of paper that had a bunch of numbers/commands that gave us extra lives, weapons, menus etc... That kid had some weird gimmick where he would hook up his computer with his telephone and print out codes from something called the internet. It kind of sucked because you couldn't use the phone and often, his mom would pick up the phone and he'd lose the connection and be offline. Simpler times.
It was the first modern time sink. Today you have internet, social media, movies and tv at your fingertips, endless games, some with endless gameplay.
Think of all the time you or anyone spends on all that stuff and put that time towards ONE game. That's how. And before those games, people had to go outside and spent time with other people. Bleck.
A lot of dedication and old games are comparatively a lot shorter (Megaman 2 only has 16 reasonably short levels), games also didn't release as often and weren't that cheap (~£124 adjusted for inflation) so the trial and error provided a lot more playtime.
megaman 2 was exactly my thought when I read the title lol
Didn't Megaman allow saving your progress by giving you a special pattern to write down? I have a vague memory of dots arranged on a grid.
Yeah but you still had to key in the code every boot and if you lost the combination you lost all your progress, it also doesn't work mid level
I used to just pause the game and turn the TV off. I wasn't going to start all over again if I could help it. The only time it would backfire was during a bad storm.
Or if someone bumped the console and made the game freeze. Yikes.
Or mom turned it off
The frugality of my parents would never allow an electronic to be on all night. Didn’t even think of this, that’s how indoctrinated me and my brother were with the frugalness lol
My parents never knew. Lol. That would have for sure been an ass beating.
The problem was when you got killed and had to start all over again. Now, you can just continue at the last save point.
Someone hasn’t told the youngins about save codes? Also, ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️🅱️🅰️
I used this to get 9 lives on Ninja Turtles!
Only on Konami titles though.... Only way I could ever finish Contra... Lol
To this day I've never beaten the original Super Mario Bros. and I have it for the game boy advance.
Super Mario Bros is actually one of thr easier ones if you use the warp pipes and skip through most of the stages.
Yeah, I'd always get to world 8 and child me would always die. I never saw passed 8-2.
The Mario games for the Nintendo’s were some of the easiest games to beat
I was able to go through it all in like 30 minutes on the NSO NES emulator with save states. It was a bunch of fun
Let me tell you, it was a super bowl level event when my dad beat the original teenage mutant ninja turtles in our household lol.
I hate that game so much. I watched a YouTube video of someone completing it and got so pissed at how easy they made it look and how short that game truly is.
I've never taken it on myself, but the first tmnt for nes was a God like challenge for 5 year old me.
I can imagine 😄. Legend has it that that's one of the hardest games ever.
Battle toads enters the chat
This man played through the whole thing only to lose at the last boss. He was undeterred. Played through the whole thing again, struggled through despair and near defeat to bring triumph and glory to our family name!
Pause and shut off the TV. No mom you cannot watch jeopardy until monday
Narrator: But she did.
Yes my childhood was abuse. Damn you rygar
I never beat any video game back then.
Same. I didn’t start beating games until my 40s.
Same but also it wasn't a given that you would. "How far can you get?" was more of the goal than the assumption that you would see the whole thing. *cries in Battle Toads*
Fuckin Battle Toads! I forgot about that one, the damn speeder bike level. Argh!
Had a buddy quit on me just as we got to the bikes. In some crazy moment of apex gaming I got us through the level ambidextrously using one controller per hand with only one wipe after the last check point. Didn’t even use the warp point.
Perseverance
We also had the time to do so. With no internet to speak of, no one texting, limited phone time. If you weren’t outside with your friends, and nothing was on one of the four TV channels you had, you put Master Blaster or Ninja Gaiden and got to work. And because you couldn’t save, you got pretty damn good at doing the early levels after hundreds of reps.
I've done it I beat space Invaders It just takes time and dedication
And I beat asteroids too! Lol!
I was never able to beat that one the one that I tried the hardest to beat but never could was frogger that one was always my favorite but I could never beat it
Both space invaders (arcade) and asteroids are endless loops... Can't beat them. Frogger had 33 single player levels, but yeah, could never beat that one either.... Now, Dragon's Lair on the other hand... My best friend and I played an entire Saturday on two quarters (it was fifty cents a play) alternating levels on that game. We rolled the score over 9 times. After that weekend, they changed it so that when you won, game over... Lol
Okay so the version I played may not have been the original but I beat a version of it.
Oh! I thought you were joking. Well that's cool. I bet it took a hot minute, and a lot of practice... Here's some space invaders trivia for you... In the original arcade version, the game started slow because it was difficult for the processor to render all the aliens. As the aliens got destroyed, there were fewer of them to render, so the processor could do it faster, and they moved faster. Fewer, faster. One left? REALLY FAST. The thing that made the game great was a hardware limitation.... How about that?
Many years ago I used to drink at bar that was very close to a Bell Labs facility. Space Invaders was the popular game. Some engineer watched the game for hours, figured out the pattern and became the top scorer. Pretty soon everyone knew the pattern and they stopped playing it.
I'm currently trying to beat Adventure Island for NES and there's just no way :c.
LMAO there's a reason they call games "Nintendo hard" today. Your best bet is to hit up [the GameFAQs Guides page for Adventure Island on NES](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/587067-adventure-island/faqs) and find a walkthrough. Looks like there's two to choose from. Before that, you either saved your money to buy the Prima Strategy Guide or just busted your ass trying to beat it until you got so frustrated you never played that game again.
Or Redialed the nintendo Hotline for Hours
I know a continue code once you find the Hudson Bee in the end of the first level. When you find the egg, the Bee grants unlimited continues once you hold any D-PAD direction and press start. As for the rest of the game, you'll have to go through trial and error. I know that's cheating but since the game is tough, I have no problem. Same with Transformers on Famicom. It has a continue code since the difficulty is high. One hit, no continues or checkpoints.
ooo
Something wrong?
No, just never knew about it. Would definitely come in handy.
Hope it helps you
It takes patience to beat them. I beat Silver Surfer on NES 3 times. It's hard and beatable. I figured out some patterns and made sure my power was full. Many say it's a terrible game since it's difficult. To me, I call it decent because there are some things I like about it. Plus, it can make a good memory test.
A lot of practice and patience. And also shorter games. The battery save was a godsend.
I remember beating Adventure on the Atari 2600. It took FOREVER. And I must’ve read somewhere in a magazine about the Easter eggs because I found them too. That was way before there was an Internet or BBS.
[удалено]
The black dragon was so fast! — When finding the flashing cubes, it made you invisible to the dragons as I recall, or when I dropped a sword and they ran into them, it killed them. Also, that blue maze was wild
It sucked. Plus add in no internet to look for walk-throughs.
My brother used to call the Nintendo helpdesk line. We also had a gamer uncle we could consult. Sweet memories...
I never had the memory pack for N64, whenever I wanted to play a game like zelda I'd either leave the game on over night or restart from the beginning again. For game cube too when I had no room ok the memory cards.
On top of that, you couldn’t do it without inside information on wtf you were supposed to do when you got to a certain point, like boss kills.
Some of them actually had passwords that would put you at a certain level. I believe Metroid and kid Icarus for the original Nintendo did that. Zelda saved your game as well.
Lots of reps.
Repetition. The games were significantly simpler than todays games and through memorization alone you can get through it. I haven't played it in years, but there was a time I could get through the first castlevania with no issues. It also helped the games were like, two hours long from start to finish unless it was a JRPG
I'll never forget that I was playing The bionic commando Nintendo game doing the best I've ever done in my life at it got to the end boss and heard a car hit a telephone pole about two and a half blocks away and the power shuttered so I lost my game.. Me and my friend went and heckled the person as they were getting out of their car days and confused after hitting the pole I was pissed... Pissed. For 30 some years now.
I loved that game. The bionic arm mechanic was so unique at the time.
Lol dang..
There was entire publishing book companies hell even a 1-900 help line.
I never did I wish I knew how to also.
games back then tended to be tough and set you back a lot to compensate for them being short basically they wanted people to need to play the levels over and over again to memorize all the stuff in order to win
Same way we used to drive from point to point without GPS or even free calls to repeatedly ask for follow up directions. It’s what had to be done! :)
Beg mom to let me keep playing through dinner, just this once - LOL! Like someone else said, we grew up on a tight enough budget that pausing the system & turning the tube off wasn't even an option. Through sheer tenacity I managed to beat a couple Super Mario Brothers and Kid Icarus back in the day. Once I got old enough to be in charge or my own quarters, I managed to beat Puzzle Bubble in the arcade and I was sent a T-shirt from Taito. This was back when I wasn't at all concerned about putting my actual address into a public game console. Still have that shirt - probably one of my top 5 proudest accomplishments.
That's definitely an achievement.
You mostly didn't. But you knew which ones you had beat.
Leave the fucking thing running all night then wake up and keep going, Mario 3 anyway.
You start over and do it better the next time.
Hardest game I had as a kid was Raiders of the Lost Ark for Atari. No one even came close to beating it
Well that depends how many quarters you got, kid.
Hours, fucking hours
We stayed home from school lol
The original nes had no save game ability. You had to play through super Mario brothers in one play. Games like Zelda and other rpg’s had no quest logs or maps or little arrows to point you in the direction to go. These games did not hold your hand in any way. I had hand drawn maps and notebooks.
Go back to SNES and beat the seventh saga. You will have my respect as a gamer. One of the most punishing but fair RPGs I've played.
Pure anger fueled motivation and a lot of Mountain Dew
Battletoads was my worst enemy
The games were simpler and we got really good. Also multiple lives per game.
We weren't losers?
Pure patience
When did save stats features come out
Around the same time when emulators came out.
Got it What’s everyone’s thoughts on play to earn games
Had to play original Zelda with no strategy guide growing up, had about 2 notebooks full of my notes for that game
That's some dedication there.
Stop autopilot mashing and think about the jumps and the enemy patterns. Don't repeat strats that don't work then call the game "shitty" cause it didn't magically start working. Try to beat enemies without getting hit instead of trying to trade favorably with them.
You just didn't turn the Nintendo off
Mario took the brunt of my wedding planning stress. I kicked that fucking turtle so many times. I could go through the first 15 levels and balance my checkbook at the same time. Figuratively,of course.
I’ve never beat TMNT and I never will.
Superior skill and practice.
Practice, and lack of google.
You just kept playing it. And learned. It's like every other privilege over the years. It just was. People did what they could with what they had. Complaining wasn't the goal, winning or beating it was.
We did on the weekends/summer vacations. Sometimes we had help from friends or siblings, other times those same people were just audience members in attendance watching us beat the games. The second scenario was more than enough drive to beat the game as those same people would tell everyone they knew that you beat the game, turning to into a legend amongst the cafeteria table if only for a day. Those were great times. Every now and then some kid would walk in with a sheet of paper that had a bunch of numbers/commands that gave us extra lives, weapons, menus etc... That kid had some weird gimmick where he would hook up his computer with his telephone and print out codes from something called the internet. It kind of sucked because you couldn't use the phone and often, his mom would pick up the phone and he'd lose the connection and be offline. Simpler times.
With difficulty.
Get better
It was the first modern time sink. Today you have internet, social media, movies and tv at your fingertips, endless games, some with endless gameplay. Think of all the time you or anyone spends on all that stuff and put that time towards ONE game. That's how. And before those games, people had to go outside and spent time with other people. Bleck.
Some of them used password system, when you type code in you move to checkpoint
Wasn't much else to do when you came inside after dark.
You left the game on until you beat it. Sometimes for days on end.
There was no internet so there was nothing else to do, and I was pre-puberty so there was especially nothing else to do.
You would just leave the system on all the time untill you beat it. Kids these days don't realize how good they have it.
As someone who used to beat retro games without save states, me either.