Should "Nintendo Hard" be brought back?

Somebody had to post it.

(hard to believe it took 2 pages).

edited 14th Aug '13 11:09:27 AM by Alucard

It was a general statement.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I wasn't even talking about finding out about a game's problems externally, only how the average person can pick up on the fact that an arcade game isn't going to allow them much more progress any time soon.

The rebuttal I came up with to myself is that such games probably rely on the occasional gamer getting pathetically addicted or starting a competition within their group of friends, just like stupid email spam that only requires one sucker out of thousands to click on it to make it profitable. And if none of that works, just inflate the price!

Honestly, it's really more like gambling, except the reward is entirely virtual. It's a Skinner box, essentially, with the only real reward being the chemical processes in the brain's pleasure centers and the potential to have your initials on display for all to see.

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Some of that "hard" was due to no saved game data, limited to only 3 lives, trying to get you to buy Nintendo Power when you got stuck in a game, etc. So no.

I vaguely remember when there were still had arcades around grandma's, but they were gradually becoming Suck E. Cheese's knockoffs and I wondered why I ever bothered with the ones that did not give me tickets, since they were harder and gave out no reward.

X-men, Alien vs Predator, The Simpsons, were just too entertaining for me to quit bu Gauntlet and house of the dead I eventually settled for just watching other people (even now I can't play Gaunlet on a home console, damn food). Tekken Tag was the only one I think I ever found myself dumping my pocket on, because unknown destroyed me again and again and again. I read about SNK Bosses and arcade on TV tropes years later and could relate. Unknown is not even an SNK boss but she still worked on me! The only reason I never emptied my pockets on Tekken Tag again is because I never did good enough at it to get to her again. Fighters like No Mercy and Smash Bros really dulled my tolerance for button chains and quarter circles.

Not that Smash Calibur games are easy. But their easy controls make SNK bosses like Cervantes/Inferno, John Cena or The Showdown/Final Final Battle seem like fish buckets compared to Unknown, though Tekken technically never had an SNK boss until Jinpachi.

Incidentally, Jinpachi is the grand champion of SNK bosses not made by SNK Playmore. From a purely blocking/dodging/punching stand point I've never personally played against one that was worse. In that way electronic gaming got harder. Jinpachi does not send you back to the start if you lose (like final Bison) nor is it as difficult to pull of King's ten hit combos and Five Moves of Doom in Tekken five as it is in Tekken Tag. That's why I can beat Jinpachi and not get to Unknown, beat Jinpachi but not Bison-in those ways game are getting easier. Easier to control and less dickish in punishing your failure.

The clearest non fighting game example is the Sin And Punishment duo, officially released in about a year of each other. The first one forces you to do good enough to earn continues. The second one gives you unlimited continues. So the second one is easier in that way, but from a purely dodging bullet patterns/hitting stuff/reflecting projectiles stand point Star Successor on Easy is like Successor to the Earth on Hard. The second game also happens to has much better controls, so reflecting a missile can be done more on reflexes than anticipation or memorization.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

IMO, Nintendo Hard was a necessary evil back in the 80's. Due to technological limitations (i.e. no ability to save in many cases), early console games had to be designed to be completable, start to finish, in one sitting. (For example, with perfect play, Super Mario Bros. can be completed without warps in about 20 minutes.) For replay value's sake, it had better not be the first sitting. Furthermore, early console games were inspired by arcade games (if not direct ports), which were specifically designed to kill you as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, more modern games tend to be more storyline-focused, meaning that you are missing out if you don't see the entire game, as opposed to earlier games which may have had an Excuse Plot if anything.

Never be normal.

Personally, whenever I play a non-Smash fighting game, I usually just mash buttons. In my experience, it's worked better than actually trying to remember to press A-X-B-A-R-LEFT-LEFT-RIGHT-R-L-X-X-X-B in order to do a whatsitmahoosy attack.

(Someone probably wants to kill me now for saying that )

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Since you brought up controls what do you guys think of the controls in some of the fighting games?

Let's take the WWF - WWE games for example. In the War Zone and Attitude games to do Stone Cold Steve Austin's Stone Cold Stunner for example you had to wait until the opponent was basically beat then hit forward, down, forward, punch+tieup for example, with other moves being nearly as complex. Then there were the Smackdown Vs Raw games where you push one button, or a direction and a button, or grapple then do it, or if you are fighting well enough to earn a finisher one button to have your near seven foot Amazonian Beauty spin the opponent around and toss them across the ring, where the challenge was more timing, not being countered.

In other words, chocolate, vanilla. Which one is the best?

edited 14th Aug '13 4:47:04 PM by tsstevens

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

For a wrestling game that doesn't have too much of or does not require a meta game, the good ole beat them senseless and press L1 for the special is good enough.

For other fighting games....well Im gonna leave that alone because you have people that love execution and people who don't.

youtube.com/Fire Trainer 92

I was always adequate at fighting games but never great at them. Games with more complex combos cater to the kind of player who can invest the time in learning and mastering them, which in turn makes me less likely to want to play them, since I know I won't be able to get good enough to be competitive.

Games where you can be reasonably competitive, if not necessarily top tier, by mastering the simple moves, are the ones I prefer.

I don't consider fighting games where the objective is to compete against other players to qualify for Nintendo Hard, though. That's not what the trope is about. It's the single player game that matters, meaning that if some bosses blatantly cheat in order to get you to dump quarters into the machine or Rage Quit, they might count.

edited 15th Aug '13 7:02:20 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think button chains work well for fighting games built around long combos and juggling, though I really do not get the appeal in games where everyone juggles each other. Quarter circles I really do not get the pervasiveness of (have gotten easier but they originally intended to be things most players could not do). While Tekken does have some needlessly complex inputs, for the most part it is just about following patterns.

If you want your game to be about guys bashing each other back and forth some simpler inputs and possibly some easy always present counter moves are better. The one failing I think with the No Mercy series is that while countering most moves takes some anticipation to be done reliably, finishing moves are always countered the same way, thus it is purely about timing of the execution. Though in wrestling games, stunning the other guy long enough inorder to pin/submit him can serve the same purpose as continual juggling. Complex button inputs can work if there are no easy counters to predictability that would make them unrewarding.

I prefer the commands simple, strategy around how to respond to them. Soul Calibur does it well I think, despite some instances of nine inputs resulting in four hits. Few "combos" go beyond four hits, parries are easy and every strike can be easily trumped or dodged. Contrast Tekken, where you won't get anywhere if you do not know how to quickly do a ten hit combo, with better players going up to 16. Even with those I am bad with, 6-8 unpublishable hits is standard.

But if single player elements are all that really qualify for Nintendo hard I think we can agree that the SNK BossSyndrome has been steadily getting worse, even with that company's exit form the market, in sheer terms of ability to unfairly beat you and better controls for the games is the only reason most of them are even possible.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

If better controls let you do better at fighting the boss, then isn't it reasonable for the bosses to get harder?

Nintendo Hard games use Fake Difficulty, Guide Dang It!, The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, and similar tactics that are not just difficult but actively unfair to the player.

That is, they blatantly cheat the established "rules" of the game, they use attacks that can't be blocked or dodged when those aren't the norm, they abuse Scratch Damage, they have perfect counters, they require you to use a strategy that cannot be deduced from their attack pattern to beat them, etc.

Also, Nintendo Hard needs to apply to all or at least a significant chunk of a game, not just to a boss. I believe that's what SNK Boss is for instead.

edited 15th Aug '13 2:12:09 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

By "10 Hit Combo," do you mean juggles? Or the predefined 10 hit combos that each character has? If it's the latter, then it has to be mentioned that those combos are fairly useless in the long run and can be easily countered even by a moderately skilled player.

EDIT: nvm, I read the rest of the post, and I kinda agree.

edited 15th Aug '13 4:40:34 PM by Nettacki

Because it seems it bears repeating, Nintendo Hard and Fake Difficulty are not the same thing.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

play Kaizo Mario World and experience hard and fair

Bumbleby is best ship. busy spending time on r/RWBY and r/anime. Unapologetic Socialist

Timestamps is love, timestamps is life...

...and if you looked at the timestamps you'd know this thread has been ogre for two years.

edited 11th Jan '15 12:26:25 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I'm not saying games should be too easy or too hard, but I think a lot of people like to play games for escapism rather than a challenge.

I prefer an challenge nowadays: Too many 3DS games have been finished within a month on my end

Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break

I would say Super Nintendo Hard. Challenging without the cheap bs.

If a game wants to be really hard, that's fine, but I don't think it should be the norm. Having higher difficulty levels be Nintendo Hard strikes me as a fair compromise, as long as it's the fair kind of challenging and not Fake Difficulty.

For the record, I usually play games on "normal" difficulty, especially if it's not a series I'm familiar with. Harder difficulties usually get saved for repeat playthroughs, and I almost always avoid Harder Than Hard difficulties.

edited 11th Jan '15 7:05:28 PM by SapphireBlue