Needs Help: Nintendo Hard

I guess it's finally for us to talk about this trope, huh?

Nintendo Hard has been around since 2007 (Or even older, who knows). The trope definition is that a game as a whole is difficult, emphasis on *whole* part.

However, there are two issues regard this trope.

The first issue is that. Difficulty, is a subjective topic. Everyone can have different view on how difficult the game could be. Let's say some people saids the game is easy while some feels the opposite. However, because games can come with different genre, of course people who used that game's genre would say it's easy for them. Not to mention, the standard of examples is purely based on other website's user rating, which is definity not a fair way for standard.

Second issue is that despite the trope definition said it's the whole game being difficult, there are lots of examples being used to emphasis on certain level, boss or gamemode. Many wicks like that attached into That One Boss or That One Level due to Trope Decay.

And so I do the justice and begin the wick check, the task ain't easy cause sheer usage of this trope, over 5000 wicks!. Wick Check - 76 out of 5820 wicks checked. Extended to 90 due to multiple wicks.

Wick check here!

Lastly, if we really gonna do something to Nintendo Hard, what are we gonna do? I can only think three solution to this. 1. Disambiguate Nintendo Hard into Super-Trope page. 2. Cut the trope entirely. 3. Make it YMMV.

Uh, this isn't the TRS. We can't make any changes here.

Put this on TRS Queue if you haven't already.

Edited by Diamondeye218 on Nov 27th 2023 at 5:28:57 PM

For the sake of convenience for the OP, here is the link to the TRS Queue:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/TRSQueue

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 27th 2023 at 1:06:46 PM

To be fair I think it's valid to discuss here first before sending it to TRS

It is, but that isn't what the intent of the post is. I genuinely think they just put it in the wrong place unknowingly.

I'm all for discussing it, though, since we're here.

Well, so long as we're here, I'd cast my vote for making it YMMV, personally. What's difficult for one might not be for another.

It's all well and good having multiple entries for That One Boss and That One Level, but it'd be nice for people to know that a game doesn't let up in general. Especially if its mechanics are set in such a way that the player's going to have a hard time most of, if not all the way through. Case in point, God Hand with how the enemies level up as you play well. That makes for a difficult game without it being covered specifically by a "That One" trope. And Cuphead with how you have a set number of hits you can take before having to repeat the entire battle over again.

Plus, the two "That One..." tropes might not apply if Dynamic Difficulty in in play. An example is Crypt Of The Necrodancer. Since the levels get procedurally-generated, what would be unmentionable-rippingly difficult on one playthrough might be less-so on the next.

Edited by Snipertoaster on Nov 28th 2023 at 6:39:03 PM

I think the biggest problem is misuse of the trope. Nintendo Hard is a really old trope so I'd wager that many examples predate the more fitting tropes, or the people that added them were just following the lead of the existing incorrect examples. A one time cleanup could be all that's necessary.

I don't like the idea of disambiguating because, as far as I can tell, it still represents a unique idea that doesn't fall under the other Video Game Difficulty Tropes.

YMMV is an option but I also think that the current description is pretty objective. It lists a ton of tropes that can contribute to the feeling of being Nintendo Hard, and the ones that I clicked on weren't YMMV. Maybe there's some ambiguity on how many of those are needed, or if something outside of those listed can count, but that could be fixed by making it less subjective not more. The end of the description even emphasizes that subjective examples don't count.

The Wikipedia page for this term states ""Nintendo hard" refers to extreme difficulty in video games, characterized by trial-and-error gameplay and limited or nonexistent saving of progress".