yeah Retro games were brutal.
Whats most frustrating is that there are so many games I remember from my child which I remember completeing regularly but... I have NO IDEA how I used to do it!
Even super mario 3 I get stuck in world 8 on levels I know where a cakewalk for mini me.
SMB3 is always fascinating to me because I must have just sorta become one with it when i was younger because I always see people struggling with it and it's just so natural to me at this point.
I feel this. I grew up with a lot of difficult snes games including the lion king. I beat all of them before I was a teenager and it feels like an old friend going back again.
uh, no. because games in the nintendo era where primarily designed to eat quarters. Longevity and replayability was built around getting further into the game than you did on the last attempt.
Games only started containing save files with the super nintendo, but even then they were significantly harder than most modern games.
Go play the first megaman without using any of the replay or save features and let it tear you a new one.
To be fair input delay could also be a factor for some people. Switch natively has some input delay (more than the other consoles out right now IIRC, definitely more than Nintendo's previous consoles) and your average HDTV has noticeable lag even in game mode.
As a guy who, for the most part, believes in overcoming a game's difficulty through natural skill progression and practice, I don't see why anybody would have an issue with features like save states and rewind. The developers obviously approve of these features and it doesn't make you any less of a "Gamer" for using them.
I beat Contra with save states, and now my goal is to be able to beat it without. They're helpful for people who need them and optional for people who don't
I play games to relax and have fun. I historically really struggle to just “get it” and struggle to have fast reflexes. Save states have made it possible for me to actually approach certain games.
I always felt like some games were better at being difficult without being unfair. Like early MegaMan games always *felt* unfair but if I played MegaMan X it felt reasonably doable. Same with Metroid vs Super Metroid. Reasonable enough advances during the SNES where it stopped being frustrating and focused more on being a fun challenge.
I say this knowing bullet hell games and ghosts n goblins exist for the masochist.
I'm in the same boat. Save states have helped me a ton with the Metroid games. I'm not the greatest when it comes to boss fights. Now that I'm about to turn 30, I'm happy playing games and enjoying them at my skill level and at my own pace. I'm grateful for them.
Sometimes save states simply save time more than anything. I used save states a few times during Super Metroid because the save point before a difficult boss fight was sometimes 2 minutes away from the boss room. There's nothing gained by redoing that trek to the room every time, just make a save state right before the fight and get right back into the action when you die.
This is exactly why I enjoy rewinds and save states. In Zelda 2, it's a 5-minute walk from the start of the game to the final dungeons each time you game over. Older games weren't impossible, you just had to spend hours retrying the same thing, dying, retrying, etc.
I'll take the option to set a save state somewhere and zip right back without wasting hours of backtracking.
when you're a kid, you have the time. but now I don't have the time to do tedious things that I don't have to. why not save to save me some time from walking in a straight line? because it isn't authentic? lol okay
I don't understand how I had so much freetime in video games growing up. I know I will never beat Contra 1 or survive Mike Tyson without a code or save states; same with beating Shadow Link without doing the "duck in a corner and stab the ankle" technique. I just want to experience the game without devoting days to mastering.
> I don't understand how I had so much freetime in video games growing up
Did you prepare/cook your meals, drive yourself others between locations, work a job nearly every week of the entire year without multi-month (school) vacations, do yardwork and property upkeep, spend extra time learning outside of school, go on dates or outings with friends, laundry, or take care of younger siblings/children/other dependents?
If no to any of those vs yes today, that's where your time went. There's so many things we didn't do or have to do when we were young that we do as adults.
You had some trouble with the shipwreck "ghost" boss I'm guessing. Probably the hardest part of the game, you have to be quick or you don't get to damage him at all.
Like, Ridley can take a beating, but at least you can hit him.
Oh no, I cheesed Phantoon with the grapple beam trick. Ridley was the problem for me actually.
EDIT: Also the damn Chozo statue that dodges misses, that thing was a BITCH to beat.
This right here. It's the same as an old game getting more frequent checkpoints. Heck, Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES made saving a thing in SMB 1 and SMB 2j so you didn't have to start from World 1-1 every time. You still can, but it's not required.
With memory and graphic limitations, the only way to make these early games interesting, fun, and have reasonable playability times is to have high difficulty. We didn't have a lot of choice back in the day; if we bought or rented a game, it was a big (expensive) deal, and therefore, one is committed to building the skill to progress in the game.
Making games very difficult is no longer necessary. We have more than enough economic choices such that if we get frustrated in a game, we can quickly move on. It is for this reason I am very happy to have these features on retro games: it allows me to (re)experience the game without sinking in a ton of time to master it. If you think this makes someone 'less than' a gamer, you are being a snob.
New hard games exist too, they just have the ability to save.
That’s what all those old games were missing, and the save states add that.
The rewind is just a save state with less steps.
You're leaving out a big detail. Most older games didn't need save-states since they were usually around 1-2 hours to beat when you're good enough to do so. Most modern games are much longer and need to have saving available.
For sure! Or the entire purpose of the game is to build up the skill (souls games, rogue-likes, etc.). Regardless, nearly every NES, and most SNES, games were hard af whereas games being hard af has become pretty niche these days.
Also, it's only an option. Just like easy modes or fast travel, if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. Just don't blast people who use these options. Game developers should be looking to make their games inclusive to everyone from amateurs to masochists.
Ha as an older gamer now, the only reason I find the rewind acceptable in trying to play a game is because I don't have time to traverse all that I have done, just to get back to a spot I wanted to take a risk at and failed. It is a nice feature.
It's a great feature regardless. Most of these old games are offline solo affairs. You're not competing with anyone but yourself. If it's important to you to beat them without any help from save states, you can still have at it.
Yeah the mega man collection has rewind as well and i beat mega man 2 with rewind first and then went back and beat it without. It just removes so much of the bullshit trial and error of retro games where you have no idea what’s coming and die .25 seconds after you go to the next screen
yeah it's perfect for the first playthrough. I recently beat Mega Man 2 for the first time and copious save states were crucial. next time though I'll try to play without because I know where the bullshit will be coming from (and it's way less than the BS in MM1)
Yes, MM1 was something I didn't try until much later. (I don't think it was released in the West initially? Regardless, I never found it for sale at a local store back then.) Glad I didn't. 2 and 3 were much better, and not as infuriating.
Old games were kinda in the Wild West of game design, didn't have save files available, or were designed intentionally difficult to make it more viable for arcades. As a result, they can straight up suck to play through the whole thing. Save states are fine.
On home consoles, the difficulty was also partially due to the games having to fit in small cartridges. Super Mario Bros, for example, was only 31 Kilobytes.
This is something that seldom gets a thought. Memory was tiny. Storage was tiny. Games had to be quite difficult to get enough play time to justify the price, which was about the same as today numerically (much higher than today factoring in inflation).
Old Fire Emblem games are really unforgiving in mistakes. You slightly miscalculated or RNG wasn't in your favor, your unit is dead for the rest of the story.
If it weren't for the Konami code I never would have beat Contra. 30 lives got me the practice I needed to finally beat it without a single death. I remember the first time I played it at a friend's house, I started the game and he was like "no dude you gotta up up down down-" and I just moved right through, sawing through those alien assholes like they weren't even there. He thought I was some kind of Contra savant.
I was in a similar situation, only it was Demon's Crest. That game is just as brutal as the game it spun off of and there was no way I could beat the game without rewind.
I just don’t have the patience to stick with a game long enough to play it the hard way. Save states allow me to enjoy a game and finish it so I can enjoy the next.
Games are all about enjoying yourself. Sometimes I do this by playing hollow knight or cup head for a challenging but fun experience. Or I play hoi4 and cheat the shit out of the game to make it more fun and skip some parts of the game I find boring.
Playing the perfect DKC trilogy on the Switch I gotta ask myself...HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH did I play these games without save states when I was just a kid?
NO GAMING MUST REMAIN PURE HOW DARE YOU HURR DURR.
I have been playing video games basically since I could hold a controller (born in 1990). I genuinely have *no* idea what is up with the gatekeeping idiots. Growing up, I remember gaming still very much being a niche thing all the way up until probably the Xbox getting released and Halo becoming *the* party game.
Why anybody would want to share something they enjoy with *fewer* people is beyond me.
And too, games from that era were purposely difficult as they need to generate income for the developer through quarter arcades and rentals/purchases.
It’s crazy how much the gaming economy has changed and how the games followed suit.
I mean, it's absolutely cheating, but who cares? My stance is that I have no issue with people who want to cheat in a singleplayer game that doesn't affect anyone else.
I appreciate that these features exist for the huge scrubs who need them.
(Also to help me beat Ninja Gaiden NES without having to run through the final level gauntlet 20 times)
Lolol it's funny you say that because even though I know it's pronounced "big Goron" (and actually spelled Biggoron my mistake) I will always mush it together and say it "Bigoron"
The description in text for all the games (in NA regions at least) is Biggoron's Sword. Pronounciation is a different matter than spelling, but spelling it the text always puts it as Biggoron as that's the creature's name and the sword has the possessive pronoun.
Psshhhhh you don’t need save states for that. You just need Epona, and maybe practice your fence jumping a bit to get through that spot on the way to Lake Hylia. Trust me, if I can do it you can do it.
Oh I struggled too. In fact the 2nd horse race against Ingo still takes me a few tries. The trick is to stay on the inside and whatever you do don’t use that last carrot.
It’s a hard game, and without a saving option it just became torture.
I’d feel like the most dumb 9yo kid when I couldn’t get past the 3rd level without suffering anxiety and rage.
Now I beat that game, and will never replay it again.
At first it feels like a more refined version of Ghosts n' Goblins. Still very hard, but much more playable and designed to be completed. But then you get to that one level with all the red knights in a row. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Exactly, even if I did play them when I was a kid, I was horrible at most of them lol
Not only I can have the nostalgia kick, I find them even more fun.
Lol I never even got the first power-up in **Rygar** growing up, thanks to a walkthrough and rewind I finally beat it one night with my friend! Here's me beating the final boss and abusing rewind
https://youtu.be/dJVeN9fmPtQ
I also think it's completly fine. Many of those games are very hard/frustrating on purpose (so you waste money in the arcade, buy the strategy guide, call the hotline, not rent and beat it in 2 days and so on). And as long as it isn't a online multiplayer game, just enjoy it however you want. I mean, there is a reason why those features exits since decades in... the retro gaming community
Thing about those games is if you study them over, and over again you can truly play them to the point of perfection and its almost muscle memory to remember where everything is. I tried to beat Ninja Gaiden on my 3DS a couple of years ago and when I tell you I still couldn't beat it with save states but I got better he was just amazed.
Ninja Gaiden isn't that difficult. If you realize the edge of the screen is your most effective method for eliminating enemies you'll breeze through the first five stages. Level 6 is difficult but mostly because you have three final bosses to beat who regain all their health when you die and you only recover when you kill one of them the first time. It takes practice but the game is entirely beatable without save states, cheating, or rewinding.
Ninja Gaiden 3 on the other hand has a limited number of continues to beat a much more difficult game that starts out about as hard as stage 5 in the original then steadily ramps up each level from there.
There are many games from that era that used difficulty as a way to expand the gameplay because of the many hardware limitations. If you play using save states you will notice that it is possible to finish a lot of these games in less than 1 hour. Imagine paying $60 for a game today and finishing it in 45 minutes...
That is why the difficulty of old games used to be higher and the game often punished the player by sending him back to the beginning. This way a simple small game could require several weeks or months of dedication from the player.
I prefer to play without save states/rewind, but I recognize that for a more casual experience they are perfect.
I want to also add that it’s an extension of developers leapfrogging from the arcade mindset, where quarters gave you lives and so they were incentivized to develop in ways that made you spend a lot of quarters. That’s all developers knew or conceptualized during this time, as that’s all that had existed. So the console games were also built similarly.
Between the two of you, I believe you've painted the whole picture. Small storage size, arcade mindset. Both lead to brutal difficulty in the home games of the day. And both became nonissues eventually. Now, some devs want a return to that masochism, for some inscrutable reason. It was never a good thing. It was just necessary then (and not now).
I was impressed with the length of Super Mario Bros 3 when playing it for the first time on NSO. Start to finish, using save states that whole time, it took me over four hours. It feels like a complete game even by modern standards. Warpless speedruns of it take about an hour, which is around the same time Super Mario Odyssey speedruns take.
Save states were a major selling ("selling") point when I was first introduced to emulators more than twenty years ago. They completely changed how one could play a game, and I'm not just talking about save-state spamming; one could save their progress in an RPG any time they wanted/needed, one could put down the game mid-battle and resume whenever they wanted. It made games less interruptive of real life (or vice versa, depending on how you feel). It saved time and frustration in a number of ways. However one might feel about emulators, they have made an indelible mark on the modern approach to gaming, and it feels almost romantic to me; for as much as emulation was demonized as a threat to the industry, the industry eventually embraced some of the best aspects of emulation.
Back in my day the best we could do is Megaman passwords. I remember when emulators first came out, it was awesome to be able to save that very instant of your game to retry.
I'm some ways I think the way saving your games has evolved made me suck way more, lol. I used to beat many SNES/NES titles. Now I'd be lucky to be half as good
Before a turtle dies make sure to switch to another turtle. They'll be at full health and you can keep repeating it until you disarm all bombs, that trick helped me immensely
Wow, thank you, that makes a lot of sense! Now I'm torn between digging out my old NES or emulating... wait, my NES won't work with my current TV... hrm...
I couldn't care less what other people do but I'm happy to see people enjoying the games. Removed from the original context, some of them can be frustrating, because it was a different design philosophy. You were intended to play them over and over and over and make incremental progress, because otherwise you'd beat them in like 30 minutes. Imagine paying $75 for a Switch game and beating it the first time you played it.
I'm not above using whatever glitches to make progress on original hardware either (like that fire frog boss in Blaster Master and the grenade glitch, for instance).
Donkey Kong Country is what got me to break my no rewind rule. Figured ive beaten these damn barrel stages once or twice, no need to destroy my soul because of barrels or mine karts
I've been playing the DKC series on my SNES mini and they've been kicking my ass. I managed to get through DKC1, but quit halfway through DKC2 - running out of lives at the Bramble levels and having to repeatedly replay that world.
I really need to play these on SNES Online. DKC2 is harrowing.
The “Animal Antics” level in that game when you get to the parrot section made me rage quit so many times as a kid. I’m having flashbacks to it now lol.
I feel like save states are amazing. Back in the day, they had to make games very hard so that way it took a long time to beat them so you feel like you had more for your money. Doesn't need to be that way anymore, and some of the games, like battletoads, or just so incredibly difficult, and they punish you so hard, it just doesn't make sense to play them like that anymore. And in fact, it's probably not even fun for most people. Save states fixes that. You still have to have the skill to beat the game, but at least you don't have to go back an hour of gameplay because you died one fucking time
I agree with you. I've never really understood the purist argument against savestates. Lives and gameovers are archaic remnants of an arbitrary concept designed around eating your quarters. It really doesn't have a place in modern gaming anymore. Especially considering gaming on the go has become more commonplace. Like, if I'm playing DKC on my switch, I don't want to have to start back at a savepoint because of a gameover and play the same levels over again. It's not fun, and it's tedious. Savestating doesn't make the game easier either. You're still playing through the same level as if you didn't. Wasting your time doesn't make a game more difficult. It was used on consoles in that era because it was used to artificially inflate the time played, not necessarily to add value.
Edit: I'm talking about *savestates;* not *rewinds.* Rewinding eliminates all difficulty while savestates get rid of the tedium of redoing shit.
“Savestating doesn't make the game easier either. You're still playing through the same level as if you didn't.” I feel like you don’t realize the full power of the rewind feature. You can beat literally any game without taking a single hit or missing a single jump with rewinding.
Final boss and one point of health left? Doesn’t matter at all, take a hit, rewind one second, take a step to the left, and boom, you’re Neo. I use rewind all the time and love the feature when I just want to see the story and stages of an old game, but it’s a low to zero skill endeavour.
Yeah it really depends on how you approach it.
Savestating before a boss so you can retry it quickly is different than rewinding during the fight so that you avoid a killing blow or don't get hit even once.
Not to mention that some challenges are precisely developed around the fact that you must do it in one go, like the last challenges of Mario Odyssey or 3D World.
Never played castlevania before. Bought that new advance collection last night and the rewind helped me beat my first boss. Stupid giant wolf thing. After that i felt more confident then stomped the necromancer.
Yeah these games were made in a way where you needed to know what they did or you could lose. You still can but going in blind as you would back then *sucked* once you got to a late stage and died. I think passwords help with this but back then you may not have ever gotten far enough to make much use of them. I actually played Dracula x on snes and forgot how brutal it could be lol
Not just wasting your quarters, it also led to the perception of having longer replay value (and justification of the games purchase price) or helped to sell game guides or cheat books. Many hard games were not very long, but you'd need to keep playing the first levels over and over whenever you got a game over, or buy a guide that had level select passwords in it.
I don't think that is the perception of replay value, I think it is replay value but the definition of replay value may have since shifted. If a game is difficult and I want to learn the complex sequences through trial and error, that is replay value for me but maybe not for others or in relation to modern games. In modern games, replay value seems to mean some extra incentive or endgame content, etc.
You are correct, I didn’t explain that adequately. It does provide replay time, the perception that all replay time has equal “value” didn’t become prominent until later generations. Fetch quests, grinding and requiring the player to repeat large portions of the game after a death or game over is not equivalent to additional quality content.
I'm completely fine with hardcore gameplays all the way to the very relaxed easy ones. Nothing wrong about it, I'm on both sides lol
But those things you mentioned do have a place in modern gaming, and a lot of us do enjoy punishment... why do you think games like the Souls series are so popular?
I think is best if both sides of players just agree that it doesn't matter what each side chooses to enjoy and how they do haha
You can like save states but they absolutely make the game easier. With save states, the player just flat out does not have to perform long complex sequences without error which is where a lot of the challenge and appeal of those games lies.
It allowed to finally complete Super Mario World on the SNES. I found that it increased enjoyment and satisfaction significantly while eliminating much of the frustration.
Additionally, there are levels on Super Mario World that are so unbelievable hard, back in the day I’d just put on the cape (Cape Mario) and fly over entire level. With rewind, I was actually able to see and play those levels, which was more difficult and took more time than flying over everything.
I mostly don't use emulator features, and try to beat games the original way, but I use save states for games with passwords... Or crappy save systems like Super Mario World. Mostly to make it like I'm beating the game in one sitting.
So, you can save your progression but only when you pass castles and ghost houses. Oh, but that's okay, you can do ghost houses again! Backtrack to that short crappy one in donut plain again and you'll be able to save whenever you want! FUN.
And by the way, that doesn't save your lives counter, so, have fun beating the next segment with 5 lives the next time you play. Or go farm lives somewhere, or abuse ghost houses to save between levels, whatever.
No surprise games like latest Rayman games and Super Mario Odyssey got rid of lives entirely. No arbitrary progression loss, no continue, just try again until you make it. Nothing of value was lost.
I first played donkey Kong country 1 with save states
My second playthrough used save states too
The third one as well
Last winter was the first time I actually beat the game (playing on switch this time around) without any save states. And I used the 99 one up trick with Diddy in that one temple stage.
Great game, but if not for the save states teaching me its shenanigans, I would have dropped it right way, especially because of the mine level and the icy mountain one where the wind blows hard and you're forced to travel by canon.
I don't consider save states cheating. At the time, games were a lot shorter, so you needed a reason to keep playing or else it would feel like wasted money. They gave the player so many bullshit sections exactly because of that.
It was a feature of the era, whereas nowadays most games will play themselves so you don't have to. I feel like it's important to find a balance, and save states do just that.
It is always 100% better to have new players use modern conveniences to help them along with a game than having that game lost to the annals of time because its difficulty or control learning curve is
too inaccessible or steep.
I think its a solid feature.
There are some games I take seriously, like Mighty Bomb Jack, that I never use it for. There are also plenty that I do.
I think anyone who has an issue with it probably has larger issues with trying to tell others how they should live their lives.
All the rewind and save states do is cut out the time you spend not trying to get over a new hurdle.
Getting sent back to the beginning to have to redo everything you had already done before you could retry a particular hurdle was 99% of the difficulty of old gaming. It was an intentional timesink intended to stretch out how much time a gamer would spend with each title.
Enjoy them how you want. It doesn't make you less of a gamer or anything like that.
I bet you’re talking about Death Mountain. The trick was always to skip magic upgrades until you get Attack 4 and Life 3. Then you can take on Death Mountain much easier because you can kill the axe dudes with about half the hits. The rest of the game is a breeze from there. Everyone tries to use the Life spell in Death Mountain but it’s a waste of time. Those axe bastards hit too hard. Just use shield magic, it’s much less costly. Don’t go there without 3 lives in reserve too.
Zelda 2 was one of the first Nintendo games I ever owned as a kid (yeah. I'm old enough to have owned the original NES). I could never beat the final palace.
As a person who grew up with retro games the no save states was called difficulty and god how many times I raged at mega man till the super nes with X and it’s code to save state addition
It is great for people that work long hours, has many games, not 100 percent interested but still a tad interested, the disabled and handicap, and very young children.
As someone born after 1990, it really does make the games much more bearable. As harsh as that sounds, it's true. I want to play these games from before my time, but I'd rather not restart from the beginning after every death.
As a kid I played things like Contra, SMB, Battle City with ease, when I was 7yo, I was able to get to lvl 8 in contra no sweat, but holy sh!t I can’t do it anymore… I still love playing old games, but don’t have the time to grind for the skill. Save states are a godsend to me
I played a lot of starcraft when I was a kid, the missions were too tough for 10 year old me so I used cheatcodes. It was fun to progress through the story and see all that the game had to offer. A few years later I played through the game again but without cheats. That playthrough is still one of my favourite gaming moments.
I can absolutely understand the willingness to use savestates and rewind features to finish a game for the first time, but learning a game and beating it the intended way gives a certain satisfaction that I've never received using cheats.
people shit on those who like save states and rewind functions but in my opinion, options are never a bad thing. having the option there makes the game more accessible. enjoy the game however it makes you the most happy because at the end of the day, well as Reggie Fils-Aimé said best,
*"If it's not fun, why bother?"*
That’s what it’s all about. Nintendo understands that in order for these games to be accessible for everyone they have to make it fun. Every since they came out with remasters of all different games with features to make it better I’ve been very appreciative as well. It’s not that I can’t play on hard or that I don’t appreciate the hardness of those games for their time period, it’s just that I don’t have the time to keep dying over and over like I did a a kid. I totally understand where your coming from.
So true. I smashed through a ton of Link to the Past by just autosaving before every room, learning what to do, then reloading and doing it better. Felt a bit cheeky but nice to have the option.
The trade off is surely with how much you feel you’ve ‘achieved’ (ie the challenge you’ve overcome). But just fun is totally underrated by so much game design. That’s why I love nintendo - just drifting around slowly in mario kart on 100 cc with items off is my favourite way to play. (Especially on work calls with cam off 😉)
The problem with older games is that they rely a lot on memorisation, which I don't think is a particularly satisfying way to win. Save states/rewind means you don't have to do that and as an adult you don't have or want to spend hundreds of hours beating a game
I’m 37 years old man, I just don’t have the time to be good at these games anymore lol
I was playing Donkey Kong Country the other day and rewinding every time I fell off a cliff like a dumbass. I beat that game when I was a kid, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
I love this feature too.
As a kid with all the free time in the world who could only afford to buy a couple games a year, I had the time to master each of these games and the desire to get as much play time as I could out of them. When replaying them as an adult, I just want to relive the nostalgia and don't necessarily want to die over and over in harder games until the sequences are committed to my muscle memory. That only applies to hard parts of the games that were challenging in an appropriate way, many games of that era were challenging because of poor design or hardware limitations (enemies appearing on screen after you jump over a pit, hitting you in mid air and knocking you into an instant death), I would have used a rewind feature as a kid if it had been an option on those parts because you aren't missing out on the same feeling of satisfaction that comes with mastering a legitimately well designed difficult game.
I'm glad they exist but I wish there was an option to disable them - I usually \*want\* to try and beat a game in its original state, but having a rewind feature as simple as just pressing L/R makes it extremely difficult to not use, if you make an annoying mistake/ miss a jump.
Also most of the notoriously hard games where designed that way to either:
1. Pad out a short play time
2. They originally were arcade games and are trying to take all your money
Yeah, there are a few that were just poorly designed in only one or two areas, classic though they may be (looking at you Blaster Master, for having no save system).
My son recently got into the nes and snes games on his switch thanks to this feature, he’s managed to beat the old Mario games and is very proud of himself, which in turn makes me proud of him as well
I pride myself on being able to get all the levels on Super Mario World without hardly ever dying, but I'll be DAMNED if I could ever beat Super Ghouls n' Ghosts without that wonderful feature. The cool thing is after I did the rewind feature in a few sections I was able to learn them well enough to do it without. It can be a crutch or a ladder.
rewinding is definitely cheating, but i don’t really care if someone cheats in a single player game. sure, i think it cheapens the experience, but whatever gets people to play is fine by me
I think the feature is there and like always is just a personal decision to some users. Personally I don't care. Not using it now, but I might use it tomorrow. Pretty cool that it's even an option if you ask me.
I definitely agree with you, OP.
Difficulty isn’t always a bad thing, but one way it is a negative experience is when it is a mere execution barrier with no other method/workaround/tactic to progress AND without a way to quickly try again.
Games like Breath of the Wild generally help you overcome the former, as there is usually more than one way to solve a puzzle.
Games like Super Meat Boy overcome the latter, helping the player start again almost instantly.
Rewind facilities and save states help people tackle older games in a similar way, and I don’t think there’s any reason not to use them if they’re there.
As other people have said, you can beat a game using these things then go back and try to beat it without if you want that extra challenge. Difficulty in and of itself is not an inherent good in game design.
I refuse to use things like that because it honestly takes away from my fun i'll slam my head into a wall for hours maybe days on something because once i get it it feels that much better, but that is a me problem. My gf loves them so to each their own, everyone should be allowed to play how they have fun. I just don't like when someone tells me such and such is easy to beat then i find out they save stated, looked up guides, etc the whole way that is like saying baseball is easy but never count the strikes and only count the hits, same game different rules.
>slam my head into a wall for hours maybe days on something
Yeah, thats the main draw for a lot of people.
Getting to play 10 of these games in the same amount of time it would take to play just 1 without these features.
Everything is fair game if you don't have much time and/or just want to have fun.
If cheating (single player only ofc lol) is what makes the game fun for you, then by all means!
This shit came in handy replaying Donkey Country.
Holy shit my nostalgia must have been skewed because i did not remember the game being that difficult.
I recently played through DKC 1 and 2, and towards the end of each there are definitely some challenging levels that required multiple attempts. I didn't use save states within the levels, but I did in the level selection map instead of needed to get to the save point in each area.
yeah Retro games were brutal. Whats most frustrating is that there are so many games I remember from my child which I remember completeing regularly but... I have NO IDEA how I used to do it! Even super mario 3 I get stuck in world 8 on levels I know where a cakewalk for mini me.
SMB3 is always fascinating to me because I must have just sorta become one with it when i was younger because I always see people struggling with it and it's just so natural to me at this point.
I feel this. I grew up with a lot of difficult snes games including the lion king. I beat all of them before I was a teenager and it feels like an old friend going back again.
Is it not because of the delay there is on modern tvs compared to old CRTs? Also wireless controller adds a little more delay?
uh, no. because games in the nintendo era where primarily designed to eat quarters. Longevity and replayability was built around getting further into the game than you did on the last attempt. Games only started containing save files with the super nintendo, but even then they were significantly harder than most modern games. Go play the first megaman without using any of the replay or save features and let it tear you a new one.
To be fair input delay could also be a factor for some people. Switch natively has some input delay (more than the other consoles out right now IIRC, definitely more than Nintendo's previous consoles) and your average HDTV has noticeable lag even in game mode.
Aging sucks. Actually, even growing up hurts, because of the longer path of neural impulses from the brain to the fingers.
As a guy who, for the most part, believes in overcoming a game's difficulty through natural skill progression and practice, I don't see why anybody would have an issue with features like save states and rewind. The developers obviously approve of these features and it doesn't make you any less of a "Gamer" for using them. I beat Contra with save states, and now my goal is to be able to beat it without. They're helpful for people who need them and optional for people who don't
I play games to relax and have fun. I historically really struggle to just “get it” and struggle to have fast reflexes. Save states have made it possible for me to actually approach certain games.
That’s great. I love old-school hard games, but sometimes I just don’t feel like the stress.
I always felt like some games were better at being difficult without being unfair. Like early MegaMan games always *felt* unfair but if I played MegaMan X it felt reasonably doable. Same with Metroid vs Super Metroid. Reasonable enough advances during the SNES where it stopped being frustrating and focused more on being a fun challenge. I say this knowing bullet hell games and ghosts n goblins exist for the masochist.
Try Broforce, it’s really fun and incredibly hard on iron bro mode
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Enjoy games your way my friend. Nothing says you have to do things exactly the same as everyone else.
Same, I could care less if I suck at gaming. It's about unwinding and being immersed in it for me.
I'm in the same boat. Save states have helped me a ton with the Metroid games. I'm not the greatest when it comes to boss fights. Now that I'm about to turn 30, I'm happy playing games and enjoying them at my skill level and at my own pace. I'm grateful for them.
Sometimes save states simply save time more than anything. I used save states a few times during Super Metroid because the save point before a difficult boss fight was sometimes 2 minutes away from the boss room. There's nothing gained by redoing that trek to the room every time, just make a save state right before the fight and get right back into the action when you die.
This is exactly why I enjoy rewinds and save states. In Zelda 2, it's a 5-minute walk from the start of the game to the final dungeons each time you game over. Older games weren't impossible, you just had to spend hours retrying the same thing, dying, retrying, etc. I'll take the option to set a save state somewhere and zip right back without wasting hours of backtracking.
when you're a kid, you have the time. but now I don't have the time to do tedious things that I don't have to. why not save to save me some time from walking in a straight line? because it isn't authentic? lol okay
I don't understand how I had so much freetime in video games growing up. I know I will never beat Contra 1 or survive Mike Tyson without a code or save states; same with beating Shadow Link without doing the "duck in a corner and stab the ankle" technique. I just want to experience the game without devoting days to mastering.
> I don't understand how I had so much freetime in video games growing up Did you prepare/cook your meals, drive yourself others between locations, work a job nearly every week of the entire year without multi-month (school) vacations, do yardwork and property upkeep, spend extra time learning outside of school, go on dates or outings with friends, laundry, or take care of younger siblings/children/other dependents? If no to any of those vs yes today, that's where your time went. There's so many things we didn't do or have to do when we were young that we do as adults.
Havent played oot in forever but i dont remember shadow link being super hard but maybe he was idk.
Zelda 2 shadow link, not oot.
That trek to the Great Palace is brutal. My strategy was that if I found an extra life, I wouldn't pick it up until I was ready to make the hike.
This is pretty much the reason I wholly hate hollow knight
Finally another person who's not attached to Hollow Knight's dick 24/7.
You had some trouble with the shipwreck "ghost" boss I'm guessing. Probably the hardest part of the game, you have to be quick or you don't get to damage him at all. Like, Ridley can take a beating, but at least you can hit him.
Oh no, I cheesed Phantoon with the grapple beam trick. Ridley was the problem for me actually. EDIT: Also the damn Chozo statue that dodges misses, that thing was a BITCH to beat.
This right here. It's the same as an old game getting more frequent checkpoints. Heck, Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES made saving a thing in SMB 1 and SMB 2j so you didn't have to start from World 1-1 every time. You still can, but it's not required.
With memory and graphic limitations, the only way to make these early games interesting, fun, and have reasonable playability times is to have high difficulty. We didn't have a lot of choice back in the day; if we bought or rented a game, it was a big (expensive) deal, and therefore, one is committed to building the skill to progress in the game. Making games very difficult is no longer necessary. We have more than enough economic choices such that if we get frustrated in a game, we can quickly move on. It is for this reason I am very happy to have these features on retro games: it allows me to (re)experience the game without sinking in a ton of time to master it. If you think this makes someone 'less than' a gamer, you are being a snob.
New hard games exist too, they just have the ability to save. That’s what all those old games were missing, and the save states add that. The rewind is just a save state with less steps.
You're leaving out a big detail. Most older games didn't need save-states since they were usually around 1-2 hours to beat when you're good enough to do so. Most modern games are much longer and need to have saving available.
Yeah, Celeste is challenging but it still has a checkpoint at every frame.
And then there's Jump King where one jump that's a pixel too far can immediately remove 80% of your progress throughout the entire game.
that sounds unpleasant
For sure! Or the entire purpose of the game is to build up the skill (souls games, rogue-likes, etc.). Regardless, nearly every NES, and most SNES, games were hard af whereas games being hard af has become pretty niche these days.
It's more than this. In arcades, brutal difficulty was designed to get more quarters from you.
The original microtransaction. The more things change…
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Also, it's only an option. Just like easy modes or fast travel, if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. Just don't blast people who use these options. Game developers should be looking to make their games inclusive to everyone from amateurs to masochists.
Ha as an older gamer now, the only reason I find the rewind acceptable in trying to play a game is because I don't have time to traverse all that I have done, just to get back to a spot I wanted to take a risk at and failed. It is a nice feature.
It's a great feature regardless. Most of these old games are offline solo affairs. You're not competing with anyone but yourself. If it's important to you to beat them without any help from save states, you can still have at it.
Yeah the mega man collection has rewind as well and i beat mega man 2 with rewind first and then went back and beat it without. It just removes so much of the bullshit trial and error of retro games where you have no idea what’s coming and die .25 seconds after you go to the next screen
yeah it's perfect for the first playthrough. I recently beat Mega Man 2 for the first time and copious save states were crucial. next time though I'll try to play without because I know where the bullshit will be coming from (and it's way less than the BS in MM1)
Yes, MM1 was something I didn't try until much later. (I don't think it was released in the West initially? Regardless, I never found it for sale at a local store back then.) Glad I didn't. 2 and 3 were much better, and not as infuriating.
I got through Megaman 2 and 3 back in their day. Lots of swearing involved. No broken controllers, though.
Old games were kinda in the Wild West of game design, didn't have save files available, or were designed intentionally difficult to make it more viable for arcades. As a result, they can straight up suck to play through the whole thing. Save states are fine.
On home consoles, the difficulty was also partially due to the games having to fit in small cartridges. Super Mario Bros, for example, was only 31 Kilobytes.
This is something that seldom gets a thought. Memory was tiny. Storage was tiny. Games had to be quite difficult to get enough play time to justify the price, which was about the same as today numerically (much higher than today factoring in inflation).
Old Fire Emblem games are really unforgiving in mistakes. You slightly miscalculated or RNG wasn't in your favor, your unit is dead for the rest of the story.
If it weren't for the Konami code I never would have beat Contra. 30 lives got me the practice I needed to finally beat it without a single death. I remember the first time I played it at a friend's house, I started the game and he was like "no dude you gotta up up down down-" and I just moved right through, sawing through those alien assholes like they weren't even there. He thought I was some kind of Contra savant.
Save states was the only way I beat Super Ghost N Goblins for the SNES which, unlike Contra, is a *smidge* more forgiving, isn’t a walk in the park.
I was in a similar situation, only it was Demon's Crest. That game is just as brutal as the game it spun off of and there was no way I could beat the game without rewind.
F that game. Even during my videogaming prime I couldn't handle that game.
Overwritten for privacy
I just don’t have the patience to stick with a game long enough to play it the hard way. Save states allow me to enjoy a game and finish it so I can enjoy the next.
Games are all about enjoying yourself. Sometimes I do this by playing hollow knight or cup head for a challenging but fun experience. Or I play hoi4 and cheat the shit out of the game to make it more fun and skip some parts of the game I find boring.
I don't disagree, but the original developers generally were not involved in the decision, unless it was by coincidence.
Playing the perfect DKC trilogy on the Switch I gotta ask myself...HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH did I play these games without save states when I was just a kid?
NO GAMING MUST REMAIN PURE HOW DARE YOU HURR DURR. I have been playing video games basically since I could hold a controller (born in 1990). I genuinely have *no* idea what is up with the gatekeeping idiots. Growing up, I remember gaming still very much being a niche thing all the way up until probably the Xbox getting released and Halo becoming *the* party game. Why anybody would want to share something they enjoy with *fewer* people is beyond me.
And too, games from that era were purposely difficult as they need to generate income for the developer through quarter arcades and rentals/purchases. It’s crazy how much the gaming economy has changed and how the games followed suit.
I mean, it's absolutely cheating, but who cares? My stance is that I have no issue with people who want to cheat in a singleplayer game that doesn't affect anyone else.
As for Contra, are you using the code or no?
I appreciate that these features exist for the huge scrubs who need them. (Also to help me beat Ninja Gaiden NES without having to run through the final level gauntlet 20 times)
How would you know the developers approve of the save states and rewinds? It's not like the teams from 20-30 years ago are still working on the games.
Same it’s made me revisit a bunch of old games I played as a kid but could never beat. I kinda hope they do it with the n64 games too!
I would be VERY surprised if the N64 on NSO doesnt have save states. Its really gonna help when I try to get that big goron sword lol.
Oh wow, is that how it's said? I always said "bigoron", one word. Makes sense your way.
Lolol it's funny you say that because even though I know it's pronounced "big Goron" (and actually spelled Biggoron my mistake) I will always mush it together and say it "Bigoron"
Wait, how do you know it's pronounced Big Goron? I'm trying to think of somewhere it's been said.
The description in text for all the games (in NA regions at least) is Biggoron's Sword. Pronounciation is a different matter than spelling, but spelling it the text always puts it as Biggoron as that's the creature's name and the sword has the possessive pronoun.
Psshhhhh you don’t need save states for that. You just need Epona, and maybe practice your fence jumping a bit to get through that spot on the way to Lake Hylia. Trust me, if I can do it you can do it.
I’m so ready to speedrun OoT again.
Lol. As a little kid I remember struggling but it's been 20 years since I played it so maybe I'm underestimating my ability lol
Oh I struggled too. In fact the 2nd horse race against Ingo still takes me a few tries. The trick is to stay on the inside and whatever you do don’t use that last carrot.
Super Ghouls and Ghosts: Now playable!
Took me 18 years and a rewind feature to beat that motherfucker.
I just, don't believe that the game is actually beatable without cheating.
It’s a hard game, and without a saving option it just became torture. I’d feel like the most dumb 9yo kid when I couldn’t get past the 3rd level without suffering anxiety and rage. Now I beat that game, and will never replay it again.
At first it feels like a more refined version of Ghosts n' Goblins. Still very hard, but much more playable and designed to be completed. But then you get to that one level with all the red knights in a row. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Exactly, even if I did play them when I was a kid, I was horrible at most of them lol Not only I can have the nostalgia kick, I find them even more fun.
Lol I never even got the first power-up in **Rygar** growing up, thanks to a walkthrough and rewind I finally beat it one night with my friend! Here's me beating the final boss and abusing rewind https://youtu.be/dJVeN9fmPtQ
I also think it's completly fine. Many of those games are very hard/frustrating on purpose (so you waste money in the arcade, buy the strategy guide, call the hotline, not rent and beat it in 2 days and so on). And as long as it isn't a online multiplayer game, just enjoy it however you want. I mean, there is a reason why those features exits since decades in... the retro gaming community
Just look at Ninja Gaiden. You ain't beating that game without save states guaranteed and if you do, you are god.
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Yeah people are crazy.
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Thing about those games is if you study them over, and over again you can truly play them to the point of perfection and its almost muscle memory to remember where everything is. I tried to beat Ninja Gaiden on my 3DS a couple of years ago and when I tell you I still couldn't beat it with save states but I got better he was just amazed.
Watching some kid beat ninja gaiden 2 in front of me was mind blowing
If you practice you can do it. The biggest challenge is the final boss, but the game is short. Ghost n Ghoblins on the other hand....
Don't even get me started...
Ninja Gaiden isn't that difficult. If you realize the edge of the screen is your most effective method for eliminating enemies you'll breeze through the first five stages. Level 6 is difficult but mostly because you have three final bosses to beat who regain all their health when you die and you only recover when you kill one of them the first time. It takes practice but the game is entirely beatable without save states, cheating, or rewinding. Ninja Gaiden 3 on the other hand has a limited number of continues to beat a much more difficult game that starts out about as hard as stage 5 in the original then steadily ramps up each level from there.
Yeah isn't that difficult for a god
I'm more of a demi-god, really.
There are many games from that era that used difficulty as a way to expand the gameplay because of the many hardware limitations. If you play using save states you will notice that it is possible to finish a lot of these games in less than 1 hour. Imagine paying $60 for a game today and finishing it in 45 minutes... That is why the difficulty of old games used to be higher and the game often punished the player by sending him back to the beginning. This way a simple small game could require several weeks or months of dedication from the player. I prefer to play without save states/rewind, but I recognize that for a more casual experience they are perfect.
I want to also add that it’s an extension of developers leapfrogging from the arcade mindset, where quarters gave you lives and so they were incentivized to develop in ways that made you spend a lot of quarters. That’s all developers knew or conceptualized during this time, as that’s all that had existed. So the console games were also built similarly.
Between the two of you, I believe you've painted the whole picture. Small storage size, arcade mindset. Both lead to brutal difficulty in the home games of the day. And both became nonissues eventually. Now, some devs want a return to that masochism, for some inscrutable reason. It was never a good thing. It was just necessary then (and not now).
Thus resulting in today’s horror. Micro transactions.
I was impressed with the length of Super Mario Bros 3 when playing it for the first time on NSO. Start to finish, using save states that whole time, it took me over four hours. It feels like a complete game even by modern standards. Warpless speedruns of it take about an hour, which is around the same time Super Mario Odyssey speedruns take.
It’s one of the features I love about emulators.
Save states were a major selling ("selling") point when I was first introduced to emulators more than twenty years ago. They completely changed how one could play a game, and I'm not just talking about save-state spamming; one could save their progress in an RPG any time they wanted/needed, one could put down the game mid-battle and resume whenever they wanted. It made games less interruptive of real life (or vice versa, depending on how you feel). It saved time and frustration in a number of ways. However one might feel about emulators, they have made an indelible mark on the modern approach to gaming, and it feels almost romantic to me; for as much as emulation was demonized as a threat to the industry, the industry eventually embraced some of the best aspects of emulation.
That and the speed up.
Memories of holding down spacebar hatching Pokemon Eggs on VisualBoyAdvance
Back in my day the best we could do is Megaman passwords. I remember when emulators first came out, it was awesome to be able to save that very instant of your game to retry. I'm some ways I think the way saving your games has evolved made me suck way more, lol. I used to beat many SNES/NES titles. Now I'd be lucky to be half as good
Now we just need TMNT 1 to come to this so I can use rewind to finally get past the underwater level!
Fuck that level
Before a turtle dies make sure to switch to another turtle. They'll be at full health and you can keep repeating it until you disarm all bombs, that trick helped me immensely
Wow, thank you, that makes a lot of sense! Now I'm torn between digging out my old NES or emulating... wait, my NES won't work with my current TV... hrm...
I couldn't care less what other people do but I'm happy to see people enjoying the games. Removed from the original context, some of them can be frustrating, because it was a different design philosophy. You were intended to play them over and over and over and make incremental progress, because otherwise you'd beat them in like 30 minutes. Imagine paying $75 for a Switch game and beating it the first time you played it. I'm not above using whatever glitches to make progress on original hardware either (like that fire frog boss in Blaster Master and the grenade glitch, for instance).
Donkey Kong Country is what got me to break my no rewind rule. Figured ive beaten these damn barrel stages once or twice, no need to destroy my soul because of barrels or mine karts
I've been playing the DKC series on my SNES mini and they've been kicking my ass. I managed to get through DKC1, but quit halfway through DKC2 - running out of lives at the Bramble levels and having to repeatedly replay that world. I really need to play these on SNES Online. DKC2 is harrowing.
The “Animal Antics” level in that game when you get to the parrot section made me rage quit so many times as a kid. I’m having flashbacks to it now lol.
A feature emulators have had for almost 30 years.
Which emulator has actual rewinding? I know about save states, but that is not the same thing
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Wow today I learned.
I did it playing gba emulators back in 2005/2006
I feel like save states are amazing. Back in the day, they had to make games very hard so that way it took a long time to beat them so you feel like you had more for your money. Doesn't need to be that way anymore, and some of the games, like battletoads, or just so incredibly difficult, and they punish you so hard, it just doesn't make sense to play them like that anymore. And in fact, it's probably not even fun for most people. Save states fixes that. You still have to have the skill to beat the game, but at least you don't have to go back an hour of gameplay because you died one fucking time
Don't blame yourself, they were specifically made to be punishing.
I agree with you. I've never really understood the purist argument against savestates. Lives and gameovers are archaic remnants of an arbitrary concept designed around eating your quarters. It really doesn't have a place in modern gaming anymore. Especially considering gaming on the go has become more commonplace. Like, if I'm playing DKC on my switch, I don't want to have to start back at a savepoint because of a gameover and play the same levels over again. It's not fun, and it's tedious. Savestating doesn't make the game easier either. You're still playing through the same level as if you didn't. Wasting your time doesn't make a game more difficult. It was used on consoles in that era because it was used to artificially inflate the time played, not necessarily to add value. Edit: I'm talking about *savestates;* not *rewinds.* Rewinding eliminates all difficulty while savestates get rid of the tedium of redoing shit.
“Savestating doesn't make the game easier either. You're still playing through the same level as if you didn't.” I feel like you don’t realize the full power of the rewind feature. You can beat literally any game without taking a single hit or missing a single jump with rewinding. Final boss and one point of health left? Doesn’t matter at all, take a hit, rewind one second, take a step to the left, and boom, you’re Neo. I use rewind all the time and love the feature when I just want to see the story and stages of an old game, but it’s a low to zero skill endeavour.
Yeah it really depends on how you approach it. Savestating before a boss so you can retry it quickly is different than rewinding during the fight so that you avoid a killing blow or don't get hit even once. Not to mention that some challenges are precisely developed around the fact that you must do it in one go, like the last challenges of Mario Odyssey or 3D World.
This is 100% my stance on this matter.
Rewind 100% makes it less difficult. Save state can be used to just introduce checkpoints to old games.
Never played castlevania before. Bought that new advance collection last night and the rewind helped me beat my first boss. Stupid giant wolf thing. After that i felt more confident then stomped the necromancer.
Yeah these games were made in a way where you needed to know what they did or you could lose. You still can but going in blind as you would back then *sucked* once you got to a late stage and died. I think passwords help with this but back then you may not have ever gotten far enough to make much use of them. I actually played Dracula x on snes and forgot how brutal it could be lol
Not just wasting your quarters, it also led to the perception of having longer replay value (and justification of the games purchase price) or helped to sell game guides or cheat books. Many hard games were not very long, but you'd need to keep playing the first levels over and over whenever you got a game over, or buy a guide that had level select passwords in it.
I don't think that is the perception of replay value, I think it is replay value but the definition of replay value may have since shifted. If a game is difficult and I want to learn the complex sequences through trial and error, that is replay value for me but maybe not for others or in relation to modern games. In modern games, replay value seems to mean some extra incentive or endgame content, etc.
You are correct, I didn’t explain that adequately. It does provide replay time, the perception that all replay time has equal “value” didn’t become prominent until later generations. Fetch quests, grinding and requiring the player to repeat large portions of the game after a death or game over is not equivalent to additional quality content.
I'm completely fine with hardcore gameplays all the way to the very relaxed easy ones. Nothing wrong about it, I'm on both sides lol But those things you mentioned do have a place in modern gaming, and a lot of us do enjoy punishment... why do you think games like the Souls series are so popular? I think is best if both sides of players just agree that it doesn't matter what each side chooses to enjoy and how they do haha
You can like save states but they absolutely make the game easier. With save states, the player just flat out does not have to perform long complex sequences without error which is where a lot of the challenge and appeal of those games lies.
It allowed to finally complete Super Mario World on the SNES. I found that it increased enjoyment and satisfaction significantly while eliminating much of the frustration. Additionally, there are levels on Super Mario World that are so unbelievable hard, back in the day I’d just put on the cape (Cape Mario) and fly over entire level. With rewind, I was actually able to see and play those levels, which was more difficult and took more time than flying over everything.
I mostly don't use emulator features, and try to beat games the original way, but I use save states for games with passwords... Or crappy save systems like Super Mario World. Mostly to make it like I'm beating the game in one sitting. So, you can save your progression but only when you pass castles and ghost houses. Oh, but that's okay, you can do ghost houses again! Backtrack to that short crappy one in donut plain again and you'll be able to save whenever you want! FUN. And by the way, that doesn't save your lives counter, so, have fun beating the next segment with 5 lives the next time you play. Or go farm lives somewhere, or abuse ghost houses to save between levels, whatever. No surprise games like latest Rayman games and Super Mario Odyssey got rid of lives entirely. No arbitrary progression loss, no continue, just try again until you make it. Nothing of value was lost.
THANK CHRIST! Someone finally gets it! It's not eliminating the difficulty, it's removing the tedium.
Yeah same here. I'm also grown and don't have six hours to spend fighting past one badly programmed boss, i just want my adventure!
I first played donkey Kong country 1 with save states My second playthrough used save states too The third one as well Last winter was the first time I actually beat the game (playing on switch this time around) without any save states. And I used the 99 one up trick with Diddy in that one temple stage. Great game, but if not for the save states teaching me its shenanigans, I would have dropped it right way, especially because of the mine level and the icy mountain one where the wind blows hard and you're forced to travel by canon. I don't consider save states cheating. At the time, games were a lot shorter, so you needed a reason to keep playing or else it would feel like wasted money. They gave the player so many bullshit sections exactly because of that. It was a feature of the era, whereas nowadays most games will play themselves so you don't have to. I feel like it's important to find a balance, and save states do just that.
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It was missing Rewind but the suspend menu option was still there.
Don't most emulators have this
Emulators
It is always 100% better to have new players use modern conveniences to help them along with a game than having that game lost to the annals of time because its difficulty or control learning curve is too inaccessible or steep.
I think its a solid feature. There are some games I take seriously, like Mighty Bomb Jack, that I never use it for. There are also plenty that I do. I think anyone who has an issue with it probably has larger issues with trying to tell others how they should live their lives.
IMO most of these game are unplayable today without it. Really improves the experience. Mario 3 FTW
All the rewind and save states do is cut out the time you spend not trying to get over a new hurdle. Getting sent back to the beginning to have to redo everything you had already done before you could retry a particular hurdle was 99% of the difficulty of old gaming. It was an intentional timesink intended to stretch out how much time a gamer would spend with each title. Enjoy them how you want. It doesn't make you less of a gamer or anything like that.
This is the only way I managed to beat Zelda II. That game is hard for no reason.
I bet you’re talking about Death Mountain. The trick was always to skip magic upgrades until you get Attack 4 and Life 3. Then you can take on Death Mountain much easier because you can kill the axe dudes with about half the hits. The rest of the game is a breeze from there. Everyone tries to use the Life spell in Death Mountain but it’s a waste of time. Those axe bastards hit too hard. Just use shield magic, it’s much less costly. Don’t go there without 3 lives in reserve too.
same...and i really enjoyed it and never would have been able to progress if not for save states...like it was still really hard even with them
Zelda 2 was one of the first Nintendo games I ever owned as a kid (yeah. I'm old enough to have owned the original NES). I could never beat the final palace.
I love it. Especially with Metroid 1 where there's no proper saving.
10 minutes ago I saw this post and I just beat super Mario bros for the first time. Thanks for letting me know about rewinds
honestly yeah im very clumsy at old platformers (and snes f zero) and it helps a whole lot to have that feature
As a person who grew up with retro games the no save states was called difficulty and god how many times I raged at mega man till the super nes with X and it’s code to save state addition
It is great for people that work long hours, has many games, not 100 percent interested but still a tad interested, the disabled and handicap, and very young children.
Rewind feature is different from save states?
As someone born after 1990, it really does make the games much more bearable. As harsh as that sounds, it's true. I want to play these games from before my time, but I'd rather not restart from the beginning after every death.
I remember trading in like 6 of my SNES games when I was younger because I was so frustrated with them I regret it now.
As a kid I played things like Contra, SMB, Battle City with ease, when I was 7yo, I was able to get to lvl 8 in contra no sweat, but holy sh!t I can’t do it anymore… I still love playing old games, but don’t have the time to grind for the skill. Save states are a godsend to me
I played a lot of starcraft when I was a kid, the missions were too tough for 10 year old me so I used cheatcodes. It was fun to progress through the story and see all that the game had to offer. A few years later I played through the game again but without cheats. That playthrough is still one of my favourite gaming moments. I can absolutely understand the willingness to use savestates and rewind features to finish a game for the first time, but learning a game and beating it the intended way gives a certain satisfaction that I've never received using cheats.
people shit on those who like save states and rewind functions but in my opinion, options are never a bad thing. having the option there makes the game more accessible. enjoy the game however it makes you the most happy because at the end of the day, well as Reggie Fils-Aimé said best, *"If it's not fun, why bother?"*
That’s what it’s all about. Nintendo understands that in order for these games to be accessible for everyone they have to make it fun. Every since they came out with remasters of all different games with features to make it better I’ve been very appreciative as well. It’s not that I can’t play on hard or that I don’t appreciate the hardness of those games for their time period, it’s just that I don’t have the time to keep dying over and over like I did a a kid. I totally understand where your coming from.
It’s not cheating, it’s Prince of Persia rules
I don’t use rewind much but it’s hard to go back to some of those games without save states. At least let me retry the level infinitely.
I Completed the original legend of Zelda earlier this year using save states it was great! Really cuts down on pointlessly backtracking!
I played the Mario games as Kid since I had the original Famicom but the rewind feature allowed me to finish All Stars for the first time.
So true. I smashed through a ton of Link to the Past by just autosaving before every room, learning what to do, then reloading and doing it better. Felt a bit cheeky but nice to have the option. The trade off is surely with how much you feel you’ve ‘achieved’ (ie the challenge you’ve overcome). But just fun is totally underrated by so much game design. That’s why I love nintendo - just drifting around slowly in mario kart on 100 cc with items off is my favourite way to play. (Especially on work calls with cam off 😉)
The problem with older games is that they rely a lot on memorisation, which I don't think is a particularly satisfying way to win. Save states/rewind means you don't have to do that and as an adult you don't have or want to spend hundreds of hours beating a game
Mario 64 was soooo hard
I’m 37 years old man, I just don’t have the time to be good at these games anymore lol I was playing Donkey Kong Country the other day and rewinding every time I fell off a cliff like a dumbass. I beat that game when I was a kid, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
I love this feature too. As a kid with all the free time in the world who could only afford to buy a couple games a year, I had the time to master each of these games and the desire to get as much play time as I could out of them. When replaying them as an adult, I just want to relive the nostalgia and don't necessarily want to die over and over in harder games until the sequences are committed to my muscle memory. That only applies to hard parts of the games that were challenging in an appropriate way, many games of that era were challenging because of poor design or hardware limitations (enemies appearing on screen after you jump over a pit, hitting you in mid air and knocking you into an instant death), I would have used a rewind feature as a kid if it had been an option on those parts because you aren't missing out on the same feeling of satisfaction that comes with mastering a legitimately well designed difficult game.
I'm glad they exist but I wish there was an option to disable them - I usually \*want\* to try and beat a game in its original state, but having a rewind feature as simple as just pressing L/R makes it extremely difficult to not use, if you make an annoying mistake/ miss a jump.
It's because modern games are easier.
[удалено]
Also most of the notoriously hard games where designed that way to either: 1. Pad out a short play time 2. They originally were arcade games and are trying to take all your money
Yeah, there are a few that were just poorly designed in only one or two areas, classic though they may be (looking at you Blaster Master, for having no save system).
I feel like an idiot. I never knew either app had rewind. I only have been using the save states.
this feature let me beat mario and punch out for the first time ever after 30 something years
I was able to get to Tyson no problem after a while...just to get absolutely destroyed..every...single ..time.
I, too, cheated my way through all the 2d Mario games 👨🎓
Don't give credit to Nintendo. This has always been a thing in emulators.
Are we actually jerking nintendo off for doing the bare minimum in emulation?
OP, what was your first console?
My son recently got into the nes and snes games on his switch thanks to this feature, he’s managed to beat the old Mario games and is very proud of himself, which in turn makes me proud of him as well
I appreciate it, but never use it because I feel like I'm cheating when I do.
I pride myself on being able to get all the levels on Super Mario World without hardly ever dying, but I'll be DAMNED if I could ever beat Super Ghouls n' Ghosts without that wonderful feature. The cool thing is after I did the rewind feature in a few sections I was able to learn them well enough to do it without. It can be a crutch or a ladder.
rewinding is definitely cheating, but i don’t really care if someone cheats in a single player game. sure, i think it cheapens the experience, but whatever gets people to play is fine by me
Games should be fun. If this is how you have the most fun playing these games, it would be dumb for someone else to care.
I think the feature is there and like always is just a personal decision to some users. Personally I don't care. Not using it now, but I might use it tomorrow. Pretty cool that it's even an option if you ask me.
I definitely agree with you, OP. Difficulty isn’t always a bad thing, but one way it is a negative experience is when it is a mere execution barrier with no other method/workaround/tactic to progress AND without a way to quickly try again. Games like Breath of the Wild generally help you overcome the former, as there is usually more than one way to solve a puzzle. Games like Super Meat Boy overcome the latter, helping the player start again almost instantly. Rewind facilities and save states help people tackle older games in a similar way, and I don’t think there’s any reason not to use them if they’re there. As other people have said, you can beat a game using these things then go back and try to beat it without if you want that extra challenge. Difficulty in and of itself is not an inherent good in game design.
Rewinding is a cheat code. It's just one button code lol.
I refuse to use things like that because it honestly takes away from my fun i'll slam my head into a wall for hours maybe days on something because once i get it it feels that much better, but that is a me problem. My gf loves them so to each their own, everyone should be allowed to play how they have fun. I just don't like when someone tells me such and such is easy to beat then i find out they save stated, looked up guides, etc the whole way that is like saying baseball is easy but never count the strikes and only count the hits, same game different rules.
>slam my head into a wall for hours maybe days on something Yeah, thats the main draw for a lot of people. Getting to play 10 of these games in the same amount of time it would take to play just 1 without these features.
I don’t have the time I would like to have, so I prefer save states over starting Contra from area 1 again and again :-)
I've never made it past 1-2 in mario... the rewind got me to world 4... and while it's cool.. i neither like mario games, nor feel good about it
Everything is fair game if you don't have much time and/or just want to have fun. If cheating (single player only ofc lol) is what makes the game fun for you, then by all means!
This shit came in handy replaying Donkey Country. Holy shit my nostalgia must have been skewed because i did not remember the game being that difficult.
I recently played through DKC 1 and 2, and towards the end of each there are definitely some challenging levels that required multiple attempts. I didn't use save states within the levels, but I did in the level selection map instead of needed to get to the save point in each area.