NES Games Too Hard for Young People | Strangest Arcade Experience -

[@PatTheNESpunk]

Who wants to arm wrestle?! What Neo Geo games would you put in your potential cabinet? Are NES games too difficult for the kids? ➡You can support us by joining this channel or on Patreon: shorturl.at/fswBU​ or patreon.com/cupodcast​

[@thebeasthatfeasts]

Arm Wrestling is on the rise as a professional sport. Look up the "WAL". lol

[@emboop2346]

Nes games are hard ..worth the difficulty though on most games

[@thebeasthatfeasts]

@Orwellian Future Is Now Im not into it, but you have peaked my curiosity, whats the title? lol

[@loganholmberg2295]

Some old Nes games and quite a few Sega games are IMO. They were either no long enough or were poorly "optimized" and have sections that are brutally difficult. Its why cheat codes became such a popular things in game magazines IMO. Notorious 8 bit ones that come to mind that I could never finish were TMNT and Battletoads as I'm such you'll agree? Also Alex Kid if you picked up the skate board. Picking up that item in the game was a death sentence for me. But then you had games like Super Mario Brothers and Sonic that were not quite as difficult and with a little practice you could explore and finish which totally lended to their popularity as anyone could play them with pulling their hair out at certain sections of the game all the time. And on Genesis Streets of Rage 3 and Contra Hard corps come to mind. I played the Japanese versions of these 2 years later and they are way more enjoyable to play. I do not know why Sega of America had such a hardon for turning up difficulty other than to pad playtime. All I had for SNES was Street fighter, Starfox. Final fight and RPGs so I can't speak to the SNES to much.

[@liamboyle6345]

I think the addition of save states alleviates any difficulties with hard nes games. I think it’s mostly the graphics. Honestly I haven’t played nes in months.

[@orinjayce]

I taught a kindergarten class how to play classic Megaman games during between class breaks to improve their concentration and reasoning. Some of them can clear a stage or two. A few just rush in, using one button at a time though. It just takes a good attitude and patience to be good at most "hard" games. Kids haven't changed much, just their environment has.

[@takigan]

If I'd had an elementary school teacher that brought video games to school as part of a lesson, I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered that teacher for the rest of my life as the "coolest teacher of all time".

[@yotvvan2472]

What thats a thing now when i as in kindergarten we did not even have any computers the teachers knew nothing about video games.

[@orinjayce]

@Orwellian Future Is Now they are only 6. So cause and effect for them requires a lot of reasoning. Also sorting boss weaknesses, the same.

[@D-Fens_1632]

I had an elementary school teacher in the 80s who called all video games "Intendo."

[@chriswaters834]

As somebody who grew up with an NES, I can admit that far too many NES games were too cryptic.

[@watata1t]

Some where localization issues with the "Engrish" and early 90's equivalent of google translate, infamouse example would be Castlevania 2 Simons quest

[@undergrounddojokeyboardcag701]

@@watata1t Developers also expected you to figure things out. There was far less hand holding with old games.

[@DrEarthwormRobotnik]

@@watata1t Simon’s Quest is just as cryptic in the Japanese version. The NPCs just flat out LIE to you in that game.

[@midimusicforever]

Back when NES games were new, there wasn't the abundance of games we have now (if you ignore the trash), so they had to last for long.

[@quezcatol]

Yes just look at how many mario/zelda/metroid you can play today and you wont ask why the kids doesnt wanna play the NES anymore- sure mario 3 is still one of the best 2D games ever made, but thats 1 nes game.

[@Zazzaro703]

They also were made hard to lengthen playtime. Imagine if you spent $60 (and that’s $60 in the late 80s which was a lot more during that time) on Castlevania and one shot all the levels beating it in an hour or two.

[@quezcatol]

@@Zazzaro703 yepp, you had to "master it" and it could take a few weeks and then you could basically "speedrun it".

[@midimusicforever]

@@Zazzaro703 Yeah, that was my point.

[@yotvvan2472]

Yea the games are technically short but i could not beat most of them even after years so they seemed huge.

[@ColonelSandurz]

"I dont want the graps, I want the snacks" What a line. XD

[@dann6065]

I just listened to a older podcast where Ian says he REGRETS buying the wonderswan handhelds all the different types he had hahaha

[@Lordgenome76]

Damn, Ian BTFO. Lol

[@BigSnipp]

Breaking news: Man changes opinion.

[@opaljk4835]

BigSnipp shocking, right? This is the biggest scandal that the media just glossed over. Of course.

[@BigSnipp]

@@opaljk4835 I should admit I''m a fraud too. I used to not like ketchup on my scrambled eggs.

[@opaljk4835]

BigSnipp we are all hack frauds

[@no_nameyouknow]

Depends on the game and the person of course. Some of those games were too hard for me as a kid too, but I had no choice. So I played them again and again until I learned how to play them.

[@JohnSmith-yd5wq]

And the controller especially when playing roms

[@TheRelen222]

@Orwellian Future Is Now I kind of agree. Not all retro games are equal though. Some of them are still very good and playable. Some were pretty bad, both then and now.

[@ostiariusalpha]

LOL! Those memorization heavy, "unfair" game mechanics are their very own genre now, and a fairly popular one at that.

[@Jp-gc6bh]

I’m 25, I use to play nes games and still do. They’re hard ass balls lol

[@dongeraci8599]

A lot of NES games are too hard for adults.

[@Rando1975]

Unfortunately true. I was in my teens when the NES launched. I picked up a NES mini a few years ago and I'm terrible at most of the games now.

[@vintagegamer695]

I think it also depends on the game in question as well as the player. When I was a kid, Zelda 2 was so hard. But now that I'm older I can beat it.

[@liverush24]

I have an arcade story to share. Back in '92, some of my dead beat friends spent all of their free time down at an arcade in the town centre, and as a result they had become very friendly with the woman who ran the place. She was in her early sixties and only an employee at the arcade, where she had worked since the '80s, the place was actually owned by a fella who also owned the nightclub upstairs. It was a long narrow arcade, with the entrance at one end and the private quarters for staff at the other. She used to let some of the regulars use her private kitchen facilities in the back of the building. She would make them a tea or coffee and they would make her one, etc. Anyway, one of the regulars somehow got hold of a master key, apparently it was just lying on the floor somewhere. This key allowed rapid access to the coin compartments located at the bottom front of all the fruit machines and some of the video games. Soon after they realised what they actually had, the stealing started. Every time she ( the manageress ) left her booth to go to the kitchen or toilet, the regulars would spring into action. It was like a military operation as they swiftly passed the key around between eachother and all of the machines were simultaneously emptied. By the time she returned, everything looked completely calm and normal. Time & time again this happened for two or three months! Unbelievably. You would have thought that a drop in revenue would have been noticed, but apparently not. Then one morning, she went off to the back of the premises as usual, and, as usual, the operation sprang into action...but on this occasion something unexpected happened. As all of the coin doors were open at front of all the machines, and as the regulars were furiously scooping coins out as fast as their hands would allow, the front door of the arcade opened, and who should walk through it, the owner. He almost never turned up there, even though he was upstairs at his club most days, but here he was. As you can imagine he was fucking fuming and they all got banned from their favourite hangout for life. They are lucky that he didn't call in the police. He roughed a couple of them up a bit and then told them all to fuck off! But witnessing the thieving happening was quite an experience, because they were so fast & organised. Actually I used to get quite anxious watching it, even though it had nothing to do with me.

[@GD-tt6hl]

I lived in a resort area that had an arcade every block. One arcade had a change machine and I somehow figured out that if you put in 1 quarter into the slot, three quarters would come out. I went home with full pockets.

[@liverush24]

@@GD-tt6hl Free money! Nice.

[@hjalmarjohnson5846]

My regret is large- I literally *gave away* my old SNES and games to a kid I worked with back in 2012-ish. Donkey Kong country trilogy, chrono trigger, F-zero, and a couple others. Couple years later I started "collecting" and saw the prices on some of the stuff I gave away. Oof.

[@hjalmarjohnson5846]

@@frankretro937 Damn. If we only knew then what we do now, huh?

[@JonDGAF]

That's why NES games were so much fun and I always go back to playing them. I loved the challenging games, I think some of todays modern games are much more difficult with tons of crazy menus and upgrade paths and 50 different button controls to do this and that. NES games were simple but challenging and I really miss that aspect in a lot of todays modern games.

[@JonDGAF]

@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I agree.

[@rainehappy7097]

Back when Capcom and Konami were household names.

[@JohnSmith-yd5wq]

The controller you use matters A LOT more when it comes to PC and OR emulator. ESPECIALLY fighting games

[@JonDGAF]

@Lassi Kinnunen 81 Yeah I remember those, it was a plastic overlay that would go over the keyboard....old school. And yeah a lot of old NES games were about memorization, Mega man is a classic example of that, once you knew the boss attack patterns you had it down.

[@IkeFoxbrush]

Some NES games are very cryptic (looking at you Castlevania II), but in other cases you just have to read the manual. For example, how many people would figure out that you can switch between the turtles in TMNT without the manual? In The Legend of Zelda, one of the goals is to find Ganon's lair and the manual tells you so, but without it you'd just be running around cluelessly.

[@Clay3613]

My strangest arcade experience was getting bullied off Operation Wolf while at a hotel while on vacation in Williamsburg. My damn parents were no help. How can you not include Metal Slug in your Neo Geo Cab?

[@hamstrungharry259]

man couldve bought a Virtual On cabinet for 500 bucks in 2014. Messed up that one.

[@rainehappy7097]

@@almostliterally593 Dreamcast has one too. There's even a twin stick for it.

[@deadpool3982]

@@almostliterally593 or Yakuza Kiwami 2

[@YodaPagoda]

A friend of mine and I played the hell out of Samurai Showdown...excellent game, we discovered new things all the time.

[@nicholaswinebrenner5164]

I won a full Space Invaders arcade machine in a raffle. I used to play it. It does not work anymore. It's still at my parents place.

[@officespace7777]

One of the strangest arcade experience's I had was... I was playing pac man around 1985. Some guy came up with a quarter with a string attached. He used the quarter and pulled it in and out of the slot, and gave himself 50 credits.

[@mattlukasik2486]

I remember I was trash at NES games until I was about 12.

[@TechWithSean]

NES games are too hard for me to go back to most of the time, and I grew up with them...

[@justinquarantine]

It's crazy how some of the older games feel alot harder and give me more trouble now then they did back then.I get why it's like that but it still never fails that at some point I say outloud how the hell was I good at this!

[@WaysideWade]

Over the Top with Pat Contri! 🦾

[@BryanX64]

"and also..." Pat: "whoops!" Damn the way he cut that guy off was cold blooded lol

[@PogueSquadron]

A lot of hard NES games are manageable but expect too much out of you. Would Blaster Master be as difficult if it had a more forgiving continue system? It turns a fun challenge into a chore.

[@PSVitaat2am]

I loved Blaster Master

[@Nathanatos22]

Title topic begins at 14:06

[@rachelandryan]

In the early 90s me and my brother and friends used to go to a games group. We used to have league tournaments with other groups in the area, playing Super Gun and Neo Geo games such as Street Fighter 2, Fatal Fury, and a local favourite, Soccer Brawl. My four desert island Neo Geo games: Soccer Brawl Garou: Mark of the Wolves Samurai Showdown 2 Viewpoint

[@brandonkick]

I don't think that NES games are "too hard", compared to modern games. Some modern games are downright brutal. I think the "overall" difficulty of older games (especially NES games) is fairly higher on average though, compared to modern. My strangest arcade memory is when I was with my grandfather who lived in pittsburgh. We want to this big mall, not sure which one, but I found an arcade in there and we were playing. He left to go look at something else while I wanted to stay and play. I found a machine that was accidently left open and I found (being young and not knowing I could just flip the coin switch) that I could just put my quarter in, it would fall to the ground, and I could keep doing it. I probably put like 8 or 10 credits on and was playing it (dig dug I think), when a "rent a cop" came over. It was a girl, that I remember. She asked me how many times I ran my quarter through and instead of lying I said, just twice.. it fell to the ground and I tried putting it back in but it kept falling. I was scared shitless... thinking I was going to the big house. She said, OK.. I'll have to write you up for that. I had no idea what that meant. She disappeared for a few min, and out the door I went. I also remember I made a friend there. He was "around" during the incident, but I was the one who "got caught". We were playing games together. I remember he ran into me else where at the mall, and he was like "hey, they want to talk to you back there". I said... "Ok". Found my grandfather and left.... I was shitting my pants like the whole way back to his house! Damn. All over two dollars worth of dig dug free play!

[@fergalstackstreams]

Best Arcade experience was at Disney World. There was a glorified babysitting service that would take the kids for a few hours at night so the parents could go out and do adult things. It was themed like Neverland from Peter Pan, with each section of the building being something fun, like Skull Rock was a book nook, the Mermaid's Lagoon was a theater, and the pirate ship was an arcade with all machines free to play. And that's pretty much where all the 7-9 year boys were glued to for the entire night.

[@pictonomii3295]

Zoomer here. The reason a lot of people my age are turned of by video games from before the 5 generation of consoles isn't because of the way they look. The fact that so many indie games go with a retro style should make that obvious. IMO, the problem is the fact that the difficulty of a lot of these games feels largely artificial, either by hampering your movement or by not letting you continue where you left off after running out of lives. You brought up Castlevania, and by a strange coincidence. I gave the Anniversary Collection on the Switch a try last week. While each "level" (ie; group of stages) has many checkpoints, you are still booted to the beginning when you run out of lives, and bosses don't have checkpoints before them, so you will almost almost always have to fight bosses without full health. Many other games don't even let you continue after running out of lives. While save scumming can alleviate this to a degree, it generally isn't very fun in super hard games like Castlevania, where an unskilled player like myself would need to save every few seconds. A game like MegaMan is much more appealing, where even a noob can get by only limiting themselves to saving at checkpoints.

[@rsmith02]

I grew up with these games but wouldn't want to play many 8-bit games without savestates. I recently played through Ninja Gaiden and StarTropics and neither would be pleasant if I had to keep repeating the same sections (though with Gaiden I only used them at the level start so it was more like a stage select for me).

[@PhoenixLaw92]

I was at a water park one summer when I was 9 years old and they had a Virtual On cabinet. I didn't have any idea what I was doing, yet managed to get pretty damn far in one playthrough.

[@ThatPrettyBMF]

JT from Denver "presumed" neither that Pat would not want to eat food nor that Ian wouldn't want to learn jujitsu. He merely offered one experience to Pat and another to Ian. Silly Pat.

[@theswapmeetflea]

I remember when my brother bought a Street Fighter 2 Champion ed arcade but this was a hacked version , my also 1st time being introduced to the mod/hack versions of street fighter as other arcade games, every character was able to throw projectiles , the best was Balrog , his fast punch mixed with hadoukens was a force to be reckoned with.

[@deezy81]

Sounds like rainbow edition.

[@cj694x2]

NES games usually require patience, determination and perseverance to complete. Modern games don't require any of that, just lots of time.

[@wasmadeinthe80s]

My Neo-Geo cab line up: Twinkle Star Sprites, Baseball Stars 2, King of Fighters '98, Wind Jammers

[@moonman0506]

Man that ninja turtles nes was the second game i ever owned and man... I remember that electric underwater level i could never beat ... That game was too hard lol

[@PatTheNESpunk]

The underwater stage is not that hard!

[@joea1007]

People finding this part of the game hard was the biggest surprise for me when I got the internet. With any patience at all you can clear the zone with next to no damage.

[@moonman0506]

Guys i was 7 with no game experience

[@deezy81]

Earthworm Jim down the tubes is the sixteen bit equivalent of that.

[@WaysideWade]

Setting a cabinet to Freeplay back in the day...that is extremely rare! 🧐

[@AbstractM0use]

Not if you had a friend that worked there. :)

[@WaysideWade]

@@AbstractM0use Great point. 🙋🤑

[@creekandseminole]

I remember going to a laundry mat with my mom back in the 80's and someone was able to set up Galaga on auto rapid-fire. It was friggin' awesome

[@WaysideWade]

@@creekandseminole Oh man, that sounds like an awesome surprise for anyone having to be at the laundry. 🙋💯🤑

[@PhillBowser]

Super Saturdays at Putt Putt Golf did this for all there machines and included a slice of pizza and soda. Great memories as a kid

[@superdupergaming8406]

I started off playing Super Mario 1 & Super Mario 3 when I was 4-5 years old. Having a difficult tasks to complete especially when kids are young, I would expect it to strengthen their troubleshooting skills and their ability to take a losses.

[@GD-tt6hl]

I was playing mortal kombat 3 in my local arcade against the computer. Someone walks up and without a word puts in money to play against me. (Kind of a rude thing to do not to ask, not a major slight as this was the height of player vs player in the arcades) So I was pretty good and I picked sub zero. I proceed to beat him handley. I beat him without blocking so I did the sub zero friendship of a snowman. The guy doesn't even look at me and hasn't looked at me. He rears back and flat out punches the screen as hard as he can. I just sat there stunned, like bro. And he walked away to never be seen again.

[@silveredgrunion7196]

Spoiler: the mystery man turned out to be a future version of the player trying to come back and correct the timeline. In the original history the player stayed too long at the cabinet and missed his chance at true love. Having broken the screen with a punch, he freed his younger self to get a frogurt at the mall food court, meet Allie (a plucky but sensible girl who worked at the gap) and they fell in love. The future self returned to a home full of kids, no video games, and all the happiness he could handle Ugh, what a nightmare...no videogames? way to Biff Tannen your timeline bruh

[@Rando1975]

WTF?! I never asked when adding a credit to play against someone. The arcade's a public place, so I have a right to play the game as much as anyone. But woah, I've never seen anyone react to losing that violently before. Good for you though, for beating him handily. I always loved it when someone would challenge him and I'd crush them.

[@GD-tt6hl]

@@Rando1975 in certain games, for example street fighter 2, people would attempt no loss runs in order to get a secret ending. In my arcade it became an etiquette thing to ask to play 2 player after that. As it was only slightly rude as people weren't aware of such things. The kid in front of me in high school said he would beat me with "that green guy" caused me to chuckle.

[@GD-tt6hl]

@@Rando1975 and I played on my varsity football team as a sophmore and wore my letterman jacket frequently at the arcade as was the style at the time. So some random kid wasn't gonna start a fight with a big dude.

[@rev0lu7ion]

RetroAchievements has been around since 2013 but it recently has really been getting a lot more popular.

[@SumerNivek]

Hey Pat...I also love the first Sengoku! Spent many a token/quarter to beat that game at an Aladdin's Castle back in the day.

[@zackschilling4376]

Almost every Roguelike I play, I think "This would be much better if it was just an action RPG with saves, progression, etc.".

[@The90sGamingGuy]

I grew up playing SNES with some NES time sprinkled in between. I would say TMNT, Super Mario 2 (Japan), Home Alone are hard games even still to this day.

[@quezcatol]

I forgot to add the issue with game crunching is that sometimes it benefit even the developers themself to release a title before they miss out on the holiday season or some competition that is another AAA in their genre is coming up. its not always "Black and white" about some greedy monopoly man trying to make more money. It CAN be what save the company.

[@devilmikey00]

Honestly, quite a few of the NES games I owned I could never beat because they were too difficult. Also, some of those old games WERE full of cryptic BS. I mean you can bag on kids for not wanting to play because they are ugly but I very much remember as a kid we did the exact same thing with movies that were black and white. You beat a lot of those hard games because that's all you had and kids these days have so many FREE options that are compelling that even if they don't have the latest game they want they have options.

[@justinlink1616]

I'm with you on Sengoku, Pat. I would go with Bust-A-Move, Alpha Mission 2, Thrash Rally and ... League Bowling.

[@shorterrecording]

My kids enjoy and are open to trying 80s NES games but have a hard time with one-hit kills and Game Overs.

[@zackschilling4376]

I dont know about consoles, but if you ve ever played any Capcom games on MAME, it has that "WARNING" that scrolls by after it starts up and says something like this machine is for use in X country and its illegal to play it anywhere else. Dont know if that was ever really enforced, but thats just what popped in my head when the Imported N64 in the arcade was mentioned.

[@mrmacross]

Mainstream games have trended easier since the 1980s. I feel a large part of it was that an NES game cost between $40 and $50 around that time ($40 in 1988 is about $90 today, after inflation), so they had to justify the price tag of an otherwise-short game by making it sufficiently hard so that you don't beat it in 2 hours. There also wasn't the hardware capability to support aggressive hand-holding. A developer dedicated a few kb to instructional text and let you rely on Nintendo Power for anything else. Anyway, it's not totally different to how different TV shows and movies back then were compared to modern counterparts. Entertainment doesn't stay static.

[@Mitjitsu]

Games were shorter back then so they needed to make them harder in order to make people think were getting value for money.

[@maccloud65]

That was cool to hear Jered from the Brother Nights call in. I miss those guys!

[@LuckyLuch1]

My best experiences growing up were in arcades no doubt. No one could knock me off mk and mk2 ect. they just kept lining up their quarters. Good times

[@GD-tt6hl]

My best I ever did was I got the 50 wins in a row on mk2 in the arcade. You get to fight noob saibot (boon tobias the creators of the game backwards). Whipped my butt. Very fond memory.

[@WaysideWade]

Ian could have given the WonderSwan to Kelsey Lewin, business transaction...🤑

[@urdad1984]

Biggest regret has to b my US copy of Last Blade 2 for Neo Geo CD. Had the OBI spine card n og neo geo jewel case...big sad

[@zackschilling4376]

I bought a TG-16 with like 25 or so games (with their cases) around 2000-2001 for like $200 and ended up flipping it for a decent amount. I found it thru the ol' Bargain Finder (not sure its a national thing or just here in the Chicagoland area). It was supposed to have a Turbo Express but the guy said that was extra, even though he was full of it and it was included in the ad and said nothing about it being extra.

[@575forza]

Haha my primary arcade was a Cyberstation, yet I also beat HotD2 on 4 quarters at my secondary arcade Dream Machine at the other mall. I also still have top shelf levels of tickets for Dream Machine. I knew I shoulda got that mini bike before they closed.

[@ThaKoalaKing]

Games journalism is a joke so there's a reason no one reported on something that actually mattered.

[@IfWeShadows]

How can “3 lives and then Game Over” possibly appeal to kids raised on Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Fortnite?

[@ZJ-ne9kn]

I dont comment very often on here every once in awhile i dont consider myself a gamer per say but i do enjoy your guys podcast have for awhile you do a great job

[@akathesk]

I mean when you have modern games handing out participation trophies? Yes, yes old nes games will kick their asses

[@erichusayn]

Cyberstation!!! Crazy, ive shot those exact same "guns". Missed the free play day though.

[@smokinjoesgaming2090]

I couldn't beat a lot of games as a kid that I can now. Punch out and castlevania come to mind

[@cj694x2]

@Orwellian Future Is Now Castlevania is not unfair at all. Yes, it's difficult, but it can be mastered once you understand the mechanics and the enemy patterns. Honestly, Konami were masters of designing very well-balanced games back then.

[@cj694x2]

@Orwellian Future Is Now No, being able to beat the game on your first try is not how you define fair difficulty. The enemy patterns in Castlevania are all very simple. The enemy placement is exactly the same in every playthrough. Yes, the movement of Simon Belmont is somewhat limited, but the controls are always responsive and the amount of action never exceeds Simon's capabilities. It's not just about memorization, it's about learning the game mechanics, which is required to play any game from any era. Being able to beat a game on the first time means there is no challenge at all. That, honestly, is a truly boring experience.

[@cj694x2]

@Orwellian Future Is Now m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJmQoKZnbsl_hqs This video breaks down the entire game and shows how it can done.

[@tiporosso]

I played TMNT and Friday the 13th when I was around 4 years old and managed to beat them. I have pro skills today xd

[@billyg8142]

I was regularly frequenting the arcade where Ted Bundy's victims were abducted from the mall

[@Thebossstage1]

Hmm... Suspicious

[@billyg8142]

Good thing I was only 9

[@GeorgeNoiseless]

Is this whole Old Games Too Difficult For Kids attitude coming from people who don't play modern difficult games? 'Cause I'd like to see how they'd do with the popular modern day titles like Sekiro or Spelunky 2. Never mind the fact that older folk can't remotely keep up in modern reaction-based multiplayer titles.

[@urdad1984]

Ooo the MVS question was a good one! Id have to go Blazing Star, KoF97, Matrimelee, & Neo Turf Master

[@makaveli4205]

Metal Slug

[@SchnellVITALVINYLVLOG]

I miss the old world

[@ezg2000]

That last question was very good. Gamestop used shady practices during 2020. And it's a shame no covered it.

[@8ByteBrian]

NES games are too hard for us people who grew up in the 1980's!! Gradius, Castlevania, Rush N Attack, Mega Man, Zelda II etc, etc. these are just a few of the games I will probably never beat!

[@deezy81]

I have beaten Castlevania and Rush N Attack.

[@PSVitaat2am]

TMNT was definitely hard!

[@rainehappy7097]

Zelda 1 needs an actual map in the top of the screen. A big gray square with a dot isn't enough to figure out where you are if you haven't memorized the overworld. I love Zelda to death, but I can see where kids today get confused.

[@almightycinder]

I've beaten it several times over the years and still can't find Level 2 without a map. Even the damn bush is easier to find.

[@BrandNewByxor]

neo turf masters is essential *(on the green)*

[@thebeasthatfeasts]

Some of those old NES games are the hardest games I've ever played, 4get about "Dark Souls". lol

[@marianatequiero28]

Who else beat TMNT nes when they were kid ? , these kids don't know

[@rsmith02]

Definitely not. Gave up on it and enjoyed II: the Arcade Game when it came out. Cowabunga!

[@marianatequiero28]

@@rsmith02 yea there's definitely some metal illness to play through that game

[@Mr_Don1]

This is interesting because I think modern games are harder. It's probably just a matter of what you're used to playing.

[@THENAMEISQUICKMAN]

Modern games are 100% more difficult.

[@LarryLopez91]

@@THENAMEISQUICKMAN Are they though? Ninja Gaiden trilogy, Ghosts n Goblins, Metroid (without a guide), SMB2 (Japan), Mega Man, Battletoads, and Super C are easier than the stuff today? Idk, plenty of NES games are just brutal, especially without any save features.

[@Mr_Don1]

@@LarryLopez91 you're not wrong about those particular games. I was just talking about overall gameplay.

[@THENAMEISQUICKMAN]

@@LarryLopez91 In my opinion the only REALLY hard games listed there are Ghosts n Goblins and Battletoads. There's just a lot more variety in video games now which makes it so easy to find stuff that's as difficult as you want it. Sure, there are a lot more easy games nowadays, but there's also a load of nightmare-level difficulty games that take hundreds of hours to perfect.

[@deelite19]

98 best choice of kof!

[@otakubullfrog1665]

I have a weird relationship with Gamestop because I've disagreed with a lot of the corporate-level decisions they've made over the years, but my local franchise location has great people working there who've always been good to me and always done the best they can under the business model, so I found myself pulling for them in their fight to survive during the pandemic against politicians in my state who didn't seem to care if everything in the retail landscape got obliterated and we were left with just Amazon and Walmart. It was like defending an annoying little brother against bullies.

[@greenmetalbox1719]

My kids have Switch, and still play the crap out of retro, including things like Star Wars Arcade, Dig Dug, Street Fighter 2: CE, most NES games even some 2600 games... a current one that's super popular are 3D Adventures of World Runner, Little Samson, Super Mario Land 2, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Anticipation, and a few others. The key is, play the games with them and play them early on and they'll like them. No different that liking music from a wide range of genres and time periods.

[@ChrisStoneinator]

I'm not sure what it is; I've been playing games since I was 3 starting with Sonic Heroes on the PS2 (which would've been the year it released). A lot of that has been playing retro, due to the sheer amount of games/compilations released on the PS2, XBLA and the Wii shop. In recent years I've been collecting for Mega Drive and PS1 as well, I play them all the time, and the games just kick my ass. I can't get past stage 2 in Thunder Force III and I've been trying for days. Streets of Rage 1 is suffering although 2 is more manageable (and better I think). Some of the bosses in MJ's Moonwalker are just completely overwhelming. I keep ragequitting Raiden Project and I keep having to savescum in Tombi!, although I persevere because it's wonderful. I play Dota 2, Splatoon and Xenoblade 2 Challenge Mode to a reasonably competitive level and I can beat most modern games with no trouble, so I don't think I suck at games, I just can't get to grips with how a lot of hard retro games telegraph things and how they want to be controlled.

[@Montork]

Like.. As a kid? Never got though the first couple levels of castlevainia.

[@DanielRivera-on5qh]

Later in the game is when it becomes unreasonable. Like the stage with death

[@nesmandan1037]

You didn’t hear much about GameStop staying open because there were so many greater issues going on at the time that they were footnotes in news articles. Mainstream news needed the “Trump bump” saying lockdowns were bad until he wanted to open everything up again. You can still see quite a few articles from Forbes, Barron’s, etc from March through June though.

[@rsmith02]

@Orwellian Future Is Now Well, that's the only thing he knows so he kept doing bizarre or outrageous things to dominate the news cycle. I agree, they shouldn't have let him hack then and simply stopped reporting on pronouncements via tweet, for example.

[@loganholmberg2295]

I don't know exactly what Id put in a Neogeo Cabinet exactly (I love most of them) but if I picked right now it'd be a shooter....viewpoint maybe cause I'm rekindling my relationship with Zaxxon lately, Big Tournament golf, Samurai showdown 2 and up, and any version of Metal Slug. I love Metal Slug so much. If I find room to build a cabinet one day it Will have ALL versions of Metal Slug and Samurai showdown for sure. Also I love golf games.😅 But they need a trackball unless its Big Tournament golf.

[@rainehappy7097]

Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Contra, Castlevania, Bayou Billy, Blaster Master, Journey to Sillius, Battletoads, TMNT, Zelda 2, Batman... Yeah there's alot of them. Haha. But there was enough there to keep you playing until you got the hang of it. The music kept them from getting boring. Controls were tight too.

[@TheCreepypro]

I would have preferred more even coverage in games journalism but I get why they focus on the things they do

[@jeremymurphy6095]

I love IAN being from Buffalo, being from just over the boarder ST.C. Ive been to that arcade way back. And House of Dead is the Best 2 Person Shooter arcade back then ever. only large scale game I loved more was. TOP SKATER. I didnt even skateboard for another 3 years till Tony Hawks proskater 2000

[@240Sil]

Thank god for the Konami code as a kid. Me , bro and Dad would always kick some ass!

[@rainehappy7097]

Phantasy Star added a map in Sega Ages and it works great.

[@tbone5757]

Second Saturday is a record show

[@sasamichan]

My arcade experiences, 1. fighting over whose turn it was at TMNT. who of 8 or more of us would be the 4 to play? who has quarters? how do we get more quarters? If we step way from the game is it still our turn? and if we die was it fir death? The day the guy comes to collect the questers from the machine meant free lives for every one I bet Mortal Kombat III this way the early days of VR, holograms, and video games that used cartoon or live action footage was more to show off the technology. The games them selves cost more to play and were rarely good and not well remembered. Getting in to fights over what was better Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter where in one kid always said "Neo Geo " The rumor that you could see female video game characters naked having every OP move, cheep move nd finishing move in Mortal Kombat III down to memory knowing that in any game, there was nothing wrong with being cheap its how you won. Having to find the one game that I didn't have t home or never saw in other arcades. knowing that games were created to eat quarters never seeing Nintendo brand games out there Arcades could even pop up in strange places. while typically at malls and boardwalks they could also be in a café, dentist office, super market, movie theater, or any place that had lobby. after a while certain ones became easy to find while others became near impossible. Pac-Man 3D, Super Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man were rare while Miss Pac-Man was common. Also common TMNT, Simpsons, Street Fighter II, Star Wars Trilogy. Harder to find Super Mario Brothers or Mega Man or Zelda. You were more likely to find a Contra. and while Ghostbusters could be in the arcades there was a top down shooter version of Ghostbusters that was exclusive to the arcades. Also the Atari Star Wars was often a lot more common then Empire Strikes Back or Jedi . If n Arcade did have a PC or a a Nintendo or Game boy or Virtual Boy or some thing it was way in the back hidden in some corner. and Arcades would at some point be more then games while pin ball was always there , some would add slots, rillette, pool, darts, gun shooting, basket ball, fortune telling, , strength testing, claw games etc and along the same lines as Arcades , we did have Game stores and used game stores where you could sit down and spend all day playing entire full games and for a long time it was just OK. When stores got crowded with customers playing, not going home and not paying that's when games started to be demos only and they started locking the controllers to the walls. other game store memories being able to buy and sell used PC games being able to get games with started save files on them being able to ask for game hints nd the guy at the desk would look them up or loan out a magazine or book. early Video rental and game rental also experimented a lot how things were done was different from one store to the next as multiple small business came in and out. Block Buster had to set standard. but for long time we had ideas drifting around like reward points cards, the game or movie was in the box on the self, if the game or movie was behind the counter you would bring the clerk a token with number on it, stores disagreed on the placement of adult and R rated films , stores disagreed with how to organizes shelves as some were by genre and some by alphabet, you could t one time rent a PC game, some stories Xeroxed there instruction booklets or gave out copies of movies not the originals, some stores et you see the full movie or full song in the store rather then just part of it or none of it, some stores had beta and lazier disk, some stores rented the plyers too, some stores had deals where you could get 3 for 2 some stores had 2 day rental some had 7 day rental some stores had just the big names and some had even the real obscure stuff. Basically before Block Buster every thing was just whatever the managers thought might work and a lot of it failed. at one point game rental places were the place to go to print Pokémon stickers. I never got to see what was in the secret back rooms of Video stores as they were closed by the time I was old enough. Also anime, very hard to find in video stores before 1997 as were many other obscure titles like House of Frankenstein or Godzilla Destroy all Monsters. we also has places you could go nd pay a high price for an hour of online game play for those who had no internet and wanted a LAN party. So you could pay hourly for Tie Fighter or X-Wing or whatever the big name RPG of the time was or Doom There was a lot of black light going on there. t was an other place that failed. after 1997 and as resent as 2018 I did still see arcades and free to play game set ups but it was more for the nostalgia. Such places were limited to the comic book shops New arcades are focused on VR, AR and motion tracking games. Lots of DDR and Fruit Ninja. We have shifted to escape rooms. Some video stores also added D n D and magic the gathering to the list of things you could pay by the hour to do A lot of old games were cryptic or hard but that was to make you get money out of them Its not the graphics that turns people off its the reputation the game has for being hard. People who never plaid games know from review videos that TMNT or Simons Quest or Zelda can be cryptic. but Nintendo didn't want you to bet game in 2 weeks and put it down and you didn't always have save files either. Pluss games had hint books, magazines, VHS, hotlines etc As for game stop I say this every time but I have never had negative issues with my Local Game Stop. Every thing you have against them seems to vary between local regions. Crunch time is also part of business, has been for a long time. I don't know a lot about it but every one does it and many games nd movies that come out to meat the dead line of the holiday season end up suffering in quality. Release things slowly, better to get done right then done fast.

[@spartonberry]

Yes, NES games too hard. Pretty sure I read somewhere Game Freak said they've been dumbing down the difficulty on Pokemon games since the 3DS because they're afraid of kids losing just one slightly tricky battle and quitting the game to play their many cheap mobile games. And it's not like Pokemon was ever of the difficulty comparable to the "hard" NES games. (in fact the reason Twitch Plays Pokemon even played Pokemon is because the creator felt it was one of the most forgiving RPG franchises, rather than a specific choice for the franchise.)

[@benandres9627]

Could you speak on NES games with a more forgiving difficulty level for people looking to quickly burn through a video game? There is an infinite amount of amazing video games and only so little time in our busy lives.

[@almightycinder]

Kirby's Adventure is very forgiving since it saves and you can come back to it. Game over just means starting over a stage, since most stages are multiple areas.

[@SP1DEYOFFICIAL]

full support from my side bro.

[@elguero117]

My games to put in a 4 sloter would be puzzle bobble. Metal slug Snk vs capcom svc chaos. Crouching tiger hidden dragon

[@skins4thewin]

Lol anyone that thinks the original TMNT is too hard really needs to get better at video games as a whole.

[@InfiniCalendar]

I once got kicked out of an arcade because I didn't have any money. I was like 10.

[@stevethompson4348]

There is a yestercade in red bank

[@WaysideWade]

Guaranteed, no debate...🛡️👾💯☣️☢️

[@gunplaygaming6830]

Those games were hard as hell but you didn’t notice back then how janky the platformer controls were. Plus games were just games Friday the 13th and a lot of other Ljn licensed games got some play in the 80s /90s . You knew games like turtles 🐢 in time was special even as a kid. Even in 2021 that game never aged it’s still good.

[@angelwolvesincorporated3582]

I'm 22 and I've never beaten an nes game

[@PEST__]

Ian the neck beard master

[@JohnSmith-yd5wq]

Damn Ian had great NEO GEO PICKS although I would add BASEBALL ALL STARS