List of difficulty of NES games?

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Pokun
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Pokun »

If the game has many paths and choices like Castlevania III, you will just have to try to make an estimation of the average difficulty and how much effort it takes for you. Of course it means you need to have played the game a lot to be able to judge its difficulty fairly. It's not an exact science, and it will still be very much based on personal opinions until you can compile data gathered from many people to make a broader estimation.

I know that some people are very anal about insisting that if you haven't 1cc'd a game you haven't really beaten it. I think you have to distinguish between beating a game to see all levels and the ending and beating with a good score (if a Game Over results in the score resetting) or otherwise avoid abusing things like unlimited continues (as maximizing the score may sometimes be an easy but tedious process). IMHO beating a game normally means you have played the game by its own given rules, if it allows unlimited continues (with consequences) then that is part of its gameplay (there's an important exception here in arcade games that allows continuing without consequences by paying coins to make more money). I don't consider using warps, cheats and bug exploits to count as beating a game normally. You will most likely have to judge games individually though.

Like Bregalad said Ninja Gaiden is a hard game for most people and not many people can beat it in a few days for the first time (unless you play all the time). There are (sometimes quite severe) consequences for Game Overing and you can't beat a level by credit feeding the same way as an arcade game. You have to do the level over and over until you have either mastered it or fluke your way through it, that can't possibly be considered easy.

If I would 1cc every game I've beaten I would probably need to play games as a full time job, I just don't have that kind of time or interest for most games I've beaten. I'm fully satisfied with beating them normally even if I had to use a continue or two. Only games that are very fun to play are worth 1ccing in my opinion.

Finally there are definitely games where there is no real difference between a death and a Game Over. Eggerland series comes to mind. In the first game (MSX) there's at least a score, but in later games life stock is a useless feature that seems to serve no purpose (in some Eggerland games there are some consequences of dying but it's still no different from a Game Over). It's probably just there by convention and the developers just didn't think of removing it. The game is designed so that each level is an individual challenge, 1ccing of course would just be frustrating and wouldn't make sense.

BTW I also used to try to read the manual before I play a new game I got. It didn't always go so well though, and the manual often felt extremely long.
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Sumez
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Sumez »

I'm not talking about beating or not beating games. I wouldn't want to spend time on a 1cc unless I really cared about the game.
I'm talking about having some sort of weight to base their perceived difficulty on. Some way to compare them. It's way too lazy to play it once and deem it difficult due to dying multiple times to the same boss (ie. how the Mega Man games tend to get their reputation).
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Pokun »

So you would have to played the game quite thoroughly and give an estimation on how much effort it took you to beat it before you can make a fair judgement. If it has several difficulties, modes or paths with varying difficulty you probably have to consider them all or the bulk of them.
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

To add further to the soup: In battle kid 1 & 2, difficulty settings easy and normal are quite different game experiences (compared to normal/hard, for example).

Normal is like every other difficulty in that if you get hit, you have to retry from the (rather densely populated) latest checkpoint, while easy lets you do two mistakes before that happens, which mean you don't need to be as careful or might even take a hit for strategic reasons. On normal, each room is more of a puzzle you have to solve if you don't make it "naturally" the first time.


In any game, initial reactions might be right - it's just not reliable, and it seems probable the initial reaction is a bit more dependent on personality than a longer experience would be.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Sumez wrote:But so is Ghouls n Ghosts, Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania 3, all of which offer infinite continues. None of those games should take you more than a couple of hours to credit feed through.
Sumez, I think you have a misinterpretation of what credit feeding is, unless I do. You credit feed through a game like Raiden II where you keep your progress despite dying/running out of lives, unlike Raiden I where every time you die, you are put back to the last checkpoint. Sure, there's often only 30 seconds to a minute of playtime between each checkpoint, but just throwing money at the game won't ensure success.
Bregalad wrote:
Sumez wrote:Which obviously also doesn't serve to give any indication of how "difficult" said game is. :P
Ninja Gaiden is easy if you don't care how many continues you're using.
There is a lot of games I could never beat, no matter how many continue I'd use. Ninja Gaiden is one of them.
Exactly.
Sumez wrote:But take a game like R-Type, which Espozo is obviously very familiar with, famous for being very difficult. But I bet that if anyone sat down and played it the same way, if they were able to always load their progress and continue from where they left off, and could keep using more credits, and retry every boss as much as they like, as you would in a Souls game, each challenge would probably be overcome a lot faster than it would in Dark Souls. So which is the harder game?
R-Type does do this though; you never have to redo the level or the game, and checkpoints are never more than a minute apart.

Again, even though the length of the area after this checkpoint is only about 40 seconds (you can cheese through the boss by getting into a spot it can't hit you and time it out), most people will not be able to get through this no matter how many continues they use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMZUtIhDKVs I actually beat it without auto fire where I had to stay to the right side of the screen at 0m15s to avoid being trapped by all the oncoming ships, which was far more difficult than even what the player has to do in the video. I'm far above the average person in video game skills, (including most self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers") but it took me several hours just to get past the checkpoint, never mind beat the game.
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Gilbert
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Gilbert »

About R-Type, since it's more about pattern memorisation than reflexes, Hiromasa Iwasaki (who himself was a programmer and director in Hudson soft) mentioned that it's very doable to beat it by practicing and following a "walkthrough". The game logic in the PCE port of the game was designed to be as close to the arcade version as possible, and there was an artist in the development team who was very good in shooting games, so for the attract mode game demos, they settled on recording this player's performance, instead of putting the original arcade ones in, even though this would make the game "less arcade perfect"(Iwasaki mentioned the recover pattern in the Stage 7 demo was exceptionally good). Following these recordings, even the worst player(another artist) in the whole company managed to beat the 1st loop of the game. I think this is an example of a game that is universally agreed to be hard, but could be helped a bit if you have some guides to follow.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Gilbert wrote:I think this is an example of a game that is universally agreed to be hard, but could be helped a bit if you have some guides to follow.
To be fair, I can't think of a single "hard" game where memorization won't come in handy, although it is definitely safe to say it will help you more here proportionally. Stage 6 of R-Type and Stage 4 of R-Type III especially are examples of blatant memorization, where you'll either be boxed in or just killed immediately if you don't memorize the correct path. I beat both R-Type I and III (couldn't beat R-Type II, f*ck that game :lol:) without a walkthrough, but it was exceptionally difficult. Now though, I can fairly easily beat R-Type I (as long as I don't die at the Stage 7 checkpoint) and can 1CC R-Type III on its first loop (I played it a lot more and it's easier overall). Other very difficult games that I've beaten, I'm not as much better as I was when I first beat them, but to be fair, I probably haven't played them as much. However, while memorization is a big aspect of either game's difficulty, I don't think it's an invalid form of difficulty. In a lot of situations, it's not even obvious what you're supposed to do to survive, so not only do you have to memorize where to go, but you have to create a plan to memorize first. Some of the boss battles on the games do not get much better with memorization though; the stage 4 boss of R-Type III still puts me on edge even though I've seen it 100 times, as I have the hardest time mentally keeping track of both it and the rotating background. (Unrelated to the discussion, but I found out that the Japanese version of R-Type III uses the regular boss theme for the stage 4 miniboss for some reason, just wanted to get that out there. :lol:)
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by tepples »

Espozo wrote:To be fair, I can't think of a single "hard" game where memorization won't come in handy
Anything with pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) as a core part of its gameplay, like Tetris the Grand Master series. Or roguelikes and the Diablo series that they inspired.
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by rainwarrior »

Oh man yes the R-Type stage 7 checkpoint. I hated that spot, and failed at it. I did beat the game, but I could only do it by restarting and getting through that checkpoint on one life. If I hit that checkpoint I was doomed with no way to go back to the beginning of the level. :(
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

It's fairly obvious they put that there as a way for people who are trying to beat the game to spend all their money in vain. :lol:

After restarting the game several times after dying at that checkpoint over and over again, I finally said screw it and after several hours, I somehow dodged those twenty something bullets in that napkin sized area. Repeatedly dying there made me probably the most pissed I've ever been at a video game, which certainly didn't help my performance. :roll:
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Sumez
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Sumez »

Espozo wrote: Sumez, I think you have a misinterpretation of what credit feeding is, unless I do. You credit feed through a game like Raiden II where you keep your progress despite dying/running out of lives, unlike Raiden I where every time you die, you are put back to the last checkpoint. Sure, there's often only 30 seconds to a minute of playtime between each checkpoint, but just throwing money at the game won't ensure success.
Credit feeding is credit feeding, no matter how far back you are sent.
Sure, the game won't carry you to the end passively, but even Ninja Gaiden allows you to start exactly from the spot where you'd respawn from simply losing a life, it even allows you to return to the final boss with a subweapon, which you'd normally never have in that fight when playing the game normally.

Sure it's possible to never beat the game if you're just completely stuck at a specific boss fight, but I don't see how there can possibly be any doubt that allowing yourself to completely ignore the concept of a limited number of lives (which almost every NES action game has) will diminish the perceived difficulty of the game immensely, and make it more difficult to compare it with other games, simply due to the different ways they might handle the concept of continuing, after technically having lost the game.

Basically, continuing will always reduce the difficulty of any game to the single most difficult checkpoint of the entire game, making the rest of it essentially redundant. Surely you can't disagree with that?
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Sumez »

Gilbert wrote:About R-Type, since it's more about pattern memorisation than reflexes, Hiromasa Iwasaki (who himself was a programmer and director in Hudson soft) mentioned that it's very doable to beat it by practicing and following a "walkthrough". The game logic in the PCE port of the game was designed to be as close to the arcade version as possible, and there was an artist in the development team who was very good in shooting games, so for the attract mode game demos, they settled on recording this player's performance, instead of putting the original arcade ones in, even though this would make the game "less arcade perfect"(Iwasaki mentioned the recover pattern in the Stage 7 demo was exceptionally good). Following these recordings, even the worst player(another artist) in the whole company managed to beat the 1st loop of the game. I think this is an example of a game that is universally agreed to be hard, but could be helped a bit if you have some guides to follow.
R-Type tends to get a lot of both hate and love for this reason. It's commonly accepted to be a bit of a puzzle shooter, and recognized as very memorization heavy. A lot of shooter fans will hate this, but personally I really love the concept that a game can be devilishly hard initially, but at the same time, by letting the game be beatable mostly by "knowing what to do", it allows almost anyone, no matter how much they would normally suck at shooting games, to be able to beat the game. It's a staple of a lot of Irem games (Metal Storm for NES is a good example), and I'd say even Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden have strong aspects of this as well.
It takes away some potential depth of the gameplay, but on the other hand it will make the game feel extremely rewarding for most people who decide to give it a genuine attempt.
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Bregalad »

Sure it's possible to never beat the game if you're just completely stuck at a specific boss fight, but I don't see how there can possibly be any doubt that allowing yourself to completely ignore the concept of a limited number of lives (which almost every NES action game has) will diminish the perceived difficulty of the game immensely, and make it more difficult to compare it with other games, simply due to the different ways they might handle the concept of continuing, after technically having lost the game.
You are completely ignoring the fact that play time as well as the patience of the player are typically limited. Even if the game allows for infinite retries, the player might not want to use infinite retries, which is why the game is perceived to be "harder" when the number of lives and/or continues is limited.

For instance, let's consider Double Dragon III. This game only have a single life (per playable character - you get 4 of them in the game but start with only one), and no continues. I'd say this game is extremely hard, as if you fail anywhere you have to restart all over again. By your logic, DD3 is not any harder or easier than any other game, because having only a single chance does not make the game harder. And that is technically true - but you can't ignore the fact that when sitting at Double Dragon 3 for an afternoon, the chance you'll beat the game is a lot lower than an hypotetical game of the same difficulty but with lives and/or continues.

And that would be my definition of difficulty. You pick the game and play it 2 hours during an afternoon, without cheats nor save states, and note how far you progressed. The closest to the begining that was, the harder is the game. Because games were designed to be played casually that way, they were not initially designed to be abused, speedran, or had any additional challenge such as 1CC or beating boss with the weakest weapon or whathever.

Applied to the games we've mentionned so far and to my own way of playing :

- Castlevania : I'm extremely likely to reach the grim reaper, and it's almost unthinkable I'd beat him, so I made progress about 5/6 of the game. But I can't beat it. So on one side it's not that hard since I can beat most of the game, but it's impossible for me to finish it so we could also agrue it's very hard
- Ninja Gaiden : I'll be likely to make progress through the first part of the game without difficulty, only to be stuck later, so it's similar to Castlevania in this respect.
- Battletoads : I'm likely to have reached level 9 or 10, however on a bad day I'll fail before and run out of continues, so it's hard, but I can still see major part of the game
- Double Dragon 3 : I'm extremely unlikely to beat the first level, so game is very hard
- Mega Man games : Very likely I'll at least reach the Wily stages, and possibly beat them or not depending on how good the day is, so they're fairly easy.
- Kirby's Adventure : I don't think it's possible beating this large game in 2 hours, but I'd have made constant progress without difficulty, so we could say it's easy.
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Sumez »

Bregalad wrote: You are completely ignoring the fact that play time as well as the patience of the player are typically limited.
I'm ignoring that fact because it has nothing to do with how difficult a game is. That is the topic of the thread. :)

You can compile a list of how difficult games are based on playing each of them "2 hours during an afternoon", and I would even claim such a list is really useful for someone looking for some games they can get through fast for a quick non-demanding game fix. I've picked games based on this many times before, when trying to weed out my backlog.
It wouldn't give a very good indication of the entire scope of that game, and pretty much any decently challenging arcade like action title would end up on the same abstract scale of "very hard", but it's entirely a valid way of looking at the game, as long as you take your prefix into account.

What I don't get is why my approach is invalid? It should be obvious to anyone that Rainbow Islands is created with the intention of beating the entire thing on one coin. But because you can choose to just continue after you lose, it's no harder than Ghouls 'n Ghosts, which also allows this. I honestly feel this perspectice devaluates my feat, as if spending more than a year trying to master the game was essentially pointless.

In fact, Ghouls n Ghosts provides another interesting counter-argument. This game requires you to beat the game twice for the true ending. But there is almost no difference between the two loops, and anyone who's able to beat the first loop, should be able to beat the second one individually. So what is the purpose of the second loop, if continuing doesn't make a difference?
Personally I think the second loop is absolutely ingenious in the context of the game, since every single segment is based on a ton of RNG that means you'll get patterns that vary heavily in difficulty. But throughout a full 2-loop playthrough, the game will even out almost any good luck you might have in one segment, ensuring that only someone who truly mastered the game gets to beat it. But if you can potentially try every segment as much as you like until you get some fortunate patterns, this compromises an essential part of the game's incredible design.

Applied to the games we've mentionned so far and to my own way of playing :

- Castlevania : I'm extremely likely to reach the grim reaper, and it's almost unthinkable I'd beat him, so I made progress about 5/6 of the game. But I can't beat it. So on one side it's not that hard since I can beat most of the game, but it's impossible for me to finish it so we could also agrue it's very hard
- Ninja Gaiden : I'll be likely to make progress through the first part of the game without difficulty, only to be stuck later, so it's similar to Castlevania in this respect.
(...etc...)
This only confirms exactly what I was saying though? You can judge a game's difficulty based on how far you can get with unlimited continues, but essentially what you get is an estimation of the single hardest part of the game, and not the game as a whole.
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Re: List of difficulty of NES games?

Post by Pokun »

My neice's strategy in Kirby games when she was younger was always: Fly over the whole stage. :)


Yes of course unlimited continues has a large impact on a game's difficulty, no one disagrees with that. But that's not what we are discussing, also games with limited or no continues tends to be made much easier. For example Super Mario Bros has no continues while Super Mario Bros 2j has unlimited continues. SMB2j is still considered much much harder than SMB for many other reasons.

Why is your point invalid? Because you say that games like Ninja Gaiden doesn't make any different on a death and a Game Over even though it does in most cases (not on the final boss).
Rainbow Island is created to eat coins out of you and the PC Engine version is made more like a console game with a milder difficulty level by giving you unlimited continues although with new consequences not present in the arcade version. If you ignore the fact that a game has unlimited continues in your difficulty ratings because in your opinion the game isn't designed to use them, you are missing the point.
You can judge a game's difficulty based on how far you can get with unlimited continues, but essentially what you get is an estimation of the single hardest part of the game, and not the game as a whole.
If that's how a game is designed that is how people is going to play it and that's how its difficulty is going to be judged. You may also consider getting a good score though. If you make up arbitrary rules and try to judge the game after that, you are only judging a new game that you made up yourself.


BTW a difficulty rating grade like: easy, medium, hard or 1 to 100 may work on many action games for NES but may be harder to apply for certain other genres and especially modern games that always comes with lots of modes and often works more like RPGs with progress saving. More complicated games may need a comment the explains in what way the game is challenging. There you could explain the differences between the above mentioned difficulty settings in Battle Kid 1 & 2 for example. But this also means more data that needs to be compiled.
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