This was the title of an article I found a while ago, that I found very interesting. It came to me as a link from another game I downloaded, that was frankly... how can you say... unique.
The game is called "I wanna be the guy", and it's quite possibly the hardest game in the world. The article I'm talking about made mention of this game as well as several others like the Leisure Suit Larry style of games, and other older NES games. This game was made to more or less outline the ridiculousness of these games by having literally everything out to kill you.
The article had a description of this game along these lines : The moon can crash on your head, spikes on the floor will grow a set of wheels and chase you, and even the save point right before the final boss will try to eat you. This game is an over-exageration of the sadism seen in games, but honestly you should try that game because that's what makes it funny.
Back to subject at hand, this game is just one of the many examples that just about anything can kill you in games, because the game was made that way. The NES games were particularly at risk of this phenomenon, probably because of technical limitations or the fact that video games were still in their infancy. Back then games were not made to make sense, but rather to have fun.
How else can you explain a pair of plumbers lost in a land of mushrooms and turtles without the use of illegal substances? Those were already more dangerous than some other games at least, that any contact with a beach ball could burn the skin off your skeleton.
Then again, if you hop just a little back in time, you'll also have Burgertime, that literally had sausages and lettuce running after you to try to... well I'm not sure what they wanted to do with you, but anyway pepper sprays could have taken their idea from this game, as it was the cook's sole method of defense.
How about games like Back to the Future? Despite being an horrid rendition of the movie, you had bees and birds trying to dart at you, people moving an near-invisible glass window and arbitrarily placed flowerpots and park benches in the middle of the street, plus the very high quota of manholes-per-feet must be a selling point of getting a house in Hill Valley.
A last interesting example of how everything wants to kill you in video games would come from paperboy. It was a rather addictive little game overall, but did you stop to count the amount of obstacles the delivery boy has to face? Rabid dogs attack you for no other reason than you're wearing blue. Lawnmovers suddenly roar to life and try to cut your shoes off at the precise time you roll past them. Cars that apparently are driving on the wrong side of the street for the off chance that some random newspaper boy might have a death wish by cycling off the sidewalk for a second as they try to avoid a tornado that just happened to be there.
You know, when I was young I delivered newspaper, and I'm glad I wasn't in the Paperboy's neiborhood, all considered.
5 comments:
Excuse me? Who are you?
I second all said about the game "Paperboy". What's funny is that looking back seems like it didn't matter how hard the games actually were, people would eventually complete them, even if they hated it (yes, i'm looking at you Battle Toads). If for nothing else, out of despite to the people who made the game so damn hard. It build character, not giving up regardless of the odds. Today seems like if a game tries to justify the investment you made in it people simply return it or use cheat codes. I remember in the Contra 4 board the amount of people who complained about the game being hard even on easy.
Of course that in some types of games the harder the better, but that's another story.
When has Contra ever been easy?
Wether it was the NES or SNES games, you always spent an insane amount of retries to eventually get the hang of all the game throws at you. There's bullets, huge monsters and mere soldiers trying to run you over, and there's no energy bar : one hit you lose.
Even with a 30 lives code, this game could easily eat them. For my share, I've managed to finish Contra 3 (SNES) on Easy and Normal (reached the final boss on Hard, urg), and that was after a full weekend of trying over and over.
NES games were definitely an excersize in patience.
I wonder if "I Wanna Be The Guy" is harder than "Takeshi's Challenge".
Another well done post.
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