Or maybe the better question is: When does difficulty take the fun out of a game?
I ask because I just beat Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts for the first time ever. I had it on the SNES but never beat it there so the VC version with the interrupt feature made it possible for me to get a feeling for each level endlessly without having to go through each level again on a further play through.
Part of the reason why I never beat SGNG when I was kid was that it was so difficult, it just wasn't any fun to play at a certain point and knowing that when you get near the end, you'd be sent back to the beginning again to play through again and even harder. I can imagine that for many people, much like myself, this turned people off from ever finishing the game outside of using emulators or taking advantage of other available means. And not only that I was playing on normal, I couldn't imagine hard or professional and what kind of crap you have to put up with.
Many of the users here who grew up on these kinds of games and certainly know what I'm talking about. They were all over the NES/SNES/Genesis and often didn't have saves to alleviate things. A lot of these were vestiges of gaming's arcade heritage. Which usually meant lots of continues (quarters spent) and doing your best to memorize every little intricacy of each stage. Overall the games are short but this difficulty usually meant that hours could be spent on each stage.
Now I'm just rambling. I guess my point is, when does it stop being fun playing games that have brutal difficulty? When it feels like no matter how much you try you just can't beat the danged game is what I'd say and that is certainly how I felt back when I was kid playing SGNG.
I ask because I just beat Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts for the first time ever. I had it on the SNES but never beat it there so the VC version with the interrupt feature made it possible for me to get a feeling for each level endlessly without having to go through each level again on a further play through.
Part of the reason why I never beat SGNG when I was kid was that it was so difficult, it just wasn't any fun to play at a certain point and knowing that when you get near the end, you'd be sent back to the beginning again to play through again and even harder. I can imagine that for many people, much like myself, this turned people off from ever finishing the game outside of using emulators or taking advantage of other available means. And not only that I was playing on normal, I couldn't imagine hard or professional and what kind of crap you have to put up with.
Many of the users here who grew up on these kinds of games and certainly know what I'm talking about. They were all over the NES/SNES/Genesis and often didn't have saves to alleviate things. A lot of these were vestiges of gaming's arcade heritage. Which usually meant lots of continues (quarters spent) and doing your best to memorize every little intricacy of each stage. Overall the games are short but this difficulty usually meant that hours could be spent on each stage.
Now I'm just rambling. I guess my point is, when does it stop being fun playing games that have brutal difficulty? When it feels like no matter how much you try you just can't beat the danged game is what I'd say and that is certainly how I felt back when I was kid playing SGNG.
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