Why were NES games so hard?

[CastletonSnob 3,074]

A number of NES games had absolutely brutal difficulty. It's even become a phrase, "Nintendo Hard". So, why were they so hard?

[Brony Number 42 10,069]

Probably because they weren't play tested enough. If the developers got the game to work at all, that was good enough in some cases. And because the game play was limited there wasn't as much room to tweak the games. That's my guess.

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,161]

I remember seeing an answer or a theory on this somewhere and it has to do with the limitations of the hardware at the time. In general those games could be pretty short if you just sat and through played them, so the difficulty was ramped up a good bit to allow players (and/or parents who spent a pretty penny on games) to actually spend time on those games. Aside from making you learn the mechanics of a game (pending if said mechanics were designed well enough) you could get the proper return of investment on the value of the product.

If I remember what I read; of course. ^^;;

[MickeyAdaptus 2,211]

You should check the the Angry Video Game Nerd, he reviews a lot of NES games (particularly the bad ones)

One game i remember him playing was Dr Jackel and Mr Hyde, and oh boy, was it hard xD

[MoTusNua 49]

56 minutes ago, VG_Addict said:

A number of NES games had absolutely brutal difficulty. It's even become a phrase, "Nintendo Hard". So, why were they so hard?

Because they were designed like Arcade Games rather than Console Games. The design philosophy for their difficulty was based around the idea, that they didn't want most people to be able to beat them easily, so that they would come back and play it again and again rather than play it all in one go and complete it quickly.

Why? Because every time, you would play an Arcade Game. You'd have to pay a Euro or a Dollar to play, this means if they can make you die or lose a lot, they can make you folk up more Euros or Dollars to try and get to the ending. Obviously, this money barrier wasn't in Consoles, but because Consoles developers were also Arcade Developers, the Philosophy carried over. Short games with little content, that were so difficult, it would take a long time to beat them.

Eventually, developers dropped this attitude. They added more content to the game rather than just making it super difficult.

I could be wrong on this, but as far as I can tell, this seems to the explanation.

Edited July 6, 2017 by MoTusNua

[CastletonSnob 3,074]

Do you think the lack of internet back then and the fact that most NES games didn't allow you to save made the games harder?

[MoTusNua 49]

9 minutes ago, VG_Addict said:

Do you think the lack of internet back then and the fact that most NES games didn't allow you to save made the games harder?

Absolutely!

The inability to save was a key feature of Arcade Machines as it meant that one would have to pay multiple 1 Euro Coins to have even the chance to beat it and if they couldn't afford to beat it all in one sitting, then they would have to start from the beginning. This philosophy yet again, carried over to the consoles and were a good reason, why they were so hard.

The internet less so, but granted Puzzle Games or games that have puzzle elements did become much easier when most households got access to an internet connection.

 

Edited July 6, 2017 by MoTusNua

[Guest]

The lack of saves was the main problem here, I think.

[Steve Piranha 29,419]

1 hour ago, Nico said:

The lack of saves was the main problem here, I think.

Or the long-ass password system some of them had  

But yeah, one of the main reasons those games where ridiculously hard was because of their short length. Seriously, I've grown with many of those when I was barely past toddler, but now that I'm a big dude, the skills I've gathered through the years made possible for me to finish some of the great classics, and trust me, most of them can be finished in about half an hour. Today is not so affordable to make the games so difficult, as the VGs are more mainstream, plus longer, unlike the old days  

[Megas 27,565]

Artificial longevity. Games were so hard you'd keep coming back to them, which prevented reselling(which companies were against at the time) and it helped games get away with being short unlike today 

Edited July 6, 2017 by Hot Rod

[cmarston1 5,959]

Developers had to get some form of replay value out of what would otherwise  be pretty short games. 

[SONICchaos 824]

On 7/6/2017 at 6:46 AM, MoTusNua said:

Because they were designed like Arcade Games rather than Console Games. The design philosophy for their difficulty was based around the idea, that they didn't want most people to be able to beat them easily, so that they would come back and play it again and again rather than play it all in one go and complete it quickly.

Why? Because every time, you would play an Arcade Game. You'd have to pay a Euro or a Dollar to play, this means if they can make you die or lose a lot, they can make you folk up more Euros or Dollars to try and get to the ending. Obviously, this money barrier wasn't in Consoles, but because Consoles developers were also Arcade Developers, the Philosophy carried over. Short games with little content, that were so difficult, it would take a long time to beat them.

Eventually, developers dropped this attitude. They added more content to the game rather than just making it super difficult.

I could be wrong on this, but as far as I can tell, this seems to the explanation.

This is the best explanation you can give so yeah, you got it right.

If you remember the old Atari 2600 you can remember a time when there was only one screen. That was the game play and content right there. You'd seen all the game has to offer in the first 30 seconds and if you spent $40 on that well that was your loss. Nintendo knew they had to compete with arcade experiences and found games with several levels but high difficulty meant you got the most of your $40. Eventually people started asking for longer more involved experiences like Legend of Zelda and RPGs to really separate home gaming from arcade. Thats when the difficulty toned down to give players more satisfying experiences rather than 30 minute bursts of excruciating difficulty.

 

[SugarCoatxMarblePie 701]

I think they were hard as a way to increase duration of play with a similar amount of content. Imagine making 30-60 hours of levels in Final Fantasy, without random battles. It would've taken too long and then their team would've broken up and no final fantasy series at all. It would've gotten transferred to 'development hell' then never finished or come out terrible and too long for play testers.

And trust me there are play testers, or else Battletoads would literally be impossible, just smaller nes games don't always have play testers and just make them impossible, some of the weaker games anyways.

[Lambdadelta 1,462]

If not for those brutal hard, these games will be finished in just few hours.

[Dan. 1,825]

The hard part was the best part of the games..made you a better gamer imho.

[Here No Longer 5,276]

It was to make the game more worth buying, and require more investment. The limitations of the console made it difficult to really make a game have more in the form of content, so they accommodated by making the games a bit more difficult.

[KirbyFluttershy 2,523]

It depends on what games though. Zelda 2: Link's adventure, Battle of Olympus, and ninja gaiden 1 were the top hardest. The other hardest game that I know was Wizards & Warriors 2: Ironsword which is hard to survive from enemy attacks and bosses, and replenishing your health and then when you die and get game over'd, you can't continue anymore at certain point and area of the game and you have to go through the password and start with a empty magic meter. Games that lets you go back the beginning after death without any checkpoints like world 8 in super Mario bros 1 can get annoying although with the exception of ninja gaiden 1, you go back to the beginning of the stage after dying from the boss.

[Will Guide 21,360]

Well, there is a reason we have the trope, "Nintendo Hard"

[Cash In 22,214]

It was a different time back then and developers wanted to make sure that consumers didn't finish the game so quickly, so they made them as hard as nails. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of them have aged horribly, which does suck, since some of them are good.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Cash In

[Misty Shadow 7,842]

Different times, challenge was definitely widely recognized as the core of gameplay back then, as evidenced by all the video game media from back then.  If you could beat a game back then in a single day, that would be attributed to skill. So it wasn't just that games had to be difficult to compensate for their short length, since even only four levels in an NES game was considered reasonable length back then, it was also that they had to test you. Nowadays, games have attracted a much wider audience of people that enjoy playing them for stories, not challenge. However, back then, with the state of storytelling in video games only being primal, the best way to make the experience of a video game as memorable as possible was to have gamers put everything they had into beating the game.  

[ZiggWheelsManning 9,922]

Do those games include Super Mario Bros. 2 (Wart the Toad being the final boss) and The Silver Surfer?