Back In The Day Show

Well, kiddies, this is the 3rd and final installment of the 10 Stupid-Hard NES Games list. Sorry it’s taken me so long to complete it. I’m sure there are plenty of other incredibly challenging NES games that I haven’t mentioned, but these 10 are the ultimate in 8-bit pain for me. Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments or share your own list of stupid-hard games. For your convenience (or punishment), here are links to Part 1 and Part 2. Thanks for reading. And now, on to the list…

Wizards and Warriors

< Back in the Day: Whenever I bought a Nintendo game, I would read the manual from cover to cover (yes, I was just as geeky back then). I did this mainly out of excitement for a brand new game and to give me something to do on the ride home from the store. Now some games are pretty straight-forward–Super Mario Bros, Tetris, Contra, and many others–and while an instruction manual may help explain the back-story or some of the intricacies of a game, many times they’re not necessary. Wizards and Warriors is one of those games that doesn’t make much sense without the manual. I either rented or borrowed this game when I played it, so I had no manual. Consequently, the best way I can describe my experience with Wizards and Warriors is a pointless game about a medieval knight battling an LSD addiction. The game has to be some kind of hallucination. You’re a knight bumbling around a maze of forests, caves, and mountains, changing colors, while looking for insane amounts of oversized gems, fighting a myriad of creatures that also change colors by swinging your sword around with your wrists only and without the use of your shoulders or elbows. Sounds fun doesn’t it? It’s a good thing I didn’t describe the game to my mother or she may have had me checked for methamphetamines. I never beat it. Why would I? Every time I felt like I was making the least bit of progress, I would die from the swarms of psychedelic birds intent on my death. Also, any kind of progress took such a long time because I would inevitably fall off any number of impossibly tiny platforms and have to fight my way back up. And I’m not kidding about the way your character swings his sword by using only his wrists. You just had to jump in the direction of a monster and hope you hit it. It was frustrating and didn’t stay in my NES very long.

> Today: Hahahahaha! You’re ridiculous if you think I’m going to play that crap again. I actually went back and read the manual just to see if it would’ve made a difference. I did learn the object of the game, and the reason for all the gems made sense, but the execution is still unbearably clumsy. Compared to this game, Metroid and Ninja Gaiden’s platforming is a breeze. If you have some sick desire to be frustrated into madness, then this game is for you. As for me, I’d like to keep my sanity from deteriorating… at least for a few more years.

Metroid

< Back in the Day: A true classic. Metroid was a smash hit in its day, selling over a million copies. As Nintendo players know, its popularity cemented it as a franchise that still exists today. Metroid is probably the least difficult game on this list, but I had to include it if only for its length. Sure, the game has its share of tough enemies and challenging boss fights, but I’d say the hardest adversary you face in Metroid is Zebes itself–the planet on which the game is set. First of all, Zebes is huge, and trying to find all the different items required to progress in the game takes a lot of time. And then, while you’re searching for those items, you’ll be jumping onto various platforms while simultaneously taking out aliens bent on your destruction. It’s all fun and games until you’ve almost made it up to grab the Long Beam when something knocks you off a platform that sends you reeling into another alien that sends you falling down close to where you started. Repeating the same pattern got old quickly. The main challenge of the game was also it’s most innovative feature: exploration. Like in The Legend of Zelda, the game allowed you to go where you want even if you were too underpowered to survive in certain places. Of course, you would eventually encounter obstacles that were impassible until you found a particular item. Certain items, like the High Jump Boots and Varia Suit, were necessary to complete the game. But you could beat the game without the Screw Attack (why?) and the Wave Beam. Speaking of the Wave Beam, don’t bother with it because you need the Ice Beam to freeze the metroids at the end; unlike in Super Metroid, the beams don’t stack. Moving on… Kraid and Ridley offered a decent challenge, but to my surprise, the final boss, Mother Brain, was a push-over. She was just an inanimate, giant rocket magnet, sitting there just waiting for annihilation. Sure there were blasters around, and those little flame rings were annoying, but it didn’t take much to avoid those. The hardest part was just making it out alive. Maneuvering up the giant corridor with the extra short platforms in only a few minutes was pretty challenging.

> Today: I haven’t played this game from start to finish since I was a kid, and I don’t plan to either. The game is just way too long for that. However, I did put in the “Justin Bailey” code and beat ol’ Mother Brain again for old time’s sake. I played the whole game as a kid and beat it, so really there’s nothing to prove, but every now and then, I’ll load up a game of Super Metroid. This game is definitely on my top 5 best Super NES games of all time. It’s a bit easier than the original, and I really like the graphics and music. Also, I always get that sense of openness and exploration every time I play it.

The Legend of Zelda

< Back in the Day: This classic adventure/RPG is one of my all time favorite games. Like Metroid, the sense of openness and discovery compelled me to keep playing. It was, however, just as challenging as it was fun. For me, the puzzles were the most difficult part of the game. I was pretty young when I first played this game, so my puzzle-solving faculties weren’t fully developed at the time. Consequently, it took some time for me to find some of the initial levels of the game and even longer to find some of the essential items to complete or even enter those levels. I can’t tell you how many bombs I wasted trying to find level 9, or how many bushes I tried to burn to find the other 100 rupees guy. Plus I didn’t actually own this game until later, so I had to borrow it from a friend, and he kept asking for it back, so I had to find another friend willing to part with it. Having to start all over in The Legend of Zelda was annoying. Needless to say, it took me a while to beat it, but I can’t really say I beat it by myself. In my experience, it took a community of friends coming together, sharing secrets, strategies, tips from Nintendo Power magazines, maps, whatever we could get our hands on. It was this type of group-effort that helped us progress in our own games where individually we had failed. I’d go as far as to say that most people beat Zelda by word-of-mouth: “You have to burn this bush” or “you need the recorder to open the entrance to level 7.” Sure, The Legend of Zelda was a difficult game, but it made each small victory–discovering a level or defeating a boss or finding another heart container–seem like such an accomplishment. In this way, getting one more step closer to finding Zelda made the game a fun and engaging experience to be had by all.

> Today: These days, you can buy a game guide or search the Web for walkthroughs for virtually any game you want. I think this kind of readily accessible information has somewhat diminished the communal gameplay we enjoyed back in the day. Yes, we have Xbox LIVE, Steam, and many other forms of online gaming networks, which are great, but there’s something to be said about a “live” gaming session with friends (probably why I dig LAN parties and the Wii so much). I guess The Legend of Zelda represents a sort of “golden age” (no pun intended) of video gaming for me. Searching Nintendo Power magazines and begging your friends for just a shred of information to aid your progress in games has given way to gaming Websites or blogs and in-game tutorials. Most games these days seem easier and only become slightly more challenging when you open the game’s settings and increase some difficulty value. I didn’t replay Zelda for this post for the same reasons I didn’t replay Metroid. After all, I watched the cartoon, I ate the cereal, I can run through the first quest in under two hours–I know the game, so replaying it would not be a challenge. I have toyed with the idea of playing the 2nd quest unaided, since I have never completed it. And since all of the levels and items are moved around in the 2nd quest, it has the potential to recapture some of the mystery and challenge behind the game. It would probably be fun, but I’d rather experience it with a group of friends playing individually with a centralized forum for sharing tips. Hmmm… that gives me an idea. Anyone wanna play?