I FINALLY beat super mario after 28 years

[Tanooki]

While a little bit of a cheat, if you have the rom or make a cart of the intense MMC5 hack of Super Mario 3, it creates Super Mario Allstars for NES/FC which includes the SNES feature of saving on each game, 4 slots, but upgraded to save by stage not just the world(or up to X castle in world) which helps a lot on doing a straight run without warping.

[Astro Rabby]

I LOVE SMB2, but yeah Peach is kinda easy mode; her lack of throwing power is rarely even a problem.

3 needed saves or at least passwords; aside from modern ports with save states the all-stars version is the definitive one just for the inclusion of saves...GBA has saves but those voice clips, oi! Dunno how I put up with them as a kid.

 

Lost Levels is just so hard and frustrating it's not fun to me. I'd end up just rewinding and reloading over and over.

[Tanooki]

You know that is a way to look at SMB2 if you think about it, per stage options screen difficulty switch.

Toad = Expert

Luigi = Hard

Mario = Normal

Princess = Easy

 

Luigi I guess is debatable, his weird long floaty jump gets nice distance but is harder to stick and land so it's more challenging than Mario which is stock difficulty.  Toad with his fast pick up is hindered by being otherwise slow and a crap jumper, but not crap enough to be stuck on any level so you can't finish it.

[Wayler]

I remember using Toad the most because most levels don't require long jumps and his speed and "pickup skills" come in handy for some extra coins and quick enemy bashing. Luigi gets his turn on some levels for the jumping power and Peach's floaty style is sometimes useful. 

 

It's funny that in a Mario game the titular character doesn't have a specialty, so he rarely got his turn in my playthroughs.

[7800Knight]

Don't be ashamed.  The original Super Mario Bros can be quite hard.

 

Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels...that's nightmare level difficulty but that's a whole other thread.

[Tanooki]

@7800Knight Agreed, people don't bother with a little thing called perspective with that one.  I've seen kids try out SMB1 and you sit there smugly arrogantly having this 'stupid kid...' thoughts as they mash face first into a goomba in 1-1 or fall into a pit trying to run along.  Never once stopping to realize, that happened to you 10, 20, 30+ years ago when you first took a shot.  Even if we're fairly well practiced or loaded with some retained muscle memory it's not a walk in the park unless you're still blowing it away semi-regularly currently.  And the SMB2 FDS/Lost Levels, I've taken crap making the comment, but I stand on it, hell NoA did skipping it, the game isn't fun, it's loaded with cheap deaths and nasty jumps and bumps that need a lot of practiced skills mastered on the original.  That game is the epitome of the concept of 'kaizo' Mario which people throw around these days as some challenge joke with weird hacks or Mario Maker stages designed to make you lose your mind and throw the controller.  Nintendo did their own trolling decades before it was chic.

[TheGameCollector]

On 11/16/2022 at 10:57 AM, MaximRecoil said:

 

I wish I could see gameplay videos from everyone who says that SMB 2 is easy.

 

I'll share you one of mine with no warps as all-Mario. Just an hour and almost 3 minutes.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DmrBMJRyJ0&list=PLb4qwA8QBt5eGHLBAruueFkNlt-NncVJh&index=14

Edited November 22, 2022 by TheGameCollector

[bubufubu]

On 11/16/2022 at 11:57 AM, MaximRecoil said:

I wish I could see gameplay videos from everyone who says that SMB 2 is easy.

 

It's not Super Mario Bros. 2 (which is hard), but it's the game to which you're referring:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L5n5GFY_Ic

[MaximRecoil]

On 11/22/2022 at 12:08 AM, TheGameCollector said:

I'll share you one of mine with no warps as all-Mario. Just an hour and almost 3 minutes.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DmrBMJRyJ0&list=PLb4qwA8QBt5eGHLBAruueFkNlt-NncVJh&index=14

Warpless with no deaths? That's awesome. I doubt there are many people who can do that.

 

On 11/22/2022 at 3:15 AM, bubufubu said:

It's not Super Mario Bros. 2 (which is hard), but it's the game to which you're referring:

I'm not sure what you're saying. Both versions of SMB 2 are hard; SMB 2 (Japan) is just a lot harder. I'd say that Doki Doki Panic is easier than SMB 2 (USA), since it's an FDS game and has saves, whereas SMB 2 (USA) has no saves and only two continues, though you do have to beat the game with all four characters instead of just one.

 

SMB 2 (Japan) isn't the hardest NES game I've played though. I've "beaten" it in one sitting by abusing save states, but recently I tried Ninja Gaiden III (US version) and so far I can't beat that game no matter how many save states I use, because in the later levels I run out of time. My last save state is at stage 7-3B, not even at the boss yet, with 3 seconds left on the clock. I don't know how I could get through 7 much faster without a ton of practice. I barely even made it through 6 with enough time. The first time I had 10 seconds left when I reached the boss and the best I could do was hit him enough times that I only needed to hit him 3 more times before the time ran out. So I redid it and reached the boss with 20 seconds left on the clock, and I beat him just as the timer reached 00.

  

On 11/2/2022 at 7:37 AM, MaximRecoil said:

There's nothing wrong with using save states and/or a "rewind" function for fun, but I don't considered a game truly beaten unless it's done without those sort of things.

 

I'll add that there is a way to use save states and still legitimately beat a game. If you're playing a game that has unlimited continues, as long as you only use save states to pick up at the exact same spot that a continue would start you at (i.e., continue, immediately make a save state, then shut the game off), then that's not going outside the intended parameters of the game. It just saves you from having to leave the game running constantly until you beat it. Of course, my save state abuse in SMB 2J and Ninja Gaiden III isn't in any way a legitimate way to beat a game though, plus it looks like it won't even help me "beat" the latter game anyway.

[bubufubu]

6 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

Warpless with no deaths? That's awesome. I doubt there are many people who can do that.

 

Probably a lot more than you think.  You are overstating the game's difficulty.

 

9 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

I'm not sure what you're saying. Both versions of SMB 2 are hard

 

I'm saying that it's fucking ridiculous to refer to a reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros. 2.  They are two different games.  There are two versions of the latter, though North America didn't receive a port until August of '93.

[MaximRecoil]

56 minutes ago, bubufubu said:

 

Probably a lot more than you think.  You are overstating the game's difficulty.

No, I'm not. It's harder than SMB, not as hard as SMB 2J. A warpless run of SMB without losing any lives isn't particularly easy, and doing it in SMB 2 is harder than that, especially if only using the Mario character like he did.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

I'm saying that it's fucking ridiculous to refer to a reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros. 2

Take it up with Nintendo. You thinking it's "fucking ridiculous" is irrelevant to the fact that it's called Super Mario Bros. 2. Just look at the label on the cartridge. Furthermore, it's not just a reskin; there are differences between Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) and Doki Doki Panic that go beyond mere reskinning.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

They are two different games.

Why are you telling me that? Not only do I already know that (which is obvious, since I've been talking about the two completely different games called Super Mario Bros. 2 all along), but it's also been fairly common knowledge for many years now.

[bubufubu]

2 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

No, I'm not.

 

Yes, you are.  Very clearly.  The reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic doesn't have a time limit, for one.  Do you realize how much pressure that takes off the player when comparing the two games?  You've also got a health bar.  By default, you start out with two hit points, which is one more than in the beginning of Super Mario Bros. and after each death.  You can even increase it to a maximum of four through the collecting of mushrooms.  Plenty of them to be found in the game.  The more mushrooms you find, the more hits you can take before losing your size or life.  The controls are tighter, as well.  I feel much more in control of my character's movement and speed than I ever did in Super Mario Bros..  Tons of extra lives can be earned through the Bonus Chance game (getting the timing down is not all that difficult, actually).  You've got four unique characters from which to pick.  So, you know, if you actually bother to study the stages in each world, then you have the option to choose the more advantageous character.  Any ineptitude on your part is no excuse for ignorance as the internet isn't short on guides.  Each character possesses a super jump, of varying degree.  There is ammo, aplenty (including the enemies themselves).  Killing a certain amount of them can earn you back health.  Lots of cherries around, too.  Collect enough of them and a star appears.  I'm fairly sure you can abuse reentry to collect more health hearts and cherries.

 

How the hell do you find the reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic to be more difficult than Super Mario Bros.?  What is wrong with you?  Research the game and practice, for pete's sake.

 

33 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

Take it up with Nintendo. You thinking it's "fucking ridiculous" is irrelevant to the fact that it's called Super Mario Bros. 2. Just look at the label on the cartridge. Furthermore, it's not just a reskin; there are differences between Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) and Doki Doki Panic that go beyond mere reskinning.

 

Nintendo of America (specifically Howard Phillips) is to blame for this mess in the first place, so taking it up with them back then would have been utterly pointless.  I don't care what the label on the NES cartridge reads.  The reality is that it's little more than a reskin.  Period.  The characters control the same.  The enemies behave the same.  Any audio or visual differences would be totally irrelevant here.

 

I suggest you use your time to study the game and get better at it rather than exaggerating about the difficulty.

[MaximRecoil]

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

Yes, you are.  Very clearly.

No, I'm not.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

The reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic doesn't have a time limit, for one. 

It's more than a reskin and it has a name: Super Mario Bros. 2.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

Do you realize how much pressure that takes off the player when comparing the two games?

The time limit is hardly ever a factor in SMB. The levels are short. It's mainly a factor in the three maze levels (or one maze level if you use warp zones), until you figure out the maze, which would only take a few tries because there aren't many path combinations to try in the first place.

 

As for the rest of the stuff you typed in that paragraph, all of that is more than countered by the fact that, in comparison to SMB, SMB 2's levels are typically longer, there are far more hazards, you can't get fireballs or any other on-demand weapon, and there are more bosses / mini-bosses, almost none of which you can simply run past, and none of which you can use your non-existent on-demand weapon against. On top of that, the chances of anyone finding the warp zones entirely on their own are slim to none, whereas in SMB they are easy to stumble upon.

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

How the hell do you find the reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic to be more difficult than Super Mario Bros.?

Because it very obviously is. If it were easier than SMB than my cousin Mike and I would have beaten it when we were kids, the same as we beat SMB. Once we discovered warp zones in SMB, we were at world 8 shortly thereafter, and then it was just a matter of learning 8-1 through 8-4. We never even found warp zones in SMB 2, and without warp zones, that's a lot of levels to learn before you can beat the game with only 2 continues.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

What is wrong with you?

That's comically ironic, coming from the guy who thinks SMB is harder than SMB 2. SMB is only 8 short levels with warp zones (more like 7½, since you only have to go through about half of 4-2 to reach the warp zone to 8-1), and you have an on-demand weapon with unlimited ammo. You'll only face one boss and no mini-bosses, and you can just run under that one boss or kill him from a safe distance with 5 fireballs. Even playing casually it only takes about 8 or 9 minutes to beat it. The best players can beat it in just under 5 minutes.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

Research the game and practice, for pete's sake.

More comical irony. Also, "research"? I didn't need to do any research to beat SMB, not that there was any feasible way to research anyway, since it was 1986 and Mike was the only one I knew who even had a Nintendo. Also, it didn't take all that much practice either. I didn't even own an NES until about 1989 but I could beat SMB in 1986. The only times I got to play SMB back then were at Mike's house, and since he lived in a different town, that wasn't very often.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

Nintendo of America (specifically Howard Phillips) is to blame for this mess in the first place

There is no mess.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

I don't care what the label on the NES cartridge reads.

That's irrelevant. The label is proof that it's called Super Mario Bros. 2, so if you're trying to "correct" people who are calling it Super Mario Bros. 2, you're the one who's wrong, obviously.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

The reality is that it's little more than a reskin.

Your concession that's it's more than just a reskin is noted.

 

1 hour ago, bubufubu said:

I suggest you use your time to study the game and get better at it rather than exaggerating about the difficulty.

Again with the irony. I could say the same thing to you with regard to SMB, except no one needs to "research" or "study" it, and it doesn't take much practice to beat either.

Edited November 25, 2022 by MaximRecoil

[Tanooki]

I'm so wanting to put a thanks on this post or a like on that, but I will say this much.  STOP LYING.  Calling SMB2(US) a reskin is bullshit.  The mechanics are changed, visuals are changed as needed, story changed, various other aspects are as well,  yes the core game is nearly there, but it's like DDP is a beta of what Mario is given the updates and changes are to mechanics, handling, flow.  It's not just some cheap dime store 5min click clik, hey we have a winner here halfass reskin.  Nintendo says as much, most rational non-die on a cross trolls over the so called slight types also know it's not some cheap re-skin.  Let it go, there's better things to do than live a lie and double down on it as it's just pathetic.

 

SMB2 is the easiest of the 3 NES titles, there is no debate on this, it's fact.  Those facts are very clear if you read any info put out there, including the arguments over the last few back and forward hours above.  More hitpoints, 2 to start, which is like if SMB1/3 started every death as Super Mario and tiny mario is just punishment/warning.  Nope, not how that works.  You can also freely navigate, backtrack, and think how to proceed any block of a stage due to no clock, so there's no rush, pace yourself. The game may have 7 worlds and even then they're short as you're looking at I think around 20 stages.  SMB1 had 32, and SMB3 is many times over that.  SMB2 let's you use whoever you want, so you can just go all modern era easy mode and play the Princess who can float over large chunks of stages, float catch from falling in a hole, easy floaty touch down landings...she's the easy way out.

 

Howard Phillips caused no mess, he saved the company from a larger mess.  Again that's fact.  Think how you choose now, but you are ignoring the reality of the year when that choice was made against what else was on the market, knowing mid 80s gamers tolerance levels, and as Mario was their mascot going from the 1 to the FDS2 on a cart would have been franchise suicide.  That guy is(then) a machine at NES games and played all sorts of stuff that was considered for US release, and even he found that game an utter turn off, not just in challenge, but by that time visually too, it was lazy and evil.  This is the guy that allowed third party notable difficulty atrocities fly by like GnG which most people just can't finish (I could, can't now.)  If he felt SMB2j was worse than the worse we did get, I'm going to trust that over some shiftless internet tough guy types who bitch about it being a fake game.  Visually the game was a year plus behind, and the difficulty was through the roof, odds are it would have scared people far away from the Mario franchise, and it would have been a harder sell to peddle SMB3 after that turd gave a bunch of kids hate fits and nightmares.

[MaximRecoil]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

SMB2 is the easiest of the 3 NES titles, there is no debate on this, it's fact.

That's not even remotely a fact.

 

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

The game may have 7 worlds and even then they're short as you're looking at I think around 20 stages.  SMB1 had 32

 

SMB all levels, world record time = 18m 55s 929ms

SMB 2 all levels, world record time = 20m 36s

 

SMB Any%, world record time = 4m 54s 798ms

SMB 2 Any%, world record time = 8m 11s 590ms

 

No matter how you slice it, SMB 2 is a longer game.

 

Also, pretty much no one is going to find a warp zone in SMB 2 without outside help, so they are going to have to play through all the levels, with only 2 continues. On the other hand, in SMB, right at the start of world 1-2 you can easily break blocks out of the ceiling, and it's natural to try to jump up there after you do that. Then you just keep going to the right (which is the only direction you can go) and you find a warp zone to 4-1. The next warp zone in 4-2 is just as easy to stumble across because a vine leads to it.

 

SMB 2's final level (castle) alone is significantly harder than any level in SMB. You've got conveyor belt platforms with spikes beneath them, mini-bosses, those spark things buzzing around everywhere, dead ends, a key to get for a particular door, and a final boss that's way harder than the final boss in SMB. Hell, you don't even need to do anything at all but barrel straight ahead to defeat SMB's final boss if you're big Mario, i.e., you can just run straight into him and your temporary invincibility after taking a hit will get you through him safely. He's one of the easiest bosses in video game history, and he's also the only boss in the game if you use the easy-to-find warp zones.

 

I would love for someone to put this to the test. Get a large group of people who know nothing about SMB or SMB 2 and have half of them play SMB and the other half play SMB 2, with no access to any outside help, and with all of them separated from each other (or split up into groups of two at the most). I would wager just about anything that more people would beat SMB in a given amount of time than SMB 2. I certainly would if I were put in the test when I was 11. It didn't take Mike and me very long to beat SMB, but we didn't make it very far with SMB 2 when he rented it. We never found a warp zone and we made it to world 2-dash-something. We had no outside help with either game.

Edited November 25, 2022 by MaximRecoil

[Razzie.P]

On 11/15/2022 at 12:59 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

I wasn't alive when this game released (yeah, everyone feels super old now that I said that, right?), but I've always felt like it was one of those things where you had to be around to see how games were before and after SMB to fully appreciate what it did. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. The game's fine, but going back to it after playing any given subsequent Mario/Sonic/Castlevania/Metroid/Rayman/basically any other later 2D platformer makes SMB look very plain, reveals its very simple mechanics, and shows that the game is actually somewhat lacking in content, especially since it recycles a few levels and is quite short. The game's ROM size is ridiculously tiny, though, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

 

If you want what probably would have been considered a super stripped-down platformer even within just a few years after its own launch, though, let alone modern post-Sonic and post-Super Metroid standards, you'd probably have great difficulty finding something better.

I was probably 10 or so and it had been out about a year when I got to play it, and I didn't really didn't like it much in real time.  I played it, felt like I "mastered" it but it didn't win me over because I was all about swords n sorcery, ninjas, that kinda thang.   I wasn't until MUCH later, after Sonics and Raymans and such that I finally realized that it's pretty much perfect.   What you view as "plain and stripped down" I see as just "rock solid  design"   Like a Tom Petty or AC/DC song -- it'd be a mess if they dropped in some over the top arrangements to make it flashier just because.

 

 

On 11/16/2022 at 1:57 PM, MaximRecoil said:

I watched a video of "Kosmic" playing SMB 2. He's among the best in the world at various Mario games. For example, his speedrun time on SMB is 4m 55s 646ms, and on SMB 2 (Japan) it is 7m 55s 384ms, plus a warpless run (all levels) of SMB 2 (Japan) in 21m 23s 869ms. Those were world records at one point, and still in the top 10. Getting times like that require some frame-perfect maneuvers that most people can't do at all. In any case, he didn't exactly breeze through SMB 2 (USA). He lost several lives, enough so that he had to continue a couple times. This is what he said while playing it:

 

"This game has SMB One Syndrome, but on steroids, where people are like, 'I beat this when I was five...' Also, anyone that remembers it being easy probably got to like world four as a kid and never actually beat it. They probably just warped to four and felt like they made lots of progress."

 

I don't know Kosmic and he's entitled to rattle off and believe his own generalizations, of course, but for that particular quote -- I was around 12ish (not quite 5) and thought it was quite an easy game back then.  I'm sure I cheesed the crap out of Peach to avoid huge chunks of it, but I remember it not being very difficult to me at the time.   My "lots of progress" included the final boss, the ending, all that jazz, so definitely not cut short at 4.   I didn't have Nintendo Power until much later in life, so unless some other game magazine had all the tips n' tricks, I don't think I had much "outside help" either.

 

 

[Tanooki]

Jesus you are a history denier, there is no reasoning with you and I should have seen that with those posts last night, but I had to respond.  Utterly pointless.

[MaximRecoil]

6 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

I don't know Kosmic and he's entitled to rattle off and believe his own generalizations, of course, but for that particular quote -- I was around 12ish (not quite 5) and thought it was quite an easy game back then.  I'm sure I cheesed the crap out of Peach to avoid huge chunks of it, but I remember it not being very difficult to me at the time.   My "lots of progress" included the final boss, the ending, all that jazz, so definitely not cut short at 4.   I didn't have Nintendo Power until much later in life, so unless some other game magazine had all the tips n' tricks, I don't think I had much "outside help" either.

Did you beat it in one day? A "quite easy" game that only consists of about 20 levels should be beatable in one day. For example, I beat Super Castlevania IV in a day in 1992 (I rented it, so I only had it for a day), and it was the first Castlevania game I'd ever played. The SMB 2 gameplay video that someone posted earlier in this thread, all levels, only took about an hour. I'm guessing he's had a good deal of practice, but for someone playing this game for the first time, if it is a quite easy game, it should only take a couple/few hours at the most to beat it.

 

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

you are a history denier, there is no reasoning with you and I should have seen that with those posts last night, but I had to respond.  Utterly pointless.

 

The fastest/easiest route through SMB, which is easy to find without outside help, is only 8 short levels with no mini-bosses and only one boss which you can simply run under or even straight through if you're big Mario/Luigi (one of the easiest bosses in video game history). Of those 8 levels, only the last 4 (8-1 through 8-4) have any significant difficulty at all, and even that can be negated if you can keep your firepower, which makes it easy to kill the Hammer Bros. in 8-3.

 

The fastest/easiest route through SMB 2, which pretty much no one will find without outside help, is 10 levels, with most of them being longer levels than in SMB. Worlds 1-1 through 1-3 are easy, but not as easy as SMB's 1-1 and 1-2, because there are some mini-bosses you have to defeat. Then you enter the warp zone in 1-3 that someone told you how to find and that's where the difficulty ramps up.

 

World 4-1 is way harder than SMB's 4-1, which is a very easy level if you just stomp the cloud creature at the beginning and run through the practically hazard-free rest of it. For one thing, it's an ice level, which messes with your control over the character (SMB has nothing like that in any level; you always have normal control over Mario/Luigi). For another thing, when you get to 4-2, which is more ice, there are a bunch of enemies flying at you that you have to make quick decisions to variously jump over, duck under, or do nothing, plus some enemies on the ground too. Meanwhile, SMB's 4-2 is a very easy level, and you only have to go through ~half of it. There's certainly no barrage of enemies flying straight at you nor is there anything messing with your control over the character.

 

Then you have 6-2 where you have to ride on flying birds through most of the level, jumping from one to another, and jumping over oncoming enemies and having to land back on the moving bird. SMB has nothing like that.

 

6-3 is a long and tedious level unless you use the shortcut that you won't know about unless someone told you, and has the multi-headed snake boss which is certainly more difficult than the non-existent bosses at the end of all but one level in SMB's shortest route, and more difficult than the only boss in SMB's shortest route too, for that matter.

 

I've already discussed the 7-2 castle, which is obviously more difficult than SMB's 8-4 castle, which is one of the easiest castles in the game after you figure out which pipes you're supposed to go down.

 

The idea that SMB 2 is easier than SMB is one of the most bizarre video game theories I've ever heard.

[Steven Pendleton]

9 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

I was probably 10 or so and it had been out about a year when I got to play it, and I didn't really didn't like it much in real time.  I played it, felt like I "mastered" it but it didn't win me over because I was all about swords n sorcery, ninjas, that kinda thang.   I wasn't until MUCH later, after Sonics and Raymans and such that I finally realized that it's pretty much perfect.   What you view as "plain and stripped down" I see as just "rock solid  design"   Like a Tom Petty or AC/DC song -- it'd be a mess if they dropped in some over the top arrangements to make it flashier just because.

I didn't play it until after I'd already played Sonic, Rayman, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 3, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Zero Mission (yeah, I didn't get to play it for a while, but you should see how long it took me to play Castlevania), and I'd always heard about HOW AMAZING the NES and its games are online and stuff, and so I really wanted an NES when I was like 10 (and to this day I have still never seen one in person, although I do have a fake Famicom + NES thing). I think the first time I played SMB was actually in 2011 or so on the 3DS when they gave it away for free as a consolation prize for the system's terrible launch and I was like

 

...

 

this is it?

 

So I imagine it's a matter of perspective. I play it, and I'm like "oh, this is a nice game... but I could be playing Super Metroid or Sonic or Castlevania instead and I like those games a hell of a lot more".

Edited November 26, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[MaximRecoil]

17 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

and I'd always heard about HOW AMAZING the NES and its games are online and stuff, and so I really wanted an NES when I was like 10

Am I reading that right? You were reading about the NES online when you were 10?

 

The NES was released in the US when I was 10, but it didn't get a national release until I was 11 (1986). I first heard of it / saw it in the TV commercials that aired for it around the fall of 1986. Commercials for the Sega Master System started airing at around the same time, and I thought the games for both of them looked amazing (a big step up from Atari 2600, or even 5200 or ColecoVision), but I figured the Master System would be the one that everyone bought because it looked like a video game console, while I thought the NES looked like a humidifier or something.

 

26 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I think the first time I played SMB was actually in 2011 or so on the 3DS when they gave it away for free as a consolation prize for the system's terrible launch and I was like

...

this is it?

SMB was the first game I played on an NES at my cousin Mike's house shortly after those first TV commercials for it aired. I thought it was a really weird game, since I'd never seen anything like it. The closest thing I'd seen was Pitfall (A2600), but SMB was far more elaborate, and had catchy music too. I thought the controllers were really weird too, since I'd only ever used joysticks. So I didn't really like it at first, though I was impressed with the graphics; which reminded me of a cartoon you might see on TV. I mostly just watched Mike play it at first, but once I gave it a chance I started to like it.

 

When I went home I fired up Pitfall hoping to find some "secrets" in it like SMB has, a warp zone or something, but it just seemed so disappointingly bland after playing SMB.

[Steven Pendleton]

13 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

Am I reading that right? You were reading about the NES online when you were 10?

Yes.

 

13 minutes ago, MaximRecoil said:

SMB was the first game I played on an NES at my cousin Mike's house shortly after those first TV commercials for it aired. I thought it was a really weird game, since I'd never seen anything like it. The closest thing I'd seen was Pitfall (A2600), but SMB was far more elaborate, and had catchy music too. I thought the controllers were really weird too, since I'd only ever used joysticks. So I didn't really like it at first, though I was impressed with the graphics; which reminded me of a cartoon you might see on TV. I mostly just watched Mike play it at first, but once I gave it a chance I started to like it.

 

When I went home I fired up Pitfall hoping to find some "secrets" in it like SMB has, a warp zone or something, but it just seemed so disappointingly bland after playing SMB.

Yeah, I played Pitfall on the Intellivision once when I was quite young, maybe 7~10 or so. The controller confused the hell out of me and I gave up. Kind of ironic considering I had no problems playing X-Wing or TIE Fighter with a HOTAS + keyboard and stuff at that age.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[Razzie.P]

2 hours ago, MaximRecoil said:

Did you beat it in one day? A "quite easy" game that only consists of about 20 levels should be beatable in one day. 

 

Maybe.  That sort of trivial nonsense isn't something I'd ever bother to memory, but I rented a lot of games after school and had a very short time to play them, so many of them did get beaten in a day.  I didn't own this one as a kid, so there's a really good chance I rented it and had finished it (at the least) in a very short time.

 

Of all the "single day/evening" game finishes I did, I only truly remember the ones I was disappointed in, since I actually bought them.

 

2 hours ago, MaximRecoil said:

but for someone playing this game for the first time, if it is a quite easy game, it should only take a couple/few hours at the most to beat it.

 

I'm not sure I agree that time to beat is necessarily indicative of difficulty.  Different people have different skillsets and someone could struggle with a game others find easy, and steamroll through a game that others find nearly impossible.   It took me 36 years to finally beat Hydlide.   Not because it's difficult (it's one of the easiest NES games to finish, now) but because of 1 nonsense "puzzle" that kept me from progressing past a certain point.

 

2 hours ago, MaximRecoil said:

The idea that SMB 2 is easier than SMB is one of the most bizarre video game theories I've ever heard.

 

What's really bizarre is that anyone is so bothered by the fact that someone else finds "game A" more/less difficult that "game B" that they write small books expecting to prove 'em all wrong and change everyone's mind.  Or whatever one hopes to accomplish with these sort of things.

[Razzie.P]

58 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yes.

 

Yeah, I played Pitfall on the Intellivision once when I was quite young, maybe 7~10 or so. The controller confused the hell out of me and I gave up. Kind of ironic considering I had no problems playing X-Wing or TIE Fighter with a HOTAS + keyboard and stuff at that age.

I've been playing these things most of my life, and have no problem with complicated flight sim type of controls either, but that Intellivision mess still confuses the hell out of me and makes me give up.

[Steven Pendleton]

8 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

I've been playing these things most of my life, and have no problem with complicated flight sim type of controls either, but that Intellivision mess still confuses the hell out of me and makes me give up.

lol at the time my conclusion was that it had all of those buttons because older console games were significantly more advanced than modern console games, which meant Sega Genesis~PS1 at the time, and that modern games had been dumbed down to make them more accessible to the masses. Old games were for SUPER HARDCORE people only, so I quickly ditched the Intellivision and went back to playing Total Annihilation instead. Yeah, I was... a very unusual 7~10 year old.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[MaximRecoil]

1 hour ago, Razzie.P said:

Maybe.  That sort of trivial nonsense isn't something I'd ever bother to memory

"Trivial nonsense"? You're the one who volunteered your anecdote about beating SMB 2 when you were ~12, and described it as "quite easy." How can you remember it being "quite easy" but not remember, even roughly, how long it took you to beat it? Difficulty and time to beat a game of this type go hand in hand. The more difficult it is, the more attempts are needed, and that adds up to more time.

 

Can you beat SMB 2 without taking any hits? Not just without losing a life, but without taking any damage whatsoever? And if so, can you do it routinely? It's easy to do in SMB when using the shortest route. Probably 9 times out of 10 when playing SMB I don't get hit at all, and I'm not even in the same league as the best SMB players. My claim isn't that SMB 2 is incredibly difficult; games like Ninja Gaiden and its sequels are way more difficult for example. My claim is that it's more difficult than SMB.

 

1 hour ago, Razzie.P said:

I'm not sure I agree that time to beat is necessarily indicative of difficulty.  Different people have different skillsets and someone could struggle with a game others find easy, and steamroll through a game that others find nearly impossible.   It took me 36 years to finally beat Hydlide.   Not because it's difficult (it's one of the easiest NES games to finish, now) but because of 1 nonsense "puzzle" that kept me from progressing past a certain point.

Anything that impedes progress adds to the difficulty. It doesn't matter if it's a wave of enemies coming at you from all directions or a cryptic puzzle because the result is the same, i.e., you're stuck until you can figure out how to get past it. Yes, some people are better at solving puzzles or reacting to enemies/hazards than others, but I'm talking about in general.

 

1 hour ago, Razzie.P said:

What's really bizarre is that anyone is so bothered by the fact that someone else finds "game A" more/less difficult that "game B" that they write small books expecting to prove 'em all wrong and change everyone's mind.  Or whatever one hopes to accomplish with these sort of things.

Here we have a couple non sequiturs and an attempted crystal ball reading, all in one paragraph.

 

Edited November 26, 2022 by MaximRecoil