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How did people beat these SNES Platformers without Restore Points?

When playing in the era of no saves I remembered every inch of the game, knowing what was best to do to not die...

For example I finished Metal Slug X on the arcade with just 2 coins (the second on the final boss), I played it so many times that it becomes "easy" to finish without die.

And I had a lot of time free to practice when I was a kid...

So it was all about "git gud" like these days with Dark Souls....
 
denx said:
Did anyone beat Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in any difficulty higher than Easy?
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Me and my friends actually made it a challenge for ourselves to beat all the Super Star Wars games on hardest difficulty.

It took one week and several hours a day but we managed to do it.
 
I didn't. Donkey Kong Land still haunts me to this day. Fucking cloud/skyscraper and underwater levels, nearly destroyed my Gameboy because of it (it was my first plattformer and I had no patience).
 
The idea of a save state in itself totally changes your approach to game design, and not necessarily for the better, imo.

Sure there were times when games without them were frustrating, but it made conquering that particular level or boss all the more exhilarating.

I still don't use them, even though they're a stock feature of many legacy titles now.

denx said:
Did anyone beat Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in any difficulty higher than Easy?
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I've beaten all three games in the trilogy on Jedi setting without losing a life. No, I'm not a gaming god. I just learned the games and practiced.

ffvorax said:
So it was all about "git gud" like these days with Dark Souls....
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More or less. The irony of the 'make franchise x Souls' meme is that before savestates, most games fundamentally were.
 
Well trying again and again like other have said. Me and my brother didn't have that many games so playing the same thing over and over again wasn't that weird.

But something must be said, that some games you just gave up on as well. That nes batman game for example. I never did get past the third stage I think.
 
For me it comes down to the fact that as a kid back in the 80s and early 90s, you'd get maybe 4-6 games per year and that was it. So each game would last you a good few months and you therefore became good through repetition of practice.
 
When you are in a position of reliance on others to buy games you get bloody good at the ones you do have. Constant practice at the same ones coupled with more disposable time equals beatable games.
 
I got maybe 3 games a year at best as a kid, so you could be damn sure I'd fight my way through any game I had no matter how hard it was. There were very few I didn't eventually beat.

When you have a lot of free time, limited options, and stuff like 'saving' is still super rare in games, then you will find a way to beat a game, no matter how hard. That being said there were a few I never beat, but those were a combination of hard and crappy rather than just hard.
 
@OP:

I felt the same way replaying Metroid II on 3DS VC. How the hell did I beat that game on my own back in the day? And why was I struggling mightily now and had to break down and use a Gamefaqs map PNG?

I think the answer is that back in the day, especially when I was a kid, I had all the time in the world to play these games and master them. It required a lot of repetition and run throughs. This is how I got so good at Ninja Gaiden NES. I played it a million times to the point of having enemy and item placement committed to memory (Pro-Tip: get the jump-n-slash in the 8-1 [iirc] and never pick up another power up. You'll beat the game with ease).

I personally don't have time to dedicate to a lot of these games these days being an adult working full time preparing for law school. So save states area godsend. And lack of reps is precisely why we suck at old-school games nowadays in my opinion.
 
Platformers were a huge chunk of the market, and in addition to the tougher ones they also comprised a big chunk of the entry-level stuff due to the amount of licensed games, so if you played games at all in the late 80s through to the mid 90s, you probably became very familiar with platformers.

Games were also shorter- my brother and I got used to blazing through the early levels of tough games as quickly as possible to have another crack at the later ones, and what all that repetition did, over hours of practice, was seal in the lessons taught in the early stages. It's not like today where some games auto-save after each boss, and the games are so long that you'll probably never replay it and have to beat it again, and so can progress through sheer chance (and then moan on forums about how broken a challenge is rather than learn to beat it while preserving a meagre supply of lives and continues).

Also, I would have played about three games a year in the early 90s, spending months mining games for every possible secret. The idea of 'one and done' would have been madness to me, I played a game through then played it again and again. These days it seems like there are a dozen new games you can play for a matter of pence (or even for free) every week.
 
Donkey Kong Land was even worse, you had to get the KONG letters to get to save your game, either that or beat an entire World. It wasn't too bad during the first few levels but on later ones where you could barely get past them let alone get all KONG letters it was absolute madness. I was like, 9 or 10 then but I still consider it a decent challenge today.
 
i kept trying until i got good at video games op

my dad wasnt gonna buy more of that shit that shit was expensive so play what you got
 
Lack of alternative as others have mention is probably one of the main reasons. In the NES era, i think i personally got like 2 games a year. I did sometime rent games for a weekend and borrowed from friends a few time though, but still.
 
Blood Diamonds said:
I know, I know, git gud and all but I'm playing DKC 2 on the n3DS VC and god damn this is hard. Every level is kicking my ass and I'm constantly out of lives. I end up creating a restore point before the start of every stage and if I reach the checkpoint and die I'll create a restore point again so I start out at the checkpoint each time. Despite this though the game is still really fun for me and the level design is great.

I have to ask though, what was it like playing SNES games back in the day without savestates and the stuff? I know you can save at the Kong Kollege in DKC 2 but still, it cost coins each time you want to save and you might end up forgetting to save and dying. Do you think savestates/restore points make a game less fun? Or do you think that times have changed and you shouldn't be pulling your hair out playing a game when you have the option to use savestates and restore points?
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If I remember correctly, one lives farming run of the first level nets you 20 something lives in DKC2, it's useful before tackling harder levels... Also, game gets about 10 times harder in the lost world, good luck with that. :)
 
Having never played Metroid (had a snes as a kid but didn't buy it) I'm actually tempted to dig out my snes and go through playing parts of it if I have time, it's either that or super probector/contra 3.

I'm not great at platform games so it will be interesting. Havevn't actually played my snes for more than 5 minutes since I re-bought one last year so it's a good excuse to go back to it.
 
My mom beat DKC 1 and 2 on the Snes back in the day... replaying them recently I also made use of the restore points on WiiU.

I can only assume this to be a lack of patience.
On one side, that's ok. We are not willing to waste even the smallest amount of time on difficult parts in such a game anymore by replaying sections, nothing wrong with that.

On the other side, we don't even try. I mean we die in one spot several times and then say "fuck that", savestate before and after, maybe even in the middle of it. But maybe we are just not putting the same effort into playing these games anymore, right from the start?
 
Games back then weren't incredibly long. It was all about repetition and practice - the challenge created an artificial length. A lot of us could pick up a lot of these platformers 20 years later and still have a decent amount of muscle memory to breeze through a good portion of them.
 
long gaming sessions till you beat a level
playing a part of a level but let a friend pass the one you can't pass by yourself (and doing the same favour to him/her for another game)
doing easy levels again and again to pile up lives

but the most important : trial and error / practice and master ^^
 
That was the rules of the game, it's just how it was.
I even tackled Resident Evil and Tomb Raider with the same mindset because I didn't own a memory card.
 
You need practice to get better at the game and know the level design.
Yeah, I know that for some gamers these days it's an alien concept.
 
Blood Diamonds said:
I have to ask though, what was it like playing SNES games back in the day without savestates and the stuff?
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Basically trial and error on your own.

People who played games back then most likely grew up playing arcade games during the 80s and early 90s. Compared to that, most SNES games were easy.

Arcade games were designed to take all your money by adjusting their difficulty to insane levels. If you were good, the game would just become harder and harder. It was brutal. You had no option but to become good unless you enjoyed watching other people play (or attract mode).

Many early console games were developed using the same unforgiving philosophy seen in the arcades. Computer games from that era were similarly challenging in their own way. Beating certain games was actually hard and something that made people proud. No easy mode, no tutorials, no saves, no everyone is a winner mentality. Not being able to beat a game you owned was a real possibility.

Games slowly became more approachable to appeal to a broader audience and home console and computer gaming opened up all kinds of new experiences that were not viable in the arcades. There are still a good number of games made today that try to challenge the player in their own way.
 
Practise.

Less games to play meant more focus on the games you had. Even with my dad being a gamer and buying more games on average during the 16/32/64bit days there still wasn't the amount of games to play that we have today.
 
Games were short and had no online or lotsnof content. Part of the game was this trial and error which extended the game's "content" by a lot of time.

Seeing new content by getting through a hard level...
 
Back then as a kid, you didn't have the option to get bored of a game or give up on it for being hard. I even played the shit out of some terrible games, because that's all I had. I got like a game for my birthday and a few for Christmas and that was it. There were no iphones, Netflix, ipads or anything like that. Basically in the summer we went out and played all day and then came in and played games all night. If you had like 3 games, you got pretty damn good at all of them out of necessity.
 
Less games and when you are younger you have more time... Back then I could beat Contra 3 without loosing a life on highest difficulty. I doubt I could do it now.
 
MisterR said:
Back then as a kid, you didn't have the option to get bored of a game or give up on it for being hard. I even played the shit out of some terrible games, because that's all I had. I got like a game for my birthday and a few for Christmas and that was it. There were no iphones, Netflix, ipads or anything like that. Basically in the summer we went out and played all day and then came in and played games all night. If you had like 3 games, you got pretty damn good at all of them out of necessity.
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This totally.

Funny thing is, your example isn't as crazy as other things I've seen people do. Friend could single man Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3. As well, have you seen Bullet Hell gameplay? OMG insane!

It's all memorization really.
 
MisterR said:
Back then as a kid, you didn't have the option to get bored of a game or give up on it for being hard. I even played the shit out of some terrible games, because that's all I had. I got like a game for my birthday and a few for Christmas and that was it. There were no iphones, Netflix, ipads or anything like that. Basically in the summer we went out and played all day and then came in and played games all night. If you had like 3 games, you got pretty damn good at all of them out of necessity.
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PREACH BROTHER AMEN! YAS LAWHD!

Say it again!
 
Kids didn't get 10 games a month and indie bundles and steam sales. There was no internet in 1993 hat most people were aware of or used. Tv was boring except for Saturday morning.

You played those games for months until you finished it or got a new one when your birthday or Christmas rolled around.

I remember finishing dkc 2 sometime in The spring and I got I for Christmas. You played those levels a lot and went for 100%.
 
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