Dark Souls Vs. Battletoads

For a long time, Battletoads was regarded as the most difficult (with about being cheap) game ever made.  I have written before on my experiences trying to best that game. But some time ago, Dark Souls was released. And it started kicking gamer's butts immediately. It was made to kick your butt, with real penalties to dying that incentivize learning how not to get killed. I haven't played far into it, but I got a real good idea of how much Dark Souls relishes killing me. So which is harder?

Battletoads Playthrough guide (1-3)

Having recently discovered new video recording options with my emulator. My first thought was to make a guide for Battletoads. Its a wicked hard game and describing a walkthrough in words is really tough. So I am just gonna film myself going through the levels. I will have some notes embedded in the video, but most of the details will be in this post. I am emulating this and it will be done with save states. I have beaten the game in a straight run with no saving, but for filming convenience I won't be doing that this time.

Level 1:

Ok, first of, you have to be real quick to reach that portal in the beginning. It takes you to level three, which is really hard, so I would not take it; the first two levels are a good place to build up lives. You can pick up the walker's legs to use as bats, but its not worth as many points. If you have two players, one can throw the head and the other can hit it: toad baseball. If you jump on the dragons while they are on the ground, you can ride them. They breathe fire and kind of fly, but you receive no points for kills on their back, so not worth it. The dragons can kill you instantly if they grab you, so take caution.

Level 2:

This is the level you can build a lot of bonus lives if you are good. Hitting the birds multiple times after they die will get you lots of points and eventually a bonus life. This wasn't my best attempt, but you can usually get three. The ones with the long beaks can kill you instantly. The wrecking ball attack has an interesting mechanic. You can activate either by sitting still by the wall and attacking, or by holding still near an enemy and attacking.

Level 3:

Level three is the level where most players gave up. The speeder bike section is legendary. I got through it without dying, but that took me weeks of practice. Not much to say you can't see. The space invaders steal your health straight from your health bar; kill them and take it back. When jumping with the speeder bike, try not to move up or down, you can actually move beyond the screen and kill yourself. The portal at the end is really hard to hit and not worth it. I will be showing the best way of getting through this game, including which warps to hit. The last post will cover the levels I skipped if you really want to see them.

Lost to the ages

Some games stand the test of time and carry on. They get sequels and a rabid fan base. Then some games have a brief flash of brilliance and then vanish into obscurity. Some get lucky and achieve cult status, but still these games will be forever ignored by the developers, leaving fans to pine for their beloved games. Pitt from Kid Icarus recently escaped this fate, with his introduction in Smash Brothers Brawl and a release for the 3DS. Other characters have not been so lucky.

Great example: Battletoads. The first game was critically acclaimed and is still well followed. It had two sequels, but they were just kinda "meh". And that was it for the frogs. No modern sequels, no developer willing to take up the challenge. Fans are left with the butt burningly hard original. What is the difference between a hit and a cult hit. Metroid was revolutionary, but it didn't scream hit until the third installment. The second game was a hard to play version on the Gameboy, so what was it that compelled the developers to push for that one more game that helped solidify it as a classic. Same thing with Legend of Zelda and Mario (console): First was good, second was iffy, the third was amazing.
There must be something different in the minds of developers from gamers. Kirby has never had a blow people out of the water classic, but he is still trucking along and Nintendo keeps making the games. Rare hasn't made a Killer Instinct game in over a decade. What about Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star, Jet Grind Radio, or the Mother series? All these are great games, but have not experienced nearly enough console time for gamers. I think it comes down to laziness. Game developers know how to make FPS, Sandbox and adventure games, so they do. There is a clearly defined formula for these games, so they don't feel like trying out any game style that pushes the boundaries, for fear of losing money. At E3, Nintendo did not announce a single new character, only oldies that we already love. Though I don't mind that, lets branch out a little people.

This game was FUN!!!

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Redd visited today. He sold me another forged painting. That's 5 in a row. I am seriously starting to get pissed at him.

Difficulty

Video game difficulty used to be very easy to measure. A thing was either hard to do, or easy to do. If you couldn't figure out what to do, it was usually because of unclear or absent instructions. This is why most of what are considered the "Hardest Games" are from the 1980's; game mechanics were simple so they had to crank up the performance difficulty in order to create a challenge. This created two flavors of difficulty: challenging and punishing. I will use GT countdowns second and first hardest games as examples. Ghosts and Goblins (2nd) is punishing. Battletoads (1st) is challenging (mostly). I have played both and I will tell you, G&G is sooooo hard that I have never gotten to the first boss. Its not harder than Battletoads(which I have beaten), its just not fun to play. To defeat the enemies in G&G requires a degree of precision that simply isn't worth the feeling of reward that comes from succeeding. The game simply isn't fun to play, even if you succeed. Battletoads level design is clever and the game rarely feels punishing. Sure the vehicle levels are nasty, but once you have the pattern, performance isn't prohibitively hard, and some levels are skip-able. So when you beat a level, you get the "I am awesome" feeling that makes the whole thing worth it. NOTE: for anyone who wants to try Battletoads, some of the later levels start to fall into the punishing category, so I don't suggest you try to beat it unless you absolutely must have the bragging rights.

So lets move to today. Nowadays, games have improved their depth, so now there are two ways to make a game difficult. Difficult to Decipher and Difficult to Perform. Almost all first person shooters are difficult to perform. What you have to do is simple: shoot the bad guy. So to make it hard you make the bad guy have armor, hide behind cover or have numerical advantage. All these things make it harder to shoot the guy, but the objective remains easy to understand. Other games, the method of completing your objective is not so clear. Yes you need to reactivate the generator, but how do you go about doing that? Portal is an excellent example. Most of the puzzles where pretty easy to complete, but only after you had figured out what you needed to do. This lowers the replay value, since once you figure it out, it isn't nearly so difficult. Legend of Zelda and other adventure games are a combination of the two. You have to figure out what to do, but once you know what to do, doing it isn't necessarily easy.
So when some people complain that games nowadays are too easy, a lot of their complaint comes from a skewed perspective. While it is true that some games are made easier so they appeal to more people, a lot of it comes from the games they grew up on. I grew up on adventure platformers, where the difficulty is always a combination of decipher and perform. The complainers grew up on Pac-man, where the difficulty is all in the performance.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Nothing big to report. It rained a lot today. I met Sahara and got a wallpaper. Got into a fishing contest with the dog in my town. It was a contest to see who could get the rarest fish. I got a blue fish, he got a damn shark.