Well this is interesting. I actually appreciate your passion to be willing to discuss this at length, and totally appreciate your perspective on it. So I think the majority of issues you've countered here boil down to a misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. And you know what, I'll take the blame for that, I should have been more clear in my original video. I sort of pride myself on being concise and not dragging out an issue, but in that process I tend to lose some things in translation. If people went in hearing what they wanted to hear there's bound to be some pushback. So let me set the record straight on some issues - I think the biggest by far is that you assume I meant ALL NES games are bad - which is not true at all if you actually listened to what I said. My conclusion was that literally "there are some good elements in NES games". I pointed out specific examples that I felt were cheap, unfair or annoying, but obviously there are shining examples, I think Castlevania and Punch-Out are some of the best on the system. We seem to disagree about lives, but only somewhat. The ONLY issue I had with them was when it sets you back to the beginning of the entire GAME not continue from the start of a world. That specific type of punishment I found to be very annoying and artificial difficulty, not anything else. Lives have their place, and you're right that they were designed differently with that in mind, but it doesn't change the fact that some of the games have seriously stupid layouts/obstacles. Again, not ALL, just some, since apparently that part wasn't clear. SMB3 - the NES game I praised more than any other in the video, was also misinterpreted. This was not the first time I've ever played SMB3, I've played every world just never had beaten it. I talked about how it was WELL-DESIGNED, and really challenging in a good way. So I'm not really sure what your issue was actually...I enjoyed it immensely. Just used save states in between levels after going back to the start several times to speed up the process (since I was streaming - it was per chat's request actually); I wasn't like using them every 2 seconds or something. It was only to save time of having to beat the same levels I'd already beaten. You're right about Mega Man nailing a lot of the issues I had - again I think it boils down to this assumption that I meant EVERY SINGLE NES game is terrible and should die in a fire, which was just not at all my intent. You showed all the good with this video, while I focused on the bad in mine. At the end of the day, it comes down to something I've been screaming from the rooftops for years now: "A creator's opinion is implied". It was all just my opinion and perspective, same with your video here. That's actually the beauty of games is that we can disagree and still loves games. My thesis, which I stated up front was to look at "the bad" on NES games and see how new games have improved upon them. I thought I was clear but apparently could have done a better job of it. Peace bro, thanks for adding to the conversation :)
Hey man - First thing: I'm sorry - as I feel this video came off as more of an attack than I originally intended it to. You didn't deserve that, and my apologies. - I'm sorry for misunderstanding your general thesis. I think... it was mainly through the b-roll you used that I misconstrued a lot of what you were saying. I know you said in the beginning (as a potential retort) what about Ninja Gaiden & Castlevania and said you'd talk about them, but then (in that video), used them as b-roll for examples of bad design elements. So - it made it come across as that was the way you ended up talking about them. That said, I obviously didn't do a great job myself (looking at a lot of the comments), as I overwhelmingly came across as saying the opposite, and that "All NES games are good", which of course, is not even close to the case. (And I should have showcased bad ones to show that). As far as the Mario 3 segment goes - I actually left in a lot of moments that I either agreed with, or wanted to (in this case) show what you said in full context, so people could understand if I was misconstruing things. Similarly (with intention coming across wrong), I didn't mean to say you didn't know how to play the game/weren't good/whatever, I was trying to put together the building blocks of everything you'd have without skipping to the end - with the main thing being the helper items and lives. I do 100% agree with you that many of the games are bad, and a lot of them can be improved upon. Anyways, I'm pinning your comment so people can see your response. I genuinely do (as I stated) enjoy your content and think you do an excellent job. So, while this 1 video stood out to me (personally), I don't want you to think that means I (or hopefully anyone else) thinks any less of your stand-out content. I've been subscribed to you since back when you had around 40k subs, and been super happy to see your growth, as it's honestly well deserved.
So your whole angle in this comment is "You misunderstood me" and "I didn't say ALL NES Games were bad!" But you're STILL not mounting much in the way of an actual defense, becuase there really isn't one other than a "my bad, I was wrong" followup. But, the thing is, when the examples you used are commonly regarded as some of the best NES games of all time, what's the fucking difference? You say not ALL NES games were bad, but using some of the BEST ONES to make this half-assed argument of a sliding scale? Seriously. Are you high? You still basically took the NES Gold Standard and started with this hipstery "nyyehh but actually they're really trash" bullshit, while pushing up your glasses like a smug douche. What's more, you had the gall to use games like Mega Man games and Duck Tales, rather than games like Monster Party or The Krion Conquest. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen? People WOULDN'T call you out on the bullshit of holding beloved games from that long ago to a 2018 standard like a brainless goon with no sense of quality scale? That's where your whole argument fell apart as the bullshit it was. So don't sit here and try to play this fake-sympathy card now. Hopefully no one is smart enough to buy your bullshit excuse. You were full of shit. You still are now. Instead of getting indignant, take your lumps like a man. You got exposed. Rather than come here and whine and try to backpedal, just deal with it. Your video sucked, and people hated it because you were smug, you used examples of legitimately good games to crap on THEM, if not all games (Imagine if I used examples of Super Mario 64 being a bad game to explain why Superman 64 isn't that bad by comparison, same difference), and you came off like an ignorant dipshit with bad priorities who clearly didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, and just hate-baiting, intentionally clueless bad takes soley for attention, and people realized it as such.
I've watched the video, it felt like a millennial making a joke video about "modern gamers", I couldn't believe you said "lack of polish" when talking about the graphics at the time, it's like looking at ps1 and saying "how could they release final fantasy 7 with those character models? They don goofed", other than that, I'm sure Dave dissected why that video should have "(MY OPINION AS SOMEONE THAT HASN'T REALLY PLAYED OLD GAMES EVER AND THINKS GRAPHIC LIMITATIONS ARE GAME DESIGN)" on the title, I was about to sub back then but until you get some homework done you shouldn't go all out with such poorly thought videos, I'm being harsh in the interest of my criticism coming through, I was binging your videos that day, I like your stuff, just don't talk factually of stuff you know nothing about, hopefully you can take Dave's pov if not mine to realize how to get better at what you do, or should I say "get gud" as you quote BB and DS for "good game design" multiple times.
I understand where he is going for with his point about starting all over again getting boring. I remember getting extremely bored to play all those starter levels in contra again and again only so I could attempt that level where I was actually stuck in. Depends on a game, but usually I'd rather have the game challenge me in other ways than limiting my times to attempt and learn the level I'm stuck in.
Yeah, I understand that point. But - not every NES games does that (which is what he implied), and it's not inherently bad design - it's a preference thing. I do love games like Shovel Knight/The Messenger which change things up. But I also appreciate games where the goal of the game is to see how far I can go, and enjoy that challenge. There are also games that do a terrible job with its balance, and the lives system doesn't work. But, I don't agree with the blanket statement of: It's all bad. -- On another note, I also included points he made that I thought were good to try to be fair to him. :) (Although, I should've been more clear that I agreed with certain points, or given him more credit for those parts).
You started over to learn, and eventually progress further and further. I remember when Super C, Contra's NES sequel (and an arcade port in name only), gave me trouble for awhile. I never got bored of the earlier levels, because each time I played, I learned to play a little better, to carry more lives and continues into the later levels till I could beat the game in 1 continue.
@@Bloodreign1 I get the appeal in that and in some ways I feel the same way, especially when you're still learning the ins and outs of the game, but the further I got in those games the more I got the feeling after having to start over "I know this already, let me get to the part that I don't", you know? I love Contra games and I'm sure the punishing nature of them has given me and my friends more amazing moments I give them credit for, but in general I feel like longer levels with checkpoints (with unlimited continues) between them would be something I'd enjoy more all things considered.
I feel like with Contra the levels are so short and fun that replaying them is more of a joy than a punishment. Thats also why difficulty loops are king :)
I think you may have alluded to it, but just in case I thought I'd point out that some of the "glitches" he complained about were actually programming *exploits* used to cope with hardware limitations or to _help_ the player! An example of the former is flicker; basically, the NES could only have so much stuff on the screen but by making certain things "flicker" (rapidly disappear then reappear), it could handle a little more. An example of the latter is slowdown; sometimes it was for "bad" reasons, but other times the designers counted on it as a built-in balance for when the programming of enemies or hazards might wind up throwing a bit too much at you all at once.
Really, the worst elements of game design from the early home console area (and forget NES; this _really_ early era of Atari/Odyssey/Intellivision/Colecovision) were drafted from arcades. Arcade games didn't even have "ends" back in those days; they'd just go on and on having you rack up points until you ran out of lives; the score was the end goal. The point of lives was to limit the player's play time before they pumped in another quarter, increasing revenue for the arcade and the machine's maker. Once arcade games started to have regular progression and endings instead of just the same thing over and over, the entire point of a "continue" was invented precisely to stop player frustration from having to replay early levels again--because they knew some players would walk away instead of continuing to pay to redo those early experiences, whereas in things like beat 'em ups they'd keep pumping in quarters for continues precisely because they'd already invested so much time and money in getting that far. And these kind of things became part of the game design culture, where it took time for designers to wrap their heads around the idea that home console games should have a different kind of paradigm for what the relationship between game and player should be. (Compare, for example, the challenge of an NES _Castlevania_ title to that of _Haunted Castle_ designed as an arcade quarter-sucker.) Once developers learned those lessons, as you highlight in the video, they started doing some amazing things. (Of course, nowadays, a big-budget game's primary goal is...to get players to keep pumping in the "quarters" via microtransactions, so it looks like we've just come full circle back to the bad old days. The more things change...)
This, exactly. One other point about "bad" older designs that kept popping into my head during both videos is Snoman's assertion that the first levels of old games are bad because they're boring and the implication is, they're slow and safe because they were designed first. That's not true at all; an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto I saw a while back asked him his design philosophy for games like the first Super Mario Bros., and he said the first levels were often designed and tested last. He went on to explain that making a video game, even one as old as SMB, was a very organic process in which changes to the design had to be made constantly to deal with or get around hardware and software limitations, deadlines, funding fluctuations, and so on. As such, they had to know exactly what kinds of challenges they were going to face the players with before they could build a tutorial to teach them to deal with them. Putting in a gun as a powerup in the first level, then realizing that the game engine wasn't robust enough to handle the mechanics of giving Mario a gun (which is something that actually happened - they planned on giving Mario a gun to shoot enemies with but the NES wasn't advanced enough yet to handle it) would mean having to remember to remove that powerup from the first level and then deciding what to put in its place. It's a design philosophy that makes sense; figure out the most complex or difficult part first then design the easier parts around that.
This isn't true at all. All of the good elements came from arcade games. Continues are a scam, not a solution. When games started having endings, lives were repurposed into an effective way to give the player "three strikes and you're out", and games started to be built around beating them without ever losing a life (which you could already do in many older games that went on forever). Haunted Castle was butchered for release outside of Japan, the original game is not nearly that difficult. At the same time, Haunted Castle is exceptional because very few care for the game to begin with. It's not a sign of how arcade games were at all (other than Konami butchering their export releases).
Those arcade games that didn't have "ends" would have needed lives even if they were free. What would be the point to Galaga, Centipede, Pac-man, etc. if they had unlimited lives/continues? The whole appeal of those games is to see how high of a score you can get with a limited set of chances.
As I mention in the video - I have nothing against Snoman Gaming and enjoy his channel. He has some great videos that I recommend watching and it's worth a sub if you're interested in game design. I disagreed on this particular topic, and thought a rebuttal was worth making. Gotta stand up for the NES.
Dave, I think he's saying how games back in the days were designed to suck your money on arcades. Contra, Castlevania, BattleToads, Street of rage, etc...
Destroyer2150 Yes, that was one point he made. And some NES games did... but a large portion of them did not. My main argument is - a lot of the good game design he attributes to games like Shovel Knight were implemented in several NES games. Also, taking away lives (like in arcade games that are designed to suck your quarters) isn't necessarily a bad thing when it's designed properly. You can balance taking away lives, 1ups as a reward, and difficulty to make it fair. I agree there are some games with horrible design on the NES, and Bullshit unfair games - but to make a blanket statement that they're all poorly designed (which is where he goes to by the end of the video), and then praise other games which use the exact same mechanics is baffling to me. Many of the visual examples of NES games he used as "unfair" and bad game design have the exact same mechanics he praises Shovel Knight for. (Outside of having a lives-based system)
Just kidding but this guy has it backwards. The problem with modern games is there’s no stakes. You can die and die and die and start right where you left off. That’s what made beating older game so rewarding. That rush you get when beating a hard game like Castlevania or mega man 2 is amazing. You felt like you actually accomplish something. You had to master the game. You don’t get that rush beating modern games because you know you get infinite chances to win.
Limitations adds creativity. That's why NES music/BMG/OST are so darn awesome in its time. Creators are pushed to their limits to fit with the consoles sound limitations. Listen to this ruclips.net/video/Wwzw_U6Hgr4/видео.html at 6:35 .
I do agree that the original NES was overly punishing, and that it is what we would now consider artificial difficulty. However, it can't be stressed enough that during the NES era we were still figuring out what games were. The designers of the NES were typically arcade designers; the idea of a home video game system was so novel that no one knew how to do it. And there were advantages--anyone who's been caught in an autosave in an impossible situation knows that there's sometimes benefits from backtracking after a death! Still, I think the main issue we need to remember is that game designers were still figuring things out back then. To compare them with today's standards is nonsensical because they weren't designing to today's standards. I also really love your point about certain games not being for everyone. In trying to reach as wide an audience as possible many game franchises have lost what makes them unique. The only way to truly create depth and meaningful gameplay is to acknowledge who your audience is--and that will NEVER be "everyone". Literature, TV, and movies have long done this. Someone making, say, a procedural drama isn't going to try to win over romantic comedy fans; the rom-com folks aren't their audience. This allows them to tailor their movie or TV show to their audience. You can make certain assumptions, because your audience does. Hallmark has made a lot of money making holiday romantic comedies (my wife's favorite vice) by tailoring them to exactly what their audience craves. Games can do this; Dark Souls, Demon Souls, and their ilk show that. But you have to be willing to say, as a studio, "We are not chasing this 50% of the market". It was easy to do that in the NES days, because no one knew what the market was; it's harder, but more rewarding, today.
This could've been a 30-minute git gud rant. But you've handled it so much better. P.S. That part from original video where he was admiring Shovel Knight for implementing a 30-year old mechanics felt amusing for ironic reasons for me xD
This just seem like just Git Gud fluff. There's plenty of way to get challenges in games today, ranking system, achievements, and the old difficulty select. What's important is that there's multiple options for different people
@@Tacom4ster That's because progressing through a game should be about becoming good at the game. The problem with not losing any progress is that you don't have to get good, just make it through once somehow and never again have to see that stage or boss. Back then, there was merit in beating a game, it was an achievement in itself and it also meant that you were now good at the game, consistently good at it, and that you had done something not everyone was capable of. Nowadays to get that same level of accomplishment you have to put a blindfold on or play using your feet, because just beating the game is pretty much guaranteed.
@@Tacom4ster >achievements Okay, how is mastering an extremely difficult stage NOT an achievement in and of itself? Unless you're talking about the meaningless """""achievements""""" that pop up on your screen in modern games for completing such menial tasks as killing an arbitrary number of enemies [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Assassin!], looking up an NPC's skirt [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Perv!] or even _dying_ in a hilariously pathetic way [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Dead man walking!], most of which seem to be implemented ironically by devs who are having a laugh. If _that's_ what you're talking about, then consider me an out-of-touch grandpa, because I'll take "the Git Gud stuff" any day.
@@NickCapricorn I just repeat levels why increasing difficulty. I like to play games east first than to fully experience the narrative, than replay for fun.
I remember reading in a magazine once about one reason NES games hold up and are so well designed - the small amount of buttons. They had to come up with gameplay mechanics and concepts that worked with only a few input options, so gameplay ideas were very pure and simple. Think about why so many older people feel more comfortable trying out a game with an NES controller than the newest games that have like 16 buttons on them.
I think that back then when we played a game, we were not expecting to beat it. Simply playing it and seeing how far you could get with limited resources were fun for me. Replaying a level was not repetitive or boring, but a way to realize that how far you had improved, or find hidden treasures/mechanics. Nowadays, we have so many games to play, sometimes we rush to finish a game. I might enjoy it for a while, but soon feel very empty and go back play NES games. They suck, they stomp on me and hurt my pride, but I love them.
Yes! Definitely. Some of these games you pop in and say: "I wonder how far I can get this time?" You probably won't beat it, and that's okay. And, yeah, you turn it off - but then you come back to it again to challenge yourself again. For me, a lot of these games end up being more replayable for that exact reason.
Exactly this. The idea that most times you start a game you also beat it is a _very_ modern point of view, and too many people criticize lives because they're stuck in that mindset.
I'm not trying to hate on nes games here but does that apply to games that seem like they were designed with nintendo power in mind like simon's quest for example?
Daniel Lewis Simon'a Quest is pretty notorious for being terrible (even by people who love NES games), for being overtly obtuse. Although, part of the reason was actually a really bad translation - as it would turn out.
Interestingly enough, there's statistics showing that very few people actually finish their games today either, despite everything being story driven and having checkpoints every 10 steps you take.
Remember when RUclips used to have video replies appear under the original? Hopefully this excellent rebuttal appears in the recommendations columns for those viewing the original.
@Gabriel Rocha reply girls were a thing back in the day, they would essentially just spam popular videos with "video responses" that were essentially just showing off their big tits. Basically the Twitch thots of yesteryear
Using Bubble Man's stage as a complaint area for 1-hit KO's was a bad idea. I thought it was one of the easiest to get by and by far the easiest part of Bubble Man's stage. If he was going to make a complaint about that, he should at least use a better example, like Mega Man 5's spike fall in Wily 1.
I remember playing the Mega Man Anniversary Collection some years ago, And I think Bubble Man's stage was one of the few I actually got through back then. I Think I managed to complete the fighting games too, but those were easier than the regular games.
My main problem with the vid was how Snoman didnt even seem to try during many clips. Castlevania for example he literally stood there attacking, no attempt to dodge attacks, he just expected to be able to blindly press buttons and win the game. Then the "looking old" complaint is completely irrelevant to the design, and does he expect the NES to run Crysis at 4k 144fps? Theres a such thing as hardware limits. This video felt a little rushed, a bit for the attention and he sounded like the stereotypical meme-game journalist who demands every game have an instant win or no death mode or complain about difficulty. It's stupid to expect a 30 or 40 year old game to follow today's design elements. Bad level design, bad performance and bad execution of mechanics are things that make a game bad, not the idea of lives or difficult stages. Also while I love save states and defend using them you CANT judge a game when you're cheating or abusing the game using an out-of-game tool. Like he isnt giving the design the chance or light of day. Another great video to add to the library, unlike Snoman's
I felt like he was purposely trying to make those games look hard. That chip and dale game is so easy. Watch how he walks off the cart for no reason at 11:40.
@singular on1 Depends on the game. Are Little Mermaid and Kirby hard? Also please check out my example in the previous comment. Snoman walks off the cart for no reason and calls that "bad game design" Not saying there weren't hard/frustrating/bullshit NES games but not all of them are like that and I feel that snoman doesn't understand how to play a lot of them.
There can be a chance that he searched for NES games clips for the videos instead of playing them himself and those videos were titled with something meaning that the game was hard. But that's just me trying to defend him 🤷❤
I have seen the original video and I've never seen a RUclips video I 100% disagreed with it and Dan seems like he hasn't even played the games he complains about.
The same with Battletoads too. They mostly skipped easier levels where you could get some extra lives. For example, I never skip second level (Wookie Hole) because with some skill you can get easily get extra lives there by continuously hitting ravens. I could even get up to 15 lives total there in my prime.
@singular on1 rote memorization alone is a very one dimensional way to have the player improve at the game and often doesn't teach anything that will be useful later in the game. This doesn't discount exploring the game's mechanics though.
sorry not everyone is autistic we just didn't even play those games because they were so boring and unfair it's called "games for kids" not "pay real money for something you can't use". everything i bought on 8bit at that time was a lesson about not ever paying for games because paying is immoral
I feel like Snoman made that video to asskiss indie games. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate indie games at all. In fact, I'm becoming an indie game dev myself. It's just that his bias is so, so ironic. To Snomam, have you actually tried sitting down and not walking off of platforms?
2:26 super mario bros 1 has continues, after you go back to the tittle screen with the game over, you have to hold the a button and press start, then you will go back to the beginning of the world you stopped, and no, I didn't discovered that out myself
This was a good response. I'm also a fan of Snoman Gaming and have learned a lot from his design videos, and he raised some decent points in this one (Ghosts and Goblins is not a fun game for many of the reasons he pointed out) but it felt like he was outright ignoring when NES games were doing everything he praised Shovel Knight for. Funny thing about his comments on lives, I'm not even sure if I like lives either, but I do appreciate games that expect me to learn their tricks over multiple playthroughs. The idea that a game gets more fun the more your skills evolve is the entire reason I like many of the better NES games your video discussed.
27:26 When is Battletoads unfair? Super difficult yes but unfair? Also the turbo tunnel isn't THAT hard. There is a rhythm to the walls and you usually have enough time to react except for maybe the jumpable walls when they appear three times in a row but they are only a problem if you jump late.
Finally, someone did a counterargument of Snoman's video. As an amateur game programmer, I respect some of these NES games. The main reason is because they managed to pioneered a lot of ideal mechanics that was later implemented in today's standards. It is really jarring how limited the technology back then, and yet they pulled something clever to make it work. I'm glad you made a defense on everyone's favorite "Archaic Live System" in which most people bashed out on modern games who uses that, such as Sonic Mania and MegaMan 11. I really hated that he keeps on mentioning Shovel Knight on how it did everything better, even though the game reiterates the same concept in older games. I love Shovel Knight, but that game is supported with modern hardware and developers who have learned from their predecessors, in contrast to the primitive nature of the NES games that he likes to compare.
Right? It's like bashing on Iron Age farmers for not using modern gas powered threshers or combine harvesters in their work and saying something like, "They could have had much higher crop yields than hand picking!" Well, yea, that's technically true, but they didn't have access to that technology nor could they have conceived of such technology ever existing, so they used what they had, and the things they invented to make their jobs easier eventually led to modern technological achievements, but the tech had to develop naturally and build on the older tech to be successful. Same goes for video games; no one back in the Atari/C64/NES days could have conceived of online multiplayer, save states, checkpoints, 3D graphics or any of our modern conveniences. Those didn't come until later when the technology improved enough to make them possible. Until then, they had to design their games around the limitations of the hardware, which were many.
The problem is that a lot of console games don't do lives right. They give you far too many and there are almost always ways to "farm" them. Sonic is especially bad about this.
@@Despatche Like I said specifically; Sonic Mania and Mega Man 11. Those two games are very skill-based in terms of difficulty. The most recent complains are how punishing it is with the live system. The problem with the live system is how it was implemented in some of the games. An example of this is Mario 64. Dying once in a level, besides Bowser's, resets the entire stage from back to the start. Getting a game over only sets you back to the beginning of the hub world, where you can just simply run back to the last painting. At this point, this live system is mostly pointless, because it is better off without it.
The worst part of his video was "It was an era where *game design wasn't a thing yet* " when in reality was the time where game design started to be considered. They had to be harsh levels because otherwhise, how they would put a worth game in 40 KB? But well, there's one channel I WON'T subscribe like ever.
I can defenitely see where Snoman was coming from here, it can be needlessly frustrating or repetitive to deal with the lives system, but there's definitely more to it. Guess it goes to show that even potentially annoying mechanics can be beneficial if they're well thought out and if the games are built around them. Both his video and yours are great! They sorta compliment each other as a pair. I'd never really thought about the merits of building a game around a lives system before!
@Russki Crisp People like you only strengthen Tim's argument. Talk about overgeneralization! Not sure if you're a Snoman fanboy or NES games killed your parents. Or maybe you grew up with LJN games. If that's the case I feel sorry for you.
Although I find re-playing sections I've died at to be annoying, tedious, and redundant at times, citing "What's so fun or challenging about replaying the same thing I just did again?" an "everybody wins" philosophy is the laziest implementation of game design, and are usually used in games I either play only once, and or forget almost everything about other than the title years after I've completed it. If NES games are guilty of being quarter suckers, new age hand-holding type games are guilty of ripping you off out of an experience not worth re-experiencing (typically referring to single player games.)
Great video! And while I kind of understand where Snoman was coming from (I've played countless NES games, most of them great, some of them just terrible, lol), the overall structure of his video came off as contradictory and using poor examples. Some people like hard games, whether modern or classic, like Sekiro and Ninja Gaiden, and others like more slower-paced or easier games, and I think they're both fine. Also I gave an immediate like for showing Iron Tank and Lolo! We need more Lolo, that gem is underrated, it needs more love!
Shovel Knight is a horrible comparison point since it's an homage and loveletter to the sidescroller. Of course it's leagues better, I'd friggin hope so. It stands on the shoulders of the giants that paved the way, took the risks and learned the lessons, they have no excuse to make a game even on par with old NES games if they're one of the most beloved pixelated indie titles out there. It's like comparing the OG castlevania or metroid titles to Deadcells. Not to mention it's not limited to 256 screens of area. He gets so much wrong. You literally couldn't do that in old games if they even had the idea to, like losing money with the option to go get it back? The NES literally has to forget that whole screen even exists just to respawn you at a checkpoint, so you'll just lose everything on death anyways. Welcome to Nintendo hard. Save states were revolutionary, because otherwise you were stuck with a string of code. All the lessons we had during NES era were carryovers from the arcade era and the mentality of bringing the arcade to your living room so you weren't pouring money into a quarter muncher, though the same tactics still proved just as profitable because people who rented games would re-rent games and eventually buy them to complete them, making more revenue in the process. He even gets the sprite flickering wrong. The image isn't glitching out, the hardware simple wasn't capable of displaying more than a certain number of sprites per horizontal line, which meant that it had to flicker some on while others were off and strobe them so they could all occupy the same space, and it was insane that they even found a workaround for that (this is the reason for vertical shooters predating horizontal shmups, you could display more enemies and rounds on a vertical hallway). This is why some games will outright delete rounds if you fire more than a few, it has to erase bullets to create new ones along the same horizontal plane. This kid doesn't know a design choice from a hardware limitation or ideological tradition in absence of a better option at the time. The console itself was breaching a new era even atari couldn't touch and began the path of consoles being able to put out a real game with visuals that weren't just stick figures. Really, I'm getting too heated over a RUclipsrs view on old console games, but still... there's a reason people will tell you to sit down and show some respect. Trying to condense a sprite sheet alone is horribly tedious, I should know since I'm actually making a game that can run on original NES hardware and have to respect its limitations to unlock its potential. You'd be stunned how much memory it sucks up just implementing the ability to scroll the screen over since you're functionally forcing the system to remember 3 screens at once in a broad sense. Mad respect to the designers of Crystalis, I don't know how those galaxy brains pulled off four way scrolling in a live action swordfighting game (turn based RPG I get, but that game was nuts for what it was). The system is beautiful, and there's even a new era of developers for it. I got inspired to do this by the people who made Micro Mages because it just looked awesome and looked like a super crisp playing experience. I still need to buy a copy myself.
Great video! I always felt like the classic Mega Man series was the best possible implementation of a lives system - you never lose *too* much progress from running out of lives, and it's an opportunity to rethink your strategy, consider tackling a different stage first, etc. rather than grinding yourself endlessly against the same room of obstacles. Nothing about that feels like an unfair arbitrary punishment to me.
"NES games are poorly designed." >The first level of Super Mario Bros. is studied and discussed as an example of pristine game design to this day. In a form of comedic irony, the video trying to impute NES games as bad design is itself an example of bad video essay design.
Not gonna lie, after watching this video (and reading several comments), I gained a stronger appreciation for games that utilize limited lives and continues fairly well. I do think there are some bad examples of games with limited resources but there's still plenty of good ones. Castlevania 1 & 3 are some of my favourite video games to play and so is the Super Mario Bros trilogy. This was a really fun video to watch. As for Snoman Gaming's video? There were some points I agreed with but there was a lot I disagreed with and I think you did a good job debunking his points. This video deserves my liking.
Thanks so much! :) And - I absolutely agree that there are some really bad games which use limited resources, and games that handle it poorly. (Which I should have mentioned more)!
Perhaps you could have made a bonus video to give out the last details but I think your video is strong enough as it is. Speaking of well designed NES games, check out New Ghostbusters 2. That game is so freaking good.
I made this comment on Snoman's video, and it bears repeating here: I feel like the streaming/speedrunning culture has a lot to do with why we see a lot of complaints about replaying portions of a game. Snoman himself cops to using warp whistles AND save states to clear SMB3, because he didn't want to get bored (and ostensibly bore his streaming audience) by replaying levels. News flash: SMB3 was not designed to be played in front of a livestreaming audience, or blasted through in a speedrun. It was designed so that you, the player, could explore the levels - many of which have their own personality and charm - and enjoy them. I don't like modern platformers because they all feel the same, which is a symptom of shrinking levels into bite-size pieces to avoid the monotony of replaying sections over and over again. I remember beating Castlevania for the first time nearly 20 years after first playing it. To that point I had complained that the game was too hard, but after beating it I realized that the challenge was fair; it was just demanding. Putting that game side by side with something like Battletoads - which *is* on the extreme side in terms of difficulty - is an unfair comparison. And comparing these games to modern exploration games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne is borderline malpractice.
Thank you for making this video. I had stumbled across his video on Bad Game Design and after watching it felt like he had no idea what he was talking about. I will give his other videos a chance though based on your recommendation :)
Limitations adds creativity. That's why NES music/BMG/OST are so darn awesome in its time. Creators are pushed to their limits to fit with the consoles sound limitations. Listen to this ruclips.net/video/Wwzw_U6Hgr4/видео.html at 6:35 .
Honestly, from the footage you've provided, this reinforces the main reason I unsubbed from Snoman long ago. Most of his points and critiques came across more as whiny entitlement and an aura of "I'm bad but I'll act like it's the game's fault instead of mine" instead of actual intelligence and genuine statements on how to improve/praise for a mechanic. It was bad in his Crash video, and here it seems like it's gotten immensely worse since then. I appreciate the response video, because playing the NES games for the first time was an immense joy for me, and made me fall in love with the likes of Castlevania 1 & 3, all of the NES Mega Man games with the exception of 1 and 5, Punch Out, even Ninja Gaiden.
Well, that's easy! You played the good games! Most of the NES games were really bad at level designing... However, Snoman used the worst examples possible to show his points!
I'm pretty sure the Crash video and Nes games video are the only ones where he does what you described. The videos that came in-between are about other stuff and are also much better.
That’s the exact same reason why I unsubbed from Snoman as well. I couldn’t take him seriously when he would constantly spout barebones analysis of games, which would either be a complete no brainer or some concept that’s already been repeated to death, and then fail when he needed to make a unique talking point.
Same, I stopped watching after he did a Bad Game Design on Super Paper Mario but gushed all over TTYD. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing game, but Super Paper Mario is just as great.
Thank you!! I love everything about this video. I also disagreed with MUCH of what SnowmanGaming said (and Dunkey bad-talked NES game design recently as well -- didn't agree with him either). It's like Snowman would say something was bad, then show an example from Dark Souls that he liked, and I'd scream at my phone, "That's the same thing! It's just that you connected with it when Dark Souls did it and thought it was bullcrap when NES games did it." I also didn't like how he said that NES games look like garbage. As you said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there are tons of NES games that I think look awesome (Megaman 2, Super Mario Bros. 2, etc.). In fact, I prefer the clean and 'super easy to read' level design of many games of that era, while many games now look unnecessarily *busy* in comparison. Again, loved your video and editing/presentation. Much respect! Thanks, RUclips recommendations! :)
This is such a great thing to point out, that Dark Souls basically did the same thing but it magically "clicked" for people. I'll never understand this.
The one issue about Mega Man/Rockman 2 I see is that Crash Bomb section where you're supposed to blow up those blobs on the walls while conserving your ammo. Something tells me that specific part didn't seem well-designed, but that's just me seeing too many people run out of Crash Bomb ammo anyways.
Easily the worst part of Mega Man 2. But the Wily stages in that game all crap the bed after Wily 1. There are better examples of a good Mega Man game throughout: 4 for example.
The number of strawberries you collect in Celeste does determine which ending image you get similar to how money worked in Luigi's Mansion, so there's that. Don't know if that's much of an incentive though.
Really?? Then color me wrong! I had no idea, as the beginning specifically says they do nothing. (And I collected them anyways, so wouldn't have realized there were two endings).
Yeah, but let's be honest. There were some pretty poorly designed NES games. The best ones DID have very good game design, but there were also a lot of NES games that had poor design. The 80s was a time before game design textbooks were written. But the nice things about these games is that they have some awesome elements that aren't used very often in games anymore.
Oh, I 100% agree there were some poorly designed NES games! Sorry, I should have really gone in more about that, as it's not something I at all disagree with. I was more-so disagreeing with his video, that pretty much said 'all' NES games were bad.
I thought the lives system was just a carry over from arcade cabinets. It took a number of years for developers to start branching out. Plenty of games were actually arcade ports too which also helps explain its persistence in older games.
I'm still a little confused on why the lives system is good. I like it when I finish a difficult section and getting a checkpoint after that. So then I don't have to worry about the section anymore. It allowed me to finally breath, even just for a little bit. However, if a game has one certain type of lives system, when I run out of lives, I have to start at the very beginning. Usually fine for short stages, but long stages is just infuriating There are also some games where a lives system is just pointless. There are some games where it gives you so many lives that losing one means nothing. Or the completely useless ones like freedom planet or conker live and reloaded. Where when you a life, you go back to a checkpoint. But when you lose all your lives, you get a game over screen or get booted back to the title screen, and respawn at your last checkpoint. Wait so what's the point of having a lives system Well at least we can both agree that limited continues are an outdated. Starting at the very start of the game is too punishing
Kevin Vo It completely depends on the game. And if it’s not for you - it’s not for you. To me - limited lives adds a lot of tension, because you know that you’re going to be punished harshly for not succeeding. I personally find that thrilling, especially when you do succeed. It also makes finding lives, and proper placement of extra lives more of an art, because they really truly mean something - you can place them in challenging spots to give a risk/reward to the player, or put them somewhere easy for something that feels truly, genuinely rewarding to obtain. Should all games have a lives system? Absolutely not. Do all games need that kind of tension, even challenging games? No - they don’t. But, I strongly disagree that they’re objectively bad.
@@DaveControlLive I can only find a few games where I don't mind a life system. Furi, but that's a boss rush game where if you die once and having to start at the very beginning, that would be frustrating. A life system in that gives you some breathing room Classic sonic design is an interesting choice where a life system is design around the game for one reason. Since their design is based on exploration, starting at the very beginning of a level means you can choose another path. This is more talking about sonic mania since I haven't finished sonic 3 and knuckles But other then that meh. You like contras life system, I personally hate it. If you respawn right where you left off, why not just make it a health bar. Also with the way you respawn, it can have some unfair deaths where you respawn over a bottomless pit and lose all you lives. Okay that last part was more of a rant about contra Also note I'm not trying to egg you on, I'm just curious about other people's opinions and understand why they like certain things
@@teneesh3376 Life system is not always good but it is good by itself. If you get many lives easily, they have no purpose or value. If the game is unfair and there are almost no checkpoints then it's fault of the level design, not the life system. If the game gives you extra lives as reward and the difficulty is balanced then lives have a purpose and are very good part of the design of the game
@@DaveControlLive I think the breakable checkpoints in Shovel Knight are a good compromise that can please both camps when it comes to the lives debate. If you don't want to run the risk of having to redo sections, you don't have to. You can retry only the hard part as many times as you want. If you DO want some tension, you can still try to beat the levels while breaking every single checkpoint. It's functionally similar to a lives system, without being too harsh on less skilled players. It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's an acceptable way to do it.
I agree with you dave but remember that the marios, castlevania, megaman, bionic commando, zeldas, metroid, etc are kind of the exception not the rule. The nes was full of bullshit unfare bad design games. The avgn has made a carreer playing them.
Theres also plenty of lesseer known obscure nes games that are great and hold up well along with those mentioned classics. Every generation has its good eggs and bad apples.
True, but modern consoles are no better or worse in that regard; look at all the crappy shovelware that came out for the Wii and Wii U alongside such masterpieces as Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Twilight Princess, the Rabbids games, Mario Party, Mario Kart, the Donkey Kong Country remakes, etc.
Most of the games the nerd complains about, I didn't play growing up. Yeah, I did play TMNT, the Simpson's games, Robocop, Mad Max, and they had their issues, but, the games I remember playing are: All the Mario games, Mega Man 2 and 3, Metroid, Zelda I & II, Contra 1 and 2, Tiny Toons, Ironsword, the other TMNT games, Jackal, Double Dragon I and II, Bubble Bobble, the Snowball Brothers, Gun Smoke, Chip N Dale, Adventure Island, Battletoads, etc. We borrowed a lot of games from friends, so this is what we got to see. Most people knew that games based on movies or TV shows are usually hit or miss and games were expensive back then, so people tended not to own bad games very often. The really bad games the Nerd finds, were mostly not very common. Nobody really wanted to play Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and most never heard of it. AVGN, I feel like, had a bit of a privileged childhood because he got to play a lot more games than I did, and he is two years older than me. I never even played the NES until the end of the summer of 1990. So he got to see a lot more crap and rented a lot more games and took the risk on movie or comic based games more often than I would have. We kinda knew which games were good. If the game was featured on Captain N, it was usually a game that was decent. Most of us didn't spend much time playing the bad games unless we were bored.
NES was a time of many firsts. A time where the game design for home consoles actually started to rise. And had to face lots of hardship. I mean they only had like what, 4MB at best to work with. It's not much of a wonder that not every designer managed to meet the challenge. But without that we wouldn't have game industry as we have today. Btw honestly, Shovel Knight feeds on our nostalgia but damn if it isn't cheating doing so. Making game like that on NES would be likely impossible.
Great video. To this day I have still not beat any of the Ninja Gaiden NES trillogy but I still play them a lot. They are BRUTAL in difficulty but that is part of the fun. If I could beat them easily I wouldn't be playing them 30 years later. lol
@@mep6302 Don't I know it. Let me tell you I was streaming a few old school Crash Bandicoot games and I ended up with like 60+ lives in all of them due to me trying not to lose them and I'd breeze through levels, but as soon as I got to bonus levels all my skills at the games dropped like a rock solely because during those bonus levels you don't lose lives for dying. Even though they give out lives like candy on Halloween in Crash Bandicoot the second there was nothing left to lose in sucking at the game was the second mistakes started piling up. Like seriously do that yourself and you'll see lives are more an incentive to not brute force your way through a game than they are an arbitrary hindrance. There's a reason they still show up as a gameplay mechanic to this day.
I remember in the SNES era where the game gave us infinite lives and being let down how easy it was. It felt very rewarding to master a game. But back then I got like 2-3 NES games a year so I had time to master it while today I would never go for that type of game cause my time is limited and I got way too many games to get through.
To be honest though, even good NES games had some bullshit elements, but those were the exception and not the rule. For example, FUCK the turret boss and it's stage in Megaman 2. The game is pretty well designed besides that.
I've used RUclips since 2008 and today I click the sub button for the first time. I've been watching tons of your videos lately, mostly kings field and dark souls. Your content is always great, humorous and detailed. Don't ever stop.
I know, right? I saw a lot of Snoman fanboys on his video claiming that "when AVGN complains about those things everyone is okay with it." As if everyone thought that was James Rolfe's actual opinion. Maybe they think he would really eat diarrhea out of a roadkill skunk's ass.
@@danielbueno8474 No, he'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear and eat the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer... Light hearted pedantry aside, I do agree that people take joke reviewers like AVGN and even CinemaSins far too seriously and give their obvious hyperbole far to much legitimacy. It's like younger viewers have forgotten the number one rule of the Internet: "Don't believe everything you see online." A grown man screaming obscenities at a 30+ year old game and talking about having farm animals defecate on his face should be taken as seriously as Disney telling you animals can talk, wear clothing and walk bipedally like a person.
I know that AVGN is a comed y series, but why are you ignoring that, while at the same time he makes his jokes, he also makes very good points about the game being bad. I mean, go watch one of his videos, ignore the comedy and just focus on the review. James makes very good points about the games being bad.
@Gabriel Rocha The difference is, James has never presented the AVGN as a serious or legit review series; from the beginning he's stated that the show is more about confronting and closing the wounds of his childhood that the shitty games caused while tearing them new assholes. Yes, he makes valid criticisms and complaints about the games, but that's more coincidental to the process of viciously ripping into them than being focused on making a legit review about them.
I also LOLed when I saw him use Duck Tales as a flawed game, I'm good at that game and I know a lot of people that think it's easy. I found it hilarious on the parts he messed up on like he didn't know how to time things and he didn't understand that you can't pogo on snow. I think out of all the NES games Duck Tales punishes the impatient and those that have a hard time learning game mechanics. In fact the three that he shows, Mega Man, Castlevania, and again Duck Tails, are like this. How he describes modern games he obviously understands HOW to do this but for some reason he is unable to do so in these or any of the NES games he shows. I think he just isn't giving them a chance, he says it isn't a huge gripe but I really think what is holding him back is how NES games look. Sure, making a 16 bit game on a system that has none of the restrictions that 16 bit hardware has it is possible to make an amazing 16 bit style game but when someone works within those restrictions and makes an amazing looking game they're an artist.
He criticizes restarting all over but praises dark souls, a game which does the same every time you die and have to restart the incredibly dull way to a boss.
I've been trying to nail down some objectively bad game design principles this week. I haven't gotten there yet, but after watching videos like this and reading some Reddit threads, I've come up with a few fairly compelling symptoms of objectively bad design: 1. A player is punished for something out of their control or understanding 2. A player's time is wasted 3. A player has difficulty making a meaningful connection to the game's objective I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on these. You seem to have a very good grasp on the topic.
Thanks for that! :) It's something I've been trying to think about too, actually, as so many things could be considered subjective. I completely agree with the list you already have. For the first point, to expand, games are based around a set of rules, so anything breaking those rules (out of a player's control) is going to feel unfair and objectively bad. Your points are concise enough that there's not much I could add except for saying that I agree. :P They're also general enough that they could apply to all games (not just video games) which is nice. I think another point that could be added (video game specific) is: - Bad gamefeel. (Physics are off, don't have a good weight to them). I think a lot of times you can tell if a game is a knock-off just by the physics/feel of it. If you ever play Mario knock-offs, it's a dead giveaway.
And this is why Sticker Star is such an awful game. 1°: Not necessarily control, but indeed understanding. You can die to the sand pits instead of going back to the start of the room, get punished for trying to battle instead of running, wasting time trying to heal outside battle, and get punish for not searching for all the mandatory secret levels. 2°: Indeed the game is great at making you replay easy and bland levels over and over again, as well as forcing a lot of backtrack. 3°: The game is overly cryptic with their puzzles and therefore is difficult to correlate both of them. Is also cryptic with their attack bar, what kind of stickers.
The beauty of a lives system is that it allows you to work within a larger frame of reference. If you have a game with unlimited lives then everything becomes isolated. Beating level 1 means that level 1 has become completely irrelevant, and then level 2 becomes your sole focus until you beat it and it becomes irrelevant, and so on... With a lives system in place you start to care about the minutia. It might be that you can usually beat level 7 with 3 lives but one time you beat it with 4, and you really feel the weight of that, you get a proper sense of flow and you start assessing how good your current "run" is. Its not just a case of "well I beat that level already, why do i have to do it again?" it's because it what matters is your ability to learn, adapt and improve at that very thing over time. Another method games allow the player to work within a larger frame of reference is with customisation and leveling up, which I do love, but I think it's unfair that lives systems aren't praised for accomplishing the same goal for a different style of game... Besides, I never understood this "getting sent back is artificial difficulty" argument because if that were the case then any game where failing sends you back even an inch does so "artificially". I don't see how dying on jump #4 of a Super Meat Boy level 100 times and having to repeat jumps #1-3 is apparently "not artificial" in that same way (or any more entertaining for that matter)
Getting send back very far means you can't practice the thing you struggle on. So yes, it is "artificial";you don't struggle because it's that hard, you struggle because you have to wait 30 minutes or whatever between each attempt.
Brent Ramsten It was to illustrate the point of playing through a game's progression, and to get to the point of: By the time you're at world 8, you'll have x,y,z.
I can't help but feel that the people who either complain about or are completely opposed to the life system in older games must have not grown up playing them. At the time it was all we had and we played the shit out of them, got better and better and persevered until we could beat them. Sure enough when i go back after a year or so later i suck, and i have to practice my arse off again in order to get through. So many things in this day and age are so instant and full of shortcuts, and going back can be tough. It dosent mean the old is bad, its just different.
I think I said something similar on Snoman's vid. But it was really long but essentially, it's the challenge. Players have to be challenged in some way and be innovative about overcoming challenges. This can be in regards to challenging level design or ranging to how the emotional aspects of its narrative can get you like movies. There are challenges that people who make games put there on purpose not as a result of fairness or unfairness but so that you can be innovative about getting over whatever is in your way using whatever mechanics you have not just in your hands with the controller but also what you can identify and plan with in your brain as a sort of communication with the game. It's fun to do alone and if you do this communally or with friends it can be really fun too! Here's an anecdote I didn't share on his vid. As an example: I personally find its way more fun when you add a communal aspect to it. My friend and I last year (we're both 21 and I've collected games since I was a kid) played Zelda first quest. It was his first time! I thought it would be fun if we helped each other map the game out and give each other suggestions on how to overcome challenges i.e. where to explore next, talking about what we think we should do, communicating and listening to figure out the logic of what is on screen, what the game is trying to show us to do. We'd switch if we died in the game. It was fun! This is just one of the ways you can explore game design in games by creating a conversation around it and analyzing it while playing the game making it a more communal experience. Was it hard? Yeah. We got frustrated. But we wanted to see it through because the allure of the game was built around discovering secrets and we were allured so we enjoyed getting innovative to discover them! This can be put into any game's experience, alone or with a friend. What's the secret to getting more lives? What's the secret to beating this boss? What can we see and analyze for ourselves to figure out the context of what we're supposed to be doing and then work at it until you've mastered that secret. For me that's the allure of games, that some sort of challenge is always there no matter the difficulty, and if they have a narrative attached to it that's structured around the game that's extra icing on the cake to make it enjoyable and want to figure out more secrets to overcoming challenges with innovation!
That guy at Snoman Gaming's criticizing game design while skipping on Mario Bros 3 all the way up to level 8 on his first playthrough and cheating by using save states made me insta-RAGE. Not the kind of person that should be taken serious for this kind of reviews.
"I just beat Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time, and it filled super rewarding! I warped straight to World 8..." "...had to use savestates..." I stopped watching his video at that point. It's clear he has no idea what he's talking about.
I must say. When he mentioned how the game looked poor and glitched. He wasn't completely wrong. Games Nintendo released by themselves like Mario games had very good and well functioning looking sprites. Most other games, though, just have disappearing sprites. And we didn't complain much. Also poor sound design. Either the sounds glitched out, or just don't have any. Something Nintendo didn't had that much problem with, usually. Well, kind of just tells us how good Nintendo was.
Awesome video, man! One more point you could have mentioned (or if you mentioned, I didn't notice cause I'm an idiot) is the main reason I like high difficulty and the lives system: the tension you feel when fighting a difficult boss or going through a difficult part of the stage risking lose your progress and the rewarding you feel after beating it. Everytime I beat a boss in Castlevania at 0 lives and at the last of my health, every time I beat Bowser with small Mario at 0 lives and time running out, everytime I beat Turbo Tunnel on my last life, everytime I beat a robot master in Megaman with only the mega buster and at the last of my health... man, I feel on the top of the world! It makes it worth all those times I died on those parts just for that one moment of satisfaction, when I throw a punch in the air and yell "YES!" while grinning like an idiot.
Great video. Lives and fail states are essential components of "games." If you can't lose, it's not a game. His video was freaking absurd and he continually contradicted himself.
I really hope he watches this video. You made so many good points and I don't think Snoman really thought all of his arguments out when he made that NES video. It almost seems like he either rushed out the video or made a video about something he didn't understand fully.
I felt like his video was made out of spite for the nes like when Egoraptor did that Ocarina of time review. Ego actually admitted to this and apologized plus that vids still entertaining imo.
11:56 During the complaint about lack of telegraphing enemies; "Look at how the zombies pop up out of the ground in Ghosts n Goblins." Zooms in so we can see him completely ignore a full second of animation warning the player of incoming zombie.
The NES designs are not bad there beyond amazing and I love the designs of NES games Friday the 13TH Super Mario Bros 3,2,1 Metroid Ghoul School TMNT Megamans 1-6 Kid Iccuris Kirby Looney and Tiny Toons Disney games and many others but I can't remember them all though 💗 0u0
NES Game design practices don't make games that are accessible to many players... but just because it's not accessible, doesn't mean it's outright bad, right? Of course, NES-style games end up being very niche in today's market as a result. In fact, the overbearing race of bigger game companies making their games as accessible as possible is what blew the door wide open for Indie markets to fill the niches left behind. Although a lot of NES games do clumsily handle some aspects of their design - often manifested with a synergy of problems that compound on one another. I would say that the worst example of a lives system absolutely murdering its game is not from a game of the NES Era, but the rather infamous Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 -- All that despite the fact that the aforementioned game does let you save and keep your progress between levels, compared to, for instance, the 1992 game Sonic The Hedgehog 2 sending you all the way back to the start of the game if you lost all your lives and continues.
A fair and excellent summation of pretty much my exact reaction to said video. First vid of yours I've seen, but very well done. I'll keep an eye out for more from here on out.
The mega man example is actually a pretty bad one for your case, considering that the developer was trying to go against the norms at the time. And shovel Knight took mostly the working parts of the old games
That one guy who’s here for no reason Consider that the game was one of the earliest NES games, and there’s an entire library of games that came out after.
@@DaveControlLive Weird, I thought it was one of the later ones because it’s a lot better when compared to most. I’m not saying the rest were bad, Megaman is just one of the least flawed NES games I know of. Mostly the good ones are First or Third party
That one guy who’s here for no reason Looked into it, and I was wrong. Mega Man 1 is around midlife for the NES. I was thinking it was earlier as there were 5 more once a year. But, NES came out in 83 to JP (85 to US) Mega Man 1 in 87, SNES 90, but NES games were made well into the early 90s . (Duck Tales 2 & Mega Man 6 came out in 93).
I know you've repeatedly stated you respect this guy, but he's dug his own pit here. He comes off as yet another modern gamer with no attention span who blames these games from another era for his own deficiencies. He also tips his hand as yet another RUclipsr that thinks all of gaming revolves around Dark Souls. Name dropping the series does not automatically make a point valid or win an argument.
I actually have been working on something exactly like this-- and then I found this this morning, and realized that I don't think my voice is necessary, because you did it already, and better. Thanks for making this video! I think maybe instead of addressing the same arguments (with a lot of the same conclusions), I'll try to rewrite mine into something more original and separately constructive!
Gosh, I disagree with both of you. While Dan complains about bad design like all old games make all the mistakes he describes, you come back at him as if most NES games are fair and fun. Both are wrong. The way I see it, every single NES game has at least a few punishing and unfair gameplay mechanics because of a difference in game design philosophy at the time. On the one hand, NES games logically flowed from the arcade games that were designed to give you just enough excitement that when you inevitably died you would put in another quarter. They were brutally difficult so they could take your money, but otherwise they would be free so you can't blame them for wanting to get paid, just that this design philosophy does not translate well to purchasing a game and taking it home, or at least, it doesn't anymore. At the time the game industry was much smaller, fewer people with less resources playing smaller libraries of games. Nowadays when you see NES enthusiasts they own dozens or hundreds of games, but back then you usually owned a single digit number and they had to last. So they were difficult and obtuse, but you had a lot more time to spend on mastering each one. Today a dozen new games come out each week and we can't possibly play them all. And the game industry is huge with millions of people wanting to have some fun and exciting play without being beaten up and sent back to the beginning every few seconds (especially with the loading screens we often have to sit through). So good modern game design wastes less of your time and gives you more options for how you want to play so you can find what you find fun. And instead of having a game with 8 levels you have to play 100 times each before you beat them you might see 100 levels you have to try 8 times to beat. We have the resources now to make huge and varied game worlds and I love that. The NES era did the best they could with limited resources and some games of that time like SMB3 can be praised even to this day for the variety of worlds they were able to show at that time. But that is the expectation of a modern game, for it to take you places, show you things, and ideally tell a compelling story along the way. In the end I am saying that times have changed, and while I agree that old games are not designed poorly, they are designed for a niche audience that still exists but was the entire audience in the 80s. Today the audience is much wider and more accessible and this modern philosophy is far more appealing to myself and most people who want to play games.
I completely agree that there were a lot of unfair games during the NES era, with bad game design elements. I'm not disagreeing with that. I also agree with you that a larger variety of games today is a good thing, and there are many great modern games that have innovated on game design. I disagree with the notion that 'ALL' NES games were poorly designed, I disagree that lives are inherently bad game design, and I disagree that Shovel Knight's elements that made it stand out weren't implemented in several good NES games. I definitely should have had a segment where I highlighted bad NES games to be more balanced. I wasn't trying to say there weren't horrible NES games (of which there are plenty), I was trying to point out ones that stood out, and that there are several good ones, as opposed to his assertion that there were none.
QuestionMarc It doesnt help that almost all of SnoMans examples were actually well designed games. Mario, Castlevania, Metroid, Megaman? Thats basically a list of the best designed action games on the system.
The games were designed to be hard with the intent of giving it a longer lifespan. If you're good at those games you can beat them in under and hour. If you lived in the 80s and would have to spend $60 to play a game for an hour, would you do it?
@@SohakmetGameplay There are other ways of making a game that gives you more than an hour of gameplay. This was just a common and simple solution for the technical issues of the time. So honestly, I don't like a lot of games from this era because there aren't many solutions to the technical limitations that I find satisfying.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO! ALL those points needed to be brought out about NES games. Some definitely hold up (Mario 3, Turtles 2, Kirby's Adventure, Megaman 2, 3, & 5) in every way, where others don't. You explained perfectly how there WAS GOOD GAME DESIGN BACK THEN as there is now. I watched his video first, I'm a fan of his too but this HAD to be done. PERFECT!
Another argument to be made is during the NES era, game designers were STILL learning to make games you could beat and not just go on and on or turn off once the high score was met. Designers were limited by the NES's hardware and that also given many game designers worked on arcade games, which were DESIGNED to be hard to suck your quarters, this would transfer to the home consoles at times, especially in console ports of arcade titles. The NES era saw a huge leap in game design, slowly but surely becoming more refined and ensuring the gameplay wasn't cheap but challenging and rewarding. Heck lookit the big leap in the 16bit era, the SNES and Genesis not only looked better with their games but the ability for games to tell DEEP stories and better music and soundtracks improved and well... I could go on but we've all grown up with those innovations emerging as time went on. That said, I agree with all your points Dave, while some design elements of the NES era were hard as hell, to say it was hard for the sake of hard or that every game had crummy design is a discredit to those games and their creators. Now if we're talking about Shovelware games....then yeah bad design all around but they're a special breed of bad that belong in their own category.
This video was absolutely brilliant! I had many of the same issues with Snoman's video and you defended the often ingenious game design of NES classics very well. It really shows when someone who actually knows these games and has played them gets to talk critically about them.
My favorite part is the end when Snoman gives advice on how to improve the games. Dude, they don't make those anymore, there are no new NES games coming out LOL And platformers for newer consoles have already improved in all the areas you mentioned, and so much more. So who are you actually talking to?
Im glad you made this video. I like SnomanGamings channel also but when I saw his video I was hoping it would have focused on games with actual bad design not games that had incredible design that holds up to this day.
I haven't watched your video yet, but I'm sure i have more in common with your opinion than his based off of past taste. I was talking back to him through the screen. :) You're both fantastic creators, I'm glad you decided to take up the gauntlet. I always look forward to your uploads. Stay Awesome.
Thanks! I hope you ended up enjoying it and it was cathartic, haha. That's part of why I made the video, that's what I was doing while watching his. :P But, I agreed - he is a fantastic creator!
3:47 I loved your video but I have to call bullshit on that one, extra lives are amazing in Mario Maker when you're playing the 100 mario challange, they even limit you to 3 lives per level to prevent levels with a million extra lives
Ah -sorry, I should've specified that I was thinking of when you play the levels individually. (As that's usually how I play the game), but I obviously didn't make that clear at all. :P My bad!
I started watching this video with the mentality that NES games were a product of their time and are poorly designed by today’s standards, but I left feeling the opposite. Honestly, this was a great video. Every point made was well informed and researched, and it was so compelling that I see this topic very differently than I did going in.
I'm happy to hear that! :) I should point out - there are plenty of games on the NES games that were very poorly designed and a bunch of shovelware. But, that shouldn't discredit the genuinely good ones.
I feel like both sides have interesting points. Personally, I think, in hindsight, looking at all these games from a pure game designer's point of view leads to Dave's point of view, where the games are, indeed, balanced, even if the challenge isn't for everyone. However, NES games have an almost unfortunate place in gaming history because of how frequently mechanics like these were implemented and how completely strapped for another choice you'd be back when NES games were first coming out. Going back to NES games today, where we're spoiled for choice as to what kind of games we'd like to play, it's easy to lean one way or another; the games are difficult so people who aren't invested will get frustrated and see the faults, while people who are uniquely equipped for that kind of challenge will see how balanced everything is and will gladly stick with the titles. After all, the gaming climate/demographic has BROADLY expanded since the NES. Back then, really the only people playing games were those who could devote to the challenge. Now, when anyone can be a gamer, the challenges feel unfair for anyone who isn't equipped to handle them.
You're both right, but thank you so much for this new perspective! I like to finish a game quickly (and don't have much free time) so I like savestates and easy checkpoints. But you're right, just because people like Snoman and I hate aspects of certain games doesn't mean a game is badly designed. Different people like different games, and just because I like Kirby's Adventure because of its relative ease, it doesn't mean it's a game for everyone. Or, even though I hate Silver Surfer for being too hard for me, it's still a good game that many people do like.
This other dude just seems like he hates NES games... which is fine, but why make a video about it? Also "unjustified deaths"? The salt is real. We don't all want to be spoon fed.
Not all of us want to be challenged. A problem with the both past and present video game era is that neither of them appeal to more than 1 type of group when it comes to difficulty. The past era didn’t provide people who just wanted a calm experience much to work with, aside from a few exceptions. However on the other hand, the present era isn’t providing people who want a challenge much to work with, again, aside from a few exceptions.
Your argument about lives makes no sense to me. Getting extra lives were not rewards, they were more like a necessity or a big relief! Lives has no reason to exist if not to extend the gameplay time. So, since we don't need lives in modern gaming anymore we have the Star Coins (that you don't mention and I don't know why) to be some real rewards to the game. They feel satisfying to get, and they give you bonus levels that are usually way harder, if you're up to the challenge! It was about time to Mario to ditch life forever! But then, I agree with you about level design in that era. Snoman showed games that had amazing level designs, like Mega Man, Mario (of course) and Duck Tales! And they are fun to play still today! He showed really bad examples and situations that could be shown with another games that really fit what he was saying.
Lives are never a necessity unless you're playing poorly, or the gameplay design is so bad and unfair, you'll die no matter what. You can beat a game like Mega Man, Mario, or Castlevania without dying once. And them being a big relief makes them a reward. I'm not arguing that games NEED lives, or games can't be designed without them. My point was, it's not inherently bad game design to use lives if you do it right, which some (not all) NES games did do. Some games (like Contra) are about the challenge to see how far you can go on limited lives. You don't have to finish the game, it's the challenge of: How far can you go? That's the game. Other games use lives more akin to Mega Man & Mario, where they're rewards to get that help incentivize exploration, or just to give you a general reward for collecting/doing well. - I agree you can use things like Star Coins to give you secret areas. When I was using the Strawberry example from Celeste, my point was to showcase more-so that lives are one way you can give a more meaningful reward than 'nothing'. But, they're also a little different: Collecting Star Coins for hidden areas (or something similar) gates off content from people who aren't skilled enough for it, so it also presents it's own problems. (I'm not sure why Celeste would have had a problem with this considering the mix tape areas, but whatever). Collecting lives gives you an in-game reward without needing to gate content from someone as a consequence. They both have good uses. One doesn't negate the other. Again, though: I have 0 problem with games that choose not to use lives. Both types of games can be designed poorly and both types of games can be designed well. I strongly disagree that lives are automatically 'bad' game design just because Snoman doesn't like them. I don't usually like roguelikes and find them to be tedious. That doesn't make roguelikes 'bad' design.
@@DaveControlLive That's true, some games are made based on lives, like Contra and Castlevania. Because they're one constant motion until the end (unless you die), and I actually think that is good! But games that are level-based, like Mario and Mega Man, I still think that lives are just to extend the gameplay. Why not let the player replay the level until he beat it? Nevertheless, the times were different back then, and Castlevania, Mario, Mega Man, Contra, Duck Tales are all great games with great level design, but today I feel that lives only get in the way! Talking about "gating off" content, lives can be the same. And even worse, lives can make the player quit the game at all, not only quit trying to find the secrets. A player that has not the necessary skill nor want to spend time repeating the level until they get good enough will not find any secrets AND will not even finish the game! That would be worse ! That's what Mario does nowadays, gives players optional collectibles that require a bit more skill, but not being necessary to finish the game. I think that's a way better solution! Lives are a thing from the past, and nowadays we have better possibilites. And yeah, I think that some roguelikes are really tedious too! hehe
@@Tulase Why should not use lives in some types of games in specific?, the core of the extra life system is variable in some franchise and does not apply to all of one in gaming, I mean, Mega Man by example uses lives and it somehow works, yet mainly because the good Mega Man games (Not MM2, MM5, MM2 GB, MM&B, MM8; those suck in design) have some structure in how presenting the challenge, the series was planned in that regard: Enemies and their positiong affect the environment. First they teach you mechanics & how the enemies work, and then sure, but slowly they stop holding your hand, (A complaint I have with the Industry right now) and then is the moment you either progress towards the level or be stucked indefinitely, ¿You know why?, the difficulty comes rather with the player actions instead of the "Lives", but instead, the competence of the player. that comes down also when you get lives and HOW you get lives So if a game suddenly has 1-ups and the design compliments it (Specially with a risk/reward system like the anterior example), we should not just be baffling about it and say it is not necesary or just a way to extend the gameplay. it also looks like you are telling me that NO Modern game extend ARTIFICIALLY the gamplay with even more tedious actions (Sub-missions that have no reward and grinding are the ones who come to mind). Despite all of this: I say lives and their use depend more in the type of game and how it builds those mechanics. (My opinion isn´t fact, btw).
I started with a video that you're commenting on, and then watch yours. Thanks for making it proper! Little Nemo game, that you show up was a game, that I finish on emulator, maybe 2-3 years ago. I love it design as well with Adventure Islands series from NES (without the first one, I hated that one). Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy was the most rewarding game for me on NES. I spend more than a year to find out how to do all the stuff without any walkthrough or tutorials, that are easy avaliable these days. Also NES games supposed to take more of your time. Now we have a big spam of games. Then, I was playing what I had. Buying this games was soo blindly. XD
Well this is interesting. I actually appreciate your passion to be willing to discuss this at length, and totally appreciate your perspective on it.
So I think the majority of issues you've countered here boil down to a misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. And you know what, I'll take the blame for that, I should have been more clear in my original video. I sort of pride myself on being concise and not dragging out an issue, but in that process I tend to lose some things in translation. If people went in hearing what they wanted to hear there's bound to be some pushback.
So let me set the record straight on some issues - I think the biggest by far is that you assume I meant ALL NES games are bad - which is not true at all if you actually listened to what I said. My conclusion was that literally "there are some good elements in NES games". I pointed out specific examples that I felt were cheap, unfair or annoying, but obviously there are shining examples, I think Castlevania and Punch-Out are some of the best on the system.
We seem to disagree about lives, but only somewhat. The ONLY issue I had with them was when it sets you back to the beginning of the entire GAME not continue from the start of a world. That specific type of punishment I found to be very annoying and artificial difficulty, not anything else. Lives have their place, and you're right that they were designed differently with that in mind, but it doesn't change the fact that some of the games have seriously stupid layouts/obstacles. Again, not ALL, just some, since apparently that part wasn't clear.
SMB3 - the NES game I praised more than any other in the video, was also misinterpreted. This was not the first time I've ever played SMB3, I've played every world just never had beaten it. I talked about how it was WELL-DESIGNED, and really challenging in a good way. So I'm not really sure what your issue was actually...I enjoyed it immensely. Just used save states in between levels after going back to the start several times to speed up the process (since I was streaming - it was per chat's request actually); I wasn't like using them every 2 seconds or something. It was only to save time of having to beat the same levels I'd already beaten.
You're right about Mega Man nailing a lot of the issues I had - again I think it boils down to this assumption that I meant EVERY SINGLE NES game is terrible and should die in a fire, which was just not at all my intent. You showed all the good with this video, while I focused on the bad in mine. At the end of the day, it comes down to something I've been screaming from the rooftops for years now: "A creator's opinion is implied". It was all just my opinion and perspective, same with your video here. That's actually the beauty of games is that we can disagree and still loves games. My thesis, which I stated up front was to look at "the bad" on NES games and see how new games have improved upon them. I thought I was clear but apparently could have done a better job of it. Peace bro, thanks for adding to the conversation :)
Hey man -
First thing: I'm sorry - as I feel this video came off as more of an attack than I originally intended it to. You didn't deserve that, and my apologies.
-
I'm sorry for misunderstanding your general thesis. I think... it was mainly through the b-roll you used that I misconstrued a lot of what you were saying. I know you said in the beginning (as a potential retort) what about Ninja Gaiden & Castlevania and said you'd talk about them, but then (in that video), used them as b-roll for examples of bad design elements. So - it made it come across as that was the way you ended up talking about them.
That said, I obviously didn't do a great job myself (looking at a lot of the comments), as I overwhelmingly came across as saying the opposite, and that "All NES games are good", which of course, is not even close to the case. (And I should have showcased bad ones to show that).
As far as the Mario 3 segment goes - I actually left in a lot of moments that I either agreed with, or wanted to (in this case) show what you said in full context, so people could understand if I was misconstruing things. Similarly (with intention coming across wrong), I didn't mean to say you didn't know how to play the game/weren't good/whatever, I was trying to put together the building blocks of everything you'd have without skipping to the end - with the main thing being the helper items and lives.
I do 100% agree with you that many of the games are bad, and a lot of them can be improved upon.
Anyways, I'm pinning your comment so people can see your response. I genuinely do (as I stated) enjoy your content and think you do an excellent job. So, while this 1 video stood out to me (personally), I don't want you to think that means I (or hopefully anyone else) thinks any less of your stand-out content. I've been subscribed to you since back when you had around 40k subs, and been super happy to see your growth, as it's honestly well deserved.
So your whole angle in this comment is "You misunderstood me" and "I didn't say ALL NES Games were bad!" But you're STILL not mounting much in the way of an actual defense, becuase there really isn't one other than a "my bad, I was wrong" followup.
But, the thing is, when the examples you used are commonly regarded as some of the best NES games of all time, what's the fucking difference? You say not ALL NES games were bad, but using some of the BEST ONES to make this half-assed argument of a sliding scale? Seriously. Are you high? You still basically took the NES Gold Standard and started with this hipstery "nyyehh but actually they're really trash" bullshit, while pushing up your glasses like a smug douche. What's more, you had the gall to use games like Mega Man games and Duck Tales, rather than games like Monster Party or The Krion Conquest. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen? People WOULDN'T call you out on the bullshit of holding beloved games from that long ago to a 2018 standard like a brainless goon with no sense of quality scale? That's where your whole argument fell apart as the bullshit it was. So don't sit here and try to play this fake-sympathy card now. Hopefully no one is smart enough to buy your bullshit excuse.
You were full of shit. You still are now. Instead of getting indignant, take your lumps like a man. You got exposed. Rather than come here and whine and try to backpedal, just deal with it. Your video sucked, and people hated it because you were smug, you used examples of legitimately good games to crap on THEM, if not all games (Imagine if I used examples of Super Mario 64 being a bad game to explain why Superman 64 isn't that bad by comparison, same difference), and you came off like an ignorant dipshit with bad priorities who clearly didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, and just hate-baiting, intentionally clueless bad takes soley for attention, and people realized it as such.
I've watched the video, it felt like a millennial making a joke video about "modern gamers", I couldn't believe you said "lack of polish" when talking about the graphics at the time, it's like looking at ps1 and saying "how could they release final fantasy 7 with those character models? They don goofed", other than that, I'm sure Dave dissected why that video should have "(MY OPINION AS SOMEONE THAT HASN'T REALLY PLAYED OLD GAMES EVER AND THINKS GRAPHIC LIMITATIONS ARE GAME DESIGN)" on the title, I was about to sub back then but until you get some homework done you shouldn't go all out with such poorly thought videos, I'm being harsh in the interest of my criticism coming through, I was binging your videos that day, I like your stuff, just don't talk factually of stuff you know nothing about, hopefully you can take Dave's pov if not mine to realize how to get better at what you do, or should I say "get gud" as you quote BB and DS for "good game design" multiple times.
Snoman Gaming you are a complete moron
When I saw the image of your video the first I thought it was a joke
@@jackthedragon8402 I read it all
I understand where he is going for with his point about starting all over again getting boring. I remember getting extremely bored to play all those starter levels in contra again and again only so I could attempt that level where I was actually stuck in. Depends on a game, but usually I'd rather have the game challenge me in other ways than limiting my times to attempt and learn the level I'm stuck in.
Yeah, I understand that point. But - not every NES games does that (which is what he implied), and it's not inherently bad design - it's a preference thing.
I do love games like Shovel Knight/The Messenger which change things up. But I also appreciate games where the goal of the game is to see how far I can go, and enjoy that challenge.
There are also games that do a terrible job with its balance, and the lives system doesn't work. But, I don't agree with the blanket statement of: It's all bad.
--
On another note, I also included points he made that I thought were good to try to be fair to him. :) (Although, I should've been more clear that I agreed with certain points, or given him more credit for those parts).
@@DaveControlLive That's fair. He did generalize pretty hard, it would've been more beneficial for his points to address things one game at a time.
You started over to learn, and eventually progress further and further. I remember when Super C, Contra's NES sequel (and an arcade port in name only), gave me trouble for awhile. I never got bored of the earlier levels, because each time I played, I learned to play a little better, to carry more lives and continues into the later levels till I could beat the game in 1 continue.
@@Bloodreign1 I get the appeal in that and in some ways I feel the same way, especially when you're still learning the ins and outs of the game, but the further I got in those games the more I got the feeling after having to start over "I know this already, let me get to the part that I don't", you know? I love Contra games and I'm sure the punishing nature of them has given me and my friends more amazing moments I give them credit for, but in general I feel like longer levels with checkpoints (with unlimited continues) between them would be something I'd enjoy more all things considered.
I feel like with Contra the levels are so short and fun that replaying them is more of a joy than a punishment. Thats also why difficulty loops are king :)
I think you may have alluded to it, but just in case I thought I'd point out that some of the "glitches" he complained about were actually programming *exploits* used to cope with hardware limitations or to _help_ the player! An example of the former is flicker; basically, the NES could only have so much stuff on the screen but by making certain things "flicker" (rapidly disappear then reappear), it could handle a little more. An example of the latter is slowdown; sometimes it was for "bad" reasons, but other times the designers counted on it as a built-in balance for when the programming of enemies or hazards might wind up throwing a bit too much at you all at once.
"nes games look old"
....yes?
I actually find it humorous he included bits from Sonic the Hedgehog "The Classic NES Game"
Really, the worst elements of game design from the early home console area (and forget NES; this _really_ early era of Atari/Odyssey/Intellivision/Colecovision) were drafted from arcades. Arcade games didn't even have "ends" back in those days; they'd just go on and on having you rack up points until you ran out of lives; the score was the end goal. The point of lives was to limit the player's play time before they pumped in another quarter, increasing revenue for the arcade and the machine's maker. Once arcade games started to have regular progression and endings instead of just the same thing over and over, the entire point of a "continue" was invented precisely to stop player frustration from having to replay early levels again--because they knew some players would walk away instead of continuing to pay to redo those early experiences, whereas in things like beat 'em ups they'd keep pumping in quarters for continues precisely because they'd already invested so much time and money in getting that far. And these kind of things became part of the game design culture, where it took time for designers to wrap their heads around the idea that home console games should have a different kind of paradigm for what the relationship between game and player should be. (Compare, for example, the challenge of an NES _Castlevania_ title to that of _Haunted Castle_ designed as an arcade quarter-sucker.)
Once developers learned those lessons, as you highlight in the video, they started doing some amazing things.
(Of course, nowadays, a big-budget game's primary goal is...to get players to keep pumping in the "quarters" via microtransactions, so it looks like we've just come full circle back to the bad old days. The more things change...)
This, exactly. One other point about "bad" older designs that kept popping into my head during both videos is Snoman's assertion that the first levels of old games are bad because they're boring and the implication is, they're slow and safe because they were designed first. That's not true at all; an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto I saw a while back asked him his design philosophy for games like the first Super Mario Bros., and he said the first levels were often designed and tested last.
He went on to explain that making a video game, even one as old as SMB, was a very organic process in which changes to the design had to be made constantly to deal with or get around hardware and software limitations, deadlines, funding fluctuations, and so on. As such, they had to know exactly what kinds of challenges they were going to face the players with before they could build a tutorial to teach them to deal with them. Putting in a gun as a powerup in the first level, then realizing that the game engine wasn't robust enough to handle the mechanics of giving Mario a gun (which is something that actually happened - they planned on giving Mario a gun to shoot enemies with but the NES wasn't advanced enough yet to handle it) would mean having to remember to remove that powerup from the first level and then deciding what to put in its place.
It's a design philosophy that makes sense; figure out the most complex or difficult part first then design the easier parts around that.
This isn't true at all. All of the good elements came from arcade games. Continues are a scam, not a solution. When games started having endings, lives were repurposed into an effective way to give the player "three strikes and you're out", and games started to be built around beating them without ever losing a life (which you could already do in many older games that went on forever).
Haunted Castle was butchered for release outside of Japan, the original game is not nearly that difficult. At the same time, Haunted Castle is exceptional because very few care for the game to begin with. It's not a sign of how arcade games were at all (other than Konami butchering their export releases).
Those arcade games that didn't have "ends" would have needed lives even if they were free. What would be the point to Galaga, Centipede, Pac-man, etc. if they had unlimited lives/continues? The whole appeal of those games is to see how high of a score you can get with a limited set of chances.
And now we play procedurally generated games to get back that sense of infinite replayability.
As I mention in the video - I have nothing against Snoman Gaming and enjoy his channel. He has some great videos that I recommend watching and it's worth a sub if you're interested in game design.
I disagreed on this particular topic, and thought a rebuttal was worth making. Gotta stand up for the NES.
Dave, I think he's saying how games back in the days were designed to suck your money on arcades.
Contra, Castlevania, BattleToads, Street of rage, etc...
Destroyer2150 Yes, that was one point he made. And some NES games did... but a large portion of them did not. My main argument is - a lot of the good game design he attributes to games like Shovel Knight were implemented in several NES games.
Also, taking away lives (like in arcade games that are designed to suck your quarters) isn't necessarily a bad thing when it's designed properly. You can balance taking away lives, 1ups as a reward, and difficulty to make it fair.
I agree there are some games with horrible design on the NES, and Bullshit unfair games - but to make a blanket statement that they're all poorly designed (which is where he goes to by the end of the video), and then praise other games which use the exact same mechanics is baffling to me. Many of the visual examples of NES games he used as "unfair" and bad game design have the exact same mechanics he praises Shovel Knight for. (Outside of having a lives-based system)
DaveControl I just got done telling him what a terrible person he is for hating on the original Nintendo. Sent him some hate just for you Davy.
Just kidding but this guy has it backwards. The problem with modern games is there’s no stakes. You can die and die and die and start right where you left off. That’s what made beating older game so rewarding. That rush you get when beating a hard game like Castlevania or mega man 2 is amazing. You felt like you actually accomplish something. You had to master the game. You don’t get that rush beating modern games because you know you get infinite chances to win.
Limitations adds creativity. That's why NES music/BMG/OST are so darn awesome in its time. Creators are pushed to their limits to fit with the consoles sound limitations. Listen to this ruclips.net/video/Wwzw_U6Hgr4/видео.html at 6:35 .
I do agree that the original NES was overly punishing, and that it is what we would now consider artificial difficulty. However, it can't be stressed enough that during the NES era we were still figuring out what games were. The designers of the NES were typically arcade designers; the idea of a home video game system was so novel that no one knew how to do it. And there were advantages--anyone who's been caught in an autosave in an impossible situation knows that there's sometimes benefits from backtracking after a death!
Still, I think the main issue we need to remember is that game designers were still figuring things out back then. To compare them with today's standards is nonsensical because they weren't designing to today's standards.
I also really love your point about certain games not being for everyone. In trying to reach as wide an audience as possible many game franchises have lost what makes them unique. The only way to truly create depth and meaningful gameplay is to acknowledge who your audience is--and that will NEVER be "everyone". Literature, TV, and movies have long done this. Someone making, say, a procedural drama isn't going to try to win over romantic comedy fans; the rom-com folks aren't their audience. This allows them to tailor their movie or TV show to their audience. You can make certain assumptions, because your audience does. Hallmark has made a lot of money making holiday romantic comedies (my wife's favorite vice) by tailoring them to exactly what their audience craves. Games can do this; Dark Souls, Demon Souls, and their ilk show that. But you have to be willing to say, as a studio, "We are not chasing this 50% of the market". It was easy to do that in the NES days, because no one knew what the market was; it's harder, but more rewarding, today.
This could've been a 30-minute git gud rant.
But you've handled it so much better.
P.S. That part from original video where he was admiring Shovel Knight for implementing a 30-year old mechanics felt amusing for ironic reasons for me xD
This just seem like just Git Gud fluff. There's plenty of way to get challenges in games today, ranking system, achievements, and the old difficulty select. What's important is that there's multiple options for different people
@@Tacom4ster That's because progressing through a game should be about becoming good at the game. The problem with not losing any progress is that you don't have to get good, just make it through once somehow and never again have to see that stage or boss. Back then, there was merit in beating a game, it was an achievement in itself and it also meant that you were now good at the game, consistently good at it, and that you had done something not everyone was capable of. Nowadays to get that same level of accomplishment you have to put a blindfold on or play using your feet, because just beating the game is pretty much guaranteed.
@@Tacom4ster >achievements
Okay, how is mastering an extremely difficult stage NOT an achievement in and of itself? Unless you're talking about the meaningless """""achievements""""" that pop up on your screen in modern games for completing such menial tasks as killing an arbitrary number of enemies [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Assassin!], looking up an NPC's skirt [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Perv!] or even _dying_ in a hilariously pathetic way [*bloop* Achievement unlocked: Dead man walking!], most of which seem to be implemented ironically by devs who are having a laugh. If _that's_ what you're talking about, then consider me an out-of-touch grandpa, because I'll take "the Git Gud stuff" any day.
@@NickCapricorn So basically, EA was right, and games are supposed to provide the player with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
@@NickCapricorn I just repeat levels why increasing difficulty. I like to play games east first than to fully experience the narrative, than replay for fun.
I remember reading in a magazine once about one reason NES games hold up and are so well designed - the small amount of buttons. They had to come up with gameplay mechanics and concepts that worked with only a few input options, so gameplay ideas were very pure and simple. Think about why so many older people feel more comfortable trying out a game with an NES controller than the newest games that have like 16 buttons on them.
I think that back then when we played a game, we were not expecting to beat it. Simply playing it and seeing how far you could get with limited resources were fun for me. Replaying a level was not repetitive or boring, but a way to realize that how far you had improved, or find hidden treasures/mechanics. Nowadays, we have so many games to play, sometimes we rush to finish a game. I might enjoy it for a while, but soon feel very empty and go back play NES games. They suck, they stomp on me and hurt my pride, but I love them.
Yes! Definitely.
Some of these games you pop in and say: "I wonder how far I can get this time?" You probably won't beat it, and that's okay. And, yeah, you turn it off - but then you come back to it again to challenge yourself again. For me, a lot of these games end up being more replayable for that exact reason.
Exactly this. The idea that most times you start a game you also beat it is a _very_ modern point of view, and too many people criticize lives because they're stuck in that mindset.
I'm not trying to hate on nes games here but does that apply to games that seem like they were designed with nintendo power in mind like simon's quest for example?
Daniel Lewis Simon'a Quest is pretty notorious for being terrible (even by people who love NES games), for being overtly obtuse.
Although, part of the reason was actually a really bad translation - as it would turn out.
Interestingly enough, there's statistics showing that very few people actually finish their games today either, despite everything being story driven and having checkpoints every 10 steps you take.
I never felt Shovel Knight was a challenging game.
That’s because it isn’t, unless you’re going for a no damage run.
What about celeste or rain world
@@novicenoobtube450 Celeste is pretty challenging all things considered tbh
Remember when RUclips used to have video replies appear under the original? Hopefully this excellent rebuttal appears in the recommendations columns for those viewing the original.
@Gabriel Rocha they said it was the spam. Some guys just promoted their shit on every popular video and marked it as response.
@Gabriel Rocha reply girls
@Gabriel Rocha reply girls were a thing back in the day, they would essentially just spam popular videos with "video responses" that were essentially just showing off their big tits. Basically the Twitch thots of yesteryear
It does. I arrived here that way.
Using Bubble Man's stage as a complaint area for 1-hit KO's was a bad idea. I thought it was one of the easiest to get by and by far the easiest part of Bubble Man's stage. If he was going to make a complaint about that, he should at least use a better example, like Mega Man 5's spike fall in Wily 1.
Megaman X6.
Also known as Spike hell: the game. I rather play 1001 spikes.
Mega Man X6 ain't an NES game tho.
I remember playing the Mega Man Anniversary Collection some years ago, And I think Bubble Man's stage was one of the few I actually got through back then. I Think I managed to complete the fighting games too, but those were easier than the regular games.
Magnat Cleo Anniversary Collection had the Power Battle games? I haven't played AC fully myself yet, so I wouldn't know.
@@solarflare9078 Yep, that's where I played them.
My main problem with the vid was how Snoman didnt even seem to try during many clips. Castlevania for example he literally stood there attacking, no attempt to dodge attacks, he just expected to be able to blindly press buttons and win the game. Then the "looking old" complaint is completely irrelevant to the design, and does he expect the NES to run Crysis at 4k 144fps? Theres a such thing as hardware limits.
This video felt a little rushed, a bit for the attention and he sounded like the stereotypical meme-game journalist who demands every game have an instant win or no death mode or complain about difficulty. It's stupid to expect a 30 or 40 year old game to follow today's design elements. Bad level design, bad performance and bad execution of mechanics are things that make a game bad, not the idea of lives or difficult stages. Also while I love save states and defend using them you CANT judge a game when you're cheating or abusing the game using an out-of-game tool. Like he isnt giving the design the chance or light of day.
Another great video to add to the library, unlike Snoman's
I felt like he was purposely trying to make those games look hard. That chip and dale game is so easy. Watch how he walks off the cart for no reason at 11:40.
Exactly, and that's one of many moments. It does feel like a video made for attention rather than giving intellectual conversation
@singular on1 Depends on the game. Are Little Mermaid and Kirby hard? Also please check out my example in the previous comment. Snoman walks off the cart for no reason and calls that "bad game design" Not saying there weren't hard/frustrating/bullshit NES games but not all of them are like that and I feel that snoman doesn't understand how to play a lot of them.
@@Dog-999i he literally does the exact same thing in castlevania at 15:32
There can be a chance that he searched for NES games clips for the videos instead of playing them himself and those videos were titled with something meaning that the game was hard. But that's just me trying to defend him 🤷❤
I have seen the original video and I've never seen a RUclips video I 100% disagreed with it and Dan seems like he hasn't even played the games he complains about.
Hopefully this is cathartic to watch, then! Haha
@@DaveControlLive I loved it man. Great work as always!
Happy to hear it! :)
It was honestly painful to watch. dunkey made a video like that too... only it was ACTUALLY GOOD
Cyberhawk best Rock n' Roll Racing character.
So, the secret warp whistle in SMB3 was a risk/reward system this whole time? Mindblown!
The same with Battletoads too.
They mostly skipped easier levels where you could get some extra lives.
For example, I never skip second level (Wookie Hole) because with some skill you can get easily get extra lives there by continuously hitting ravens. I could even get up to 15 lives total there in my prime.
Mainly risk /reward until you memorize the levels in the last world, then it becomes reward only.
@singular on1 rote memorization alone is a very one dimensional way to have the player improve at the game and often doesn't teach anything that will be useful later in the game. This doesn't discount exploring the game's mechanics though.
Hard games can be punishing as hell, but that is part of the appealing.
You simply want to avoid creating bullshit and other unfair stuff.
But it feels so good to finally crush your enemies***redacted*** beat the game don't it?
Hard but Fair: Dark Souls 3 = Good Design. Hard becuase its garbage: Battletoads = Bad design, your worst enemy is the controls.
sorry not everyone is autistic
we just didn't even play those games because they were so boring and unfair
it's called "games for kids" not "pay real money for something you can't use". everything i bought on 8bit at that time was a lesson about not ever paying for games because paying is immoral
I feel like Snoman made that video to asskiss indie games. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate indie games at all. In fact, I'm becoming an indie game dev myself. It's just that his bias is so, so ironic.
To Snomam, have you actually tried sitting down and not walking off of platforms?
It's especially funny since he uses an indie game as an example of good design... when it took its mechanics from NES games.
2:26 super mario bros 1 has continues, after you go back to the tittle screen with the game over, you have to hold the a button and press start, then you will go back to the beginning of the world you stopped, and no, I didn't discovered that out myself
This was a good response. I'm also a fan of Snoman Gaming and have learned a lot from his design videos, and he raised some decent points in this one (Ghosts and Goblins is not a fun game for many of the reasons he pointed out) but it felt like he was outright ignoring when NES games were doing everything he praised Shovel Knight for.
Funny thing about his comments on lives, I'm not even sure if I like lives either, but I do appreciate games that expect me to learn their tricks over multiple playthroughs. The idea that a game gets more fun the more your skills evolve is the entire reason I like many of the better NES games your video discussed.
Ghosts'n Goblins has a lot of RNG but it's playable to a point. The sequels are better, yes.
27:26 When is Battletoads unfair? Super difficult yes but unfair?
Also the turbo tunnel isn't THAT hard. There is a rhythm to the walls and you usually have enough time to react except for maybe the jumpable walls when they appear three times in a row but they are only a problem if you jump late.
I like how "That's just limited hardware" is actually a defense here
Finally, someone did a counterargument of Snoman's video. As an amateur game programmer, I respect some of these NES games. The main reason is because they managed to pioneered a lot of ideal mechanics that was later implemented in today's standards.
It is really jarring how limited the technology back then, and yet they pulled something clever to make it work. I'm glad you made a defense on everyone's favorite "Archaic Live System" in which most people bashed out on modern games who uses that, such as Sonic Mania and MegaMan 11. I really hated that he keeps on mentioning Shovel Knight on how it did everything better, even though the game reiterates the same concept in older games. I love Shovel Knight, but that game is supported with modern hardware and developers who have learned from their predecessors, in contrast to the primitive nature of the NES games that he likes to compare.
Right? It's like bashing on Iron Age farmers for not using modern gas powered threshers or combine harvesters in their work and saying something like, "They could have had much higher crop yields than hand picking!"
Well, yea, that's technically true, but they didn't have access to that technology nor could they have conceived of such technology ever existing, so they used what they had, and the things they invented to make their jobs easier eventually led to modern technological achievements, but the tech had to develop naturally and build on the older tech to be successful. Same goes for video games; no one back in the Atari/C64/NES days could have conceived of online multiplayer, save states, checkpoints, 3D graphics or any of our modern conveniences. Those didn't come until later when the technology improved enough to make them possible. Until then, they had to design their games around the limitations of the hardware, which were many.
The problem is that a lot of console games don't do lives right. They give you far too many and there are almost always ways to "farm" them. Sonic is especially bad about this.
@@Despatche Like I said specifically; Sonic Mania and Mega Man 11. Those two games are very skill-based in terms of difficulty. The most recent complains are how punishing it is with the live system.
The problem with the live system is how it was implemented in some of the games. An example of this is Mario 64. Dying once in a level, besides Bowser's, resets the entire stage from back to the start. Getting a game over only sets you back to the beginning of the hub world, where you can just simply run back to the last painting. At this point, this live system is mostly pointless, because it is better off without it.
The worst part of his video was "It was an era where *game design wasn't a thing yet* " when in reality was the time where game design started to be considered. They had to be harsh levels because otherwhise, how they would put a worth game in 40 KB? But well, there's one channel I WON'T subscribe like ever.
I can defenitely see where Snoman was coming from here, it can be needlessly frustrating or repetitive to deal with the lives system, but there's definitely more to it.
Guess it goes to show that even potentially annoying mechanics can be beneficial if they're well thought out and if the games are built around them.
Both his video and yours are great! They sorta compliment each other as a pair.
I'd never really thought about the merits of building a game around a lives system before!
i think Snowman overgeneralized NES Games too much.
That's my biggest problem with his video.
@Russki Crisp People like you only strengthen Tim's argument. Talk about overgeneralization! Not sure if you're a Snoman fanboy or NES games killed your parents. Or maybe you grew up with LJN games. If that's the case I feel sorry for you.
That's like bashing on a VHS just because there's no DVD support.
Although I find re-playing sections I've died at to be annoying, tedious, and redundant at times, citing "What's so fun or challenging about replaying the same thing I just did again?" an "everybody wins" philosophy is the laziest implementation of game design, and are usually used in games I either play only once, and or forget almost everything about other than the title years after I've completed it. If NES games are guilty of being quarter suckers, new age hand-holding type games are guilty of ripping you off out of an experience not worth re-experiencing (typically referring to single player games.)
I highly recomend beating mario 3 without using the warps. At least just once.
So pleasant to hear someone who understands the philosophy of game desgn of that era, and not blinded by "modern only" standards.
the philosophy of sell literal trash for real money to scam people
It is great to see a response video that isn't toxic and talks rationally
toxic boomerinity
Great video! And while I kind of understand where Snoman was coming from (I've played countless NES games, most of them great, some of them just terrible, lol), the overall structure of his video came off as contradictory and using poor examples. Some people like hard games, whether modern or classic, like Sekiro and Ninja Gaiden, and others like more slower-paced or easier games, and I think they're both fine. Also I gave an immediate like for showing Iron Tank and Lolo! We need more Lolo, that gem is underrated, it needs more love!
Shovel Knight is a horrible comparison point since it's an homage and loveletter to the sidescroller. Of course it's leagues better, I'd friggin hope so. It stands on the shoulders of the giants that paved the way, took the risks and learned the lessons, they have no excuse to make a game even on par with old NES games if they're one of the most beloved pixelated indie titles out there. It's like comparing the OG castlevania or metroid titles to Deadcells.
Not to mention it's not limited to 256 screens of area. He gets so much wrong. You literally couldn't do that in old games if they even had the idea to, like losing money with the option to go get it back? The NES literally has to forget that whole screen even exists just to respawn you at a checkpoint, so you'll just lose everything on death anyways. Welcome to Nintendo hard. Save states were revolutionary, because otherwise you were stuck with a string of code. All the lessons we had during NES era were carryovers from the arcade era and the mentality of bringing the arcade to your living room so you weren't pouring money into a quarter muncher, though the same tactics still proved just as profitable because people who rented games would re-rent games and eventually buy them to complete them, making more revenue in the process.
He even gets the sprite flickering wrong. The image isn't glitching out, the hardware simple wasn't capable of displaying more than a certain number of sprites per horizontal line, which meant that it had to flicker some on while others were off and strobe them so they could all occupy the same space, and it was insane that they even found a workaround for that (this is the reason for vertical shooters predating horizontal shmups, you could display more enemies and rounds on a vertical hallway). This is why some games will outright delete rounds if you fire more than a few, it has to erase bullets to create new ones along the same horizontal plane.
This kid doesn't know a design choice from a hardware limitation or ideological tradition in absence of a better option at the time. The console itself was breaching a new era even atari couldn't touch and began the path of consoles being able to put out a real game with visuals that weren't just stick figures.
Really, I'm getting too heated over a RUclipsrs view on old console games, but still... there's a reason people will tell you to sit down and show some respect.
Trying to condense a sprite sheet alone is horribly tedious, I should know since I'm actually making a game that can run on original NES hardware and have to respect its limitations to unlock its potential. You'd be stunned how much memory it sucks up just implementing the ability to scroll the screen over since you're functionally forcing the system to remember 3 screens at once in a broad sense. Mad respect to the designers of Crystalis, I don't know how those galaxy brains pulled off four way scrolling in a live action swordfighting game (turn based RPG I get, but that game was nuts for what it was).
The system is beautiful, and there's even a new era of developers for it. I got inspired to do this by the people who made Micro Mages because it just looked awesome and looked like a super crisp playing experience. I still need to buy a copy myself.
Great video! I always felt like the classic Mega Man series was the best possible implementation of a lives system - you never lose *too* much progress from running out of lives, and it's an opportunity to rethink your strategy, consider tackling a different stage first, etc. rather than grinding yourself endlessly against the same room of obstacles. Nothing about that feels like an unfair arbitrary punishment to me.
"NES games are poorly designed."
>The first level of Super Mario Bros. is studied and discussed as an example of pristine game design to this day.
In a form of comedic irony, the video trying to impute NES games as bad design is itself an example of bad video essay design.
Not gonna lie, after watching this video (and reading several comments), I gained a stronger appreciation for games that utilize limited lives and continues fairly well. I do think there are some bad examples of games with limited resources but there's still plenty of good ones. Castlevania 1 & 3 are some of my favourite video games to play and so is the Super Mario Bros trilogy.
This was a really fun video to watch. As for Snoman Gaming's video? There were some points I agreed with but there was a lot I disagreed with and I think you did a good job debunking his points. This video deserves my liking.
Thanks so much! :)
And - I absolutely agree that there are some really bad games which use limited resources, and games that handle it poorly. (Which I should have mentioned more)!
Perhaps you could have made a bonus video to give out the last details but I think your video is strong enough as it is.
Speaking of well designed NES games, check out New Ghostbusters 2. That game is so freaking good.
I made this comment on Snoman's video, and it bears repeating here: I feel like the streaming/speedrunning culture has a lot to do with why we see a lot of complaints about replaying portions of a game. Snoman himself cops to using warp whistles AND save states to clear SMB3, because he didn't want to get bored (and ostensibly bore his streaming audience) by replaying levels. News flash: SMB3 was not designed to be played in front of a livestreaming audience, or blasted through in a speedrun. It was designed so that you, the player, could explore the levels - many of which have their own personality and charm - and enjoy them. I don't like modern platformers because they all feel the same, which is a symptom of shrinking levels into bite-size pieces to avoid the monotony of replaying sections over and over again.
I remember beating Castlevania for the first time nearly 20 years after first playing it. To that point I had complained that the game was too hard, but after beating it I realized that the challenge was fair; it was just demanding. Putting that game side by side with something like Battletoads - which *is* on the extreme side in terms of difficulty - is an unfair comparison. And comparing these games to modern exploration games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne is borderline malpractice.
Thank you for making this video. I had stumbled across his video on Bad Game Design and after watching it felt like he had no idea what he was talking about. I will give his other videos a chance though based on your recommendation :)
No problem! Glad you enjoyed it. :)
Limitations adds creativity. That's why NES music/BMG/OST are so darn awesome in its time. Creators are pushed to their limits to fit with the consoles sound limitations. Listen to this ruclips.net/video/Wwzw_U6Hgr4/видео.html at 6:35 .
Honestly, from the footage you've provided, this reinforces the main reason I unsubbed from Snoman long ago. Most of his points and critiques came across more as whiny entitlement and an aura of "I'm bad but I'll act like it's the game's fault instead of mine" instead of actual intelligence and genuine statements on how to improve/praise for a mechanic. It was bad in his Crash video, and here it seems like it's gotten immensely worse since then. I appreciate the response video, because playing the NES games for the first time was an immense joy for me, and made me fall in love with the likes of Castlevania 1 & 3, all of the NES Mega Man games with the exception of 1 and 5, Punch Out, even Ninja Gaiden.
Well, that's easy! You played the good games!
Most of the NES games were really bad at level designing...
However, Snoman used the worst examples possible to show his points!
I'm pretty sure the Crash video and Nes games video are the only ones where he does what you described. The videos that came in-between are about other stuff and are also much better.
That’s the exact same reason why I unsubbed from Snoman as well. I couldn’t take him seriously when he would constantly spout barebones analysis of games, which would either be a complete no brainer or some concept that’s already been repeated to death, and then fail when he needed to make a unique talking point.
Same, I stopped watching after he did a Bad Game Design on Super Paper Mario but gushed all over TTYD. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing game, but Super Paper Mario is just as great.
Thank you!! I love everything about this video. I also disagreed with MUCH of what SnowmanGaming said (and Dunkey bad-talked NES game design recently as well -- didn't agree with him either). It's like Snowman would say something was bad, then show an example from Dark Souls that he liked, and I'd scream at my phone, "That's the same thing! It's just that you connected with it when Dark Souls did it and thought it was bullcrap when NES games did it."
I also didn't like how he said that NES games look like garbage. As you said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there are tons of NES games that I think look awesome (Megaman 2, Super Mario Bros. 2, etc.). In fact, I prefer the clean and 'super easy to read' level design of many games of that era, while many games now look unnecessarily *busy* in comparison.
Again, loved your video and editing/presentation. Much respect! Thanks, RUclips recommendations! :)
This is such a great thing to point out, that Dark Souls basically did the same thing but it magically "clicked" for people. I'll never understand this.
The one issue about Mega Man/Rockman 2 I see is that Crash Bomb section where you're supposed to blow up those blobs on the walls while conserving your ammo.
Something tells me that specific part didn't seem well-designed, but that's just me seeing too many people run out of Crash Bomb ammo anyways.
I actually fully agree with you.
That's my largest gripe with MM2. :-/
@@DaveControlLive Welp, I do admit there are some gripes with Snoman
Like....K-Pop in Kingdom Hearts? It's J-Pop, fam....
Easily the worst part of Mega Man 2. But the Wily stages in that game all crap the bed after Wily 1. There are better examples of a good Mega Man game throughout: 4 for example.
The number of strawberries you collect in Celeste does determine which ending image you get similar to how money worked in Luigi's Mansion, so there's that. Don't know if that's much of an incentive though.
Really??
Then color me wrong! I had no idea, as the beginning specifically says they do nothing. (And I collected them anyways, so wouldn't have realized there were two endings).
Or ending images, rather. Well... I guess that's at least something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@DaveControlLive maybe that line in the beginning was either A: a diversion or B: a joke
Idk, sue me
Yeah, but let's be honest. There were some pretty poorly designed NES games. The best ones DID have very good game design, but there were also a lot of NES games that had poor design. The 80s was a time before game design textbooks were written. But the nice things about these games is that they have some awesome elements that aren't used very often in games anymore.
Oh, I 100% agree there were some poorly designed NES games!
Sorry, I should have really gone in more about that, as it's not something I at all disagree with. I was more-so disagreeing with his video, that pretty much said 'all' NES games were bad.
The good thing about NES games and older games in general, is that you you were forced to learn damn near every move to beat them.
True
I thought the lives system was just a carry over from arcade cabinets. It took a number of years for developers to start branching out. Plenty of games were actually arcade ports too which also helps explain its persistence in older games.
Yes. But life system aren't bad game design if the game is fair
I'm still a little confused on why the lives system is good. I like it when I finish a difficult section and getting a checkpoint after that. So then I don't have to worry about the section anymore. It allowed me to finally breath, even just for a little bit. However, if a game has one certain type of lives system, when I run out of lives, I have to start at the very beginning. Usually fine for short stages, but long stages is just infuriating
There are also some games where a lives system is just pointless. There are some games where it gives you so many lives that losing one means nothing.
Or the completely useless ones like freedom planet or conker live and reloaded. Where when you a life, you go back to a checkpoint. But when you lose all your lives, you get a game over screen or get booted back to the title screen, and respawn at your last checkpoint. Wait so what's the point of having a lives system
Well at least we can both agree that limited continues are an outdated. Starting at the very start of the game is too punishing
Kevin Vo It completely depends on the game. And if it’s not for you - it’s not for you.
To me - limited lives adds a lot of tension, because you know that you’re going to be punished harshly for not succeeding. I personally find that thrilling, especially when you do succeed. It also makes finding lives, and proper placement of extra lives more of an art, because they really truly mean something - you can place them in challenging spots to give a risk/reward to the player, or put them somewhere easy for something that feels truly, genuinely rewarding to obtain.
Should all games have a lives system? Absolutely not. Do all games need that kind of tension, even challenging games? No - they don’t. But, I strongly disagree that they’re objectively bad.
@@DaveControlLive I can only find a few games where I don't mind a life system. Furi, but that's a boss rush game where if you die once and having to start at the very beginning, that would be frustrating. A life system in that gives you some breathing room
Classic sonic design is an interesting choice where a life system is design around the game for one reason. Since their design is based on exploration, starting at the very beginning of a level means you can choose another path. This is more talking about sonic mania since I haven't finished sonic 3 and knuckles
But other then that meh. You like contras life system, I personally hate it. If you respawn right where you left off, why not just make it a health bar. Also with the way you respawn, it can have some unfair deaths where you respawn over a bottomless pit and lose all you lives. Okay that last part was more of a rant about contra
Also note I'm not trying to egg you on, I'm just curious about other people's opinions and understand why they like certain things
@@teneesh3376 Meh is not an opinion. And if you hate contra it's because you suck at it. It's not always the game's fault but your skills.
@@teneesh3376 Life system is not always good but it is good by itself. If you get many lives easily, they have no purpose or value. If the game is unfair and there are almost no checkpoints then it's fault of the level design, not the life system. If the game gives you extra lives as reward and the difficulty is balanced then lives have a purpose and are very good part of the design of the game
@@DaveControlLive I think the breakable checkpoints in Shovel Knight are a good compromise that can please both camps when it comes to the lives debate.
If you don't want to run the risk of having to redo sections, you don't have to. You can retry only the hard part as many times as you want.
If you DO want some tension, you can still try to beat the levels while breaking every single checkpoint.
It's functionally similar to a lives system, without being too harsh on less skilled players.
It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's an acceptable way to do it.
I agree with you dave but remember that the marios, castlevania, megaman, bionic commando, zeldas, metroid, etc are kind of the exception not the rule. The nes was full of bullshit unfare bad design games. The avgn has made a carreer playing them.
I 100% agree that there was plenty of bullshit on the NES.
Theres also plenty of lesseer known obscure nes games that are great and hold up well along with those mentioned classics. Every generation has its good eggs and bad apples.
True, but modern consoles are no better or worse in that regard; look at all the crappy shovelware that came out for the Wii and Wii U alongside such masterpieces as Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Twilight Princess, the Rabbids games, Mario Party, Mario Kart, the Donkey Kong Country remakes, etc.
Most of the games the nerd complains about, I didn't play growing up. Yeah, I did play TMNT, the Simpson's games, Robocop, Mad Max, and they had their issues, but, the games I remember playing are: All the Mario games, Mega Man 2 and 3, Metroid, Zelda I & II, Contra 1 and 2, Tiny Toons, Ironsword, the other TMNT games, Jackal, Double Dragon I and II, Bubble Bobble, the Snowball Brothers, Gun Smoke, Chip N Dale, Adventure Island, Battletoads, etc. We borrowed a lot of games from friends, so this is what we got to see. Most people knew that games based on movies or TV shows are usually hit or miss and games were expensive back then, so people tended not to own bad games very often. The really bad games the Nerd finds, were mostly not very common. Nobody really wanted to play Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and most never heard of it. AVGN, I feel like, had a bit of a privileged childhood because he got to play a lot more games than I did, and he is two years older than me. I never even played the NES until the end of the summer of 1990. So he got to see a lot more crap and rented a lot more games and took the risk on movie or comic based games more often than I would have. We kinda knew which games were good. If the game was featured on Captain N, it was usually a game that was decent. Most of us didn't spend much time playing the bad games unless we were bored.
NES was a time of many firsts. A time where the game design for home consoles actually started to rise. And had to face lots of hardship. I mean they only had like what, 4MB at best to work with. It's not much of a wonder that not every designer managed to meet the challenge. But without that we wouldn't have game industry as we have today. Btw honestly, Shovel Knight feeds on our nostalgia but damn if it isn't cheating doing so. Making game like that on NES would be likely impossible.
NES games: playing the game was the point.
Modern games: beating the game is the point.
Great video.
To this day I have still not beat any of the Ninja Gaiden NES trillogy but I still play them a lot.
They are BRUTAL in difficulty but that is part of the fun.
If I could beat them easily I wouldn't be playing them 30 years later. lol
The entire video was basically he hates the concept of lives for almost 17 minutes.
Yeah and the concept of lives is not bad at all
@@mep6302 Don't I know it. Let me tell you I was streaming a few old school Crash Bandicoot games and I ended up with like 60+ lives in all of them due to me trying not to lose them and I'd breeze through levels, but as soon as I got to bonus levels all my skills at the games dropped like a rock solely because during those bonus levels you don't lose lives for dying. Even though they give out lives like candy on Halloween in Crash Bandicoot the second there was nothing left to lose in sucking at the game was the second mistakes started piling up. Like seriously do that yourself and you'll see lives are more an incentive to not brute force your way through a game than they are an arbitrary hindrance. There's a reason they still show up as a gameplay mechanic to this day.
I remember in the SNES era where the game gave us infinite lives and being let down how easy it was. It felt very rewarding to master a game. But back then I got like 2-3 NES games a year so I had time to master it while today I would never go for that type of game cause my time is limited and I got way too many games to get through.
I keep coming back to this video. Love your articulate arguments and I really agree with everything you said. Much respect! Hear hear! :D
Im surprised that there was no mention about NES JRPGs.
I disagree and agree with both of you
Fair enough!
My opinion isn't the law, haha.
To be honest though, even good NES games had some bullshit elements, but those were the exception and not the rule. For example, FUCK the turret boss and it's stage in Megaman 2.
The game is pretty well designed besides that.
There's no perfect game
I've used RUclips since 2008 and today I click the sub button for the first time. I've been watching tons of your videos lately, mostly kings field and dark souls. Your content is always great, humorous and detailed. Don't ever stop.
LA Sales I'm genuinely honored! I hope you enjoy my future content!
If anyone says that nes games have bad graphics than they do not like video games
This is what happens when you form an opinion based on no experience... you look AVGN videos and think they are legit reviews. :D
I know, right? I saw a lot of Snoman fanboys on his video claiming that "when AVGN complains about those things everyone is okay with it." As if everyone thought that was James Rolfe's actual opinion. Maybe they think he would really eat diarrhea out of a roadkill skunk's ass.
@@danielbueno8474 No, he'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear and eat the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer...
Light hearted pedantry aside, I do agree that people take joke reviewers like AVGN and even CinemaSins far too seriously and give their obvious hyperbole far to much legitimacy. It's like younger viewers have forgotten the number one rule of the Internet: "Don't believe everything you see online." A grown man screaming obscenities at a 30+ year old game and talking about having farm animals defecate on his face should be taken as seriously as Disney telling you animals can talk, wear clothing and walk bipedally like a person.
I know that AVGN is a comed y series, but why are you ignoring that, while at the same time he makes his jokes, he also makes very good points about the game being bad. I mean, go watch one of his videos, ignore the comedy and just focus on the review. James makes very good points about the games being bad.
@Gabriel Rocha The difference is, James has never presented the AVGN as a serious or legit review series; from the beginning he's stated that the show is more about confronting and closing the wounds of his childhood that the shitty games caused while tearing them new assholes. Yes, he makes valid criticisms and complaints about the games, but that's more coincidental to the process of viciously ripping into them than being focused on making a legit review about them.
LJN Games 😂
I also LOLed when I saw him use Duck Tales as a flawed game, I'm good at that game and I know a lot of people that think it's easy. I found it hilarious on the parts he messed up on like he didn't know how to time things and he didn't understand that you can't pogo on snow. I think out of all the NES games Duck Tales punishes the impatient and those that have a hard time learning game mechanics. In fact the three that he shows, Mega Man, Castlevania, and again Duck Tails, are like this. How he describes modern games he obviously understands HOW to do this but for some reason he is unable to do so in these or any of the NES games he shows. I think he just isn't giving them a chance, he says it isn't a huge gripe but I really think what is holding him back is how NES games look. Sure, making a 16 bit game on a system that has none of the restrictions that 16 bit hardware has it is possible to make an amazing 16 bit style game but when someone works within those restrictions and makes an amazing looking game they're an artist.
He criticizes restarting all over but praises dark souls, a game which does the same every time you die and have to restart the incredibly dull way to a boss.
I've been trying to nail down some objectively bad game design principles this week. I haven't gotten there yet, but after watching videos like this and reading some Reddit threads, I've come up with a few fairly compelling symptoms of objectively bad design:
1. A player is punished for something out of their control or understanding
2. A player's time is wasted
3. A player has difficulty making a meaningful connection to the game's objective
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on these. You seem to have a very good grasp on the topic.
Thanks for that! :)
It's something I've been trying to think about too, actually, as so many things could be considered subjective.
I completely agree with the list you already have. For the first point, to expand, games are based around a set of rules, so anything breaking those rules (out of a player's control) is going to feel unfair and objectively bad.
Your points are concise enough that there's not much I could add except for saying that I agree. :P They're also general enough that they could apply to all games (not just video games) which is nice.
I think another point that could be added (video game specific) is:
- Bad gamefeel. (Physics are off, don't have a good weight to them). I think a lot of times you can tell if a game is a knock-off just by the physics/feel of it. If you ever play Mario knock-offs, it's a dead giveaway.
And this is why Sticker Star is such an awful game.
1°: Not necessarily control, but indeed understanding. You can die to the sand pits instead of going back to the start of the room, get punished for trying to battle instead of running, wasting time trying to heal outside battle, and get punish for not searching for all the mandatory secret levels.
2°: Indeed the game is great at making you replay easy and bland levels over and over again, as well as forcing a lot of backtrack.
3°: The game is overly cryptic with their puzzles and therefore is difficult to correlate both of them. Is also cryptic with their attack bar, what kind of stickers.
The beauty of a lives system is that it allows you to work within a larger frame of reference. If you have a game with unlimited lives then everything becomes isolated. Beating level 1 means that level 1 has become completely irrelevant, and then level 2 becomes your sole focus until you beat it and it becomes irrelevant, and so on... With a lives system in place you start to care about the minutia. It might be that you can usually beat level 7 with 3 lives but one time you beat it with 4, and you really feel the weight of that, you get a proper sense of flow and you start assessing how good your current "run" is. Its not just a case of "well I beat that level already, why do i have to do it again?" it's because it what matters is your ability to learn, adapt and improve at that very thing over time. Another method games allow the player to work within a larger frame of reference is with customisation and leveling up, which I do love, but I think it's unfair that lives systems aren't praised for accomplishing the same goal for a different style of game...
Besides, I never understood this "getting sent back is artificial difficulty" argument because if that were the case then any game where failing sends you back even an inch does so "artificially". I don't see how dying on jump #4 of a Super Meat Boy level 100 times and having to repeat jumps #1-3 is apparently "not artificial" in that same way (or any more entertaining for that matter)
You get it exactly. Thank you. Seriously, thank you. Lives are a tool to measure the player's performance in a different way besides score.
Getting send back very far means you can't practice the thing you struggle on. So yes, it is "artificial";you don't struggle because it's that hard, you struggle because you have to wait 30 minutes or whatever between each attempt.
9:55 but he didnt complain that it was hard.
why are you debating against an argument he didnt make?
Brent Ramsten It was to illustrate the point of playing through a game's progression, and to get to the point of: By the time you're at world 8, you'll have x,y,z.
I can't help but feel that the people who either complain about or are completely opposed to the life system in older games must have not grown up playing them. At the time it was all we had and we played the shit out of them, got better and better and persevered until we could beat them. Sure enough when i go back after a year or so later i suck, and i have to practice my arse off again in order to get through. So many things in this day and age are so instant and full of shortcuts, and going back can be tough. It dosent mean the old is bad, its just different.
Imagine Scrooge McDuck in Smash Bros
I think I said something similar on Snoman's vid. But it was really long but essentially, it's the challenge. Players have to be challenged in some way and be innovative about overcoming challenges. This can be in regards to challenging level design or ranging to how the emotional aspects of its narrative can get you like movies. There are challenges that people who make games put there on purpose not as a result of fairness or unfairness but so that you can be innovative about getting over whatever is in your way using whatever mechanics you have not just in your hands with the controller but also what you can identify and plan with in your brain as a sort of communication with the game. It's fun to do alone and if you do this communally or with friends it can be really fun too! Here's an anecdote I didn't share on his vid. As an example: I personally find its way more fun when you add a communal aspect to it. My friend and I last year (we're both 21 and I've collected games since I was a kid) played Zelda first quest. It was his first time! I thought it would be fun if we helped each other map the game out and give each other suggestions on how to overcome challenges i.e. where to explore next, talking about what we think we should do, communicating and listening to figure out the logic of what is on screen, what the game is trying to show us to do. We'd switch if we died in the game. It was fun! This is just one of the ways you can explore game design in games by creating a conversation around it and analyzing it while playing the game making it a more communal experience. Was it hard? Yeah. We got frustrated. But we wanted to see it through because the allure of the game was built around discovering secrets and we were allured so we enjoyed getting innovative to discover them! This can be put into any game's experience, alone or with a friend. What's the secret to getting more lives? What's the secret to beating this boss? What can we see and analyze for ourselves to figure out the context of what we're supposed to be doing and then work at it until you've mastered that secret. For me that's the allure of games, that some sort of challenge is always there no matter the difficulty, and if they have a narrative attached to it that's structured around the game that's extra icing on the cake to make it enjoyable and want to figure out more secrets to overcoming challenges with innovation!
That guy at Snoman Gaming's criticizing game design while skipping on Mario Bros 3 all the way up to level 8 on his first playthrough and cheating by using save states made me insta-RAGE. Not the kind of person that should be taken serious for this kind of reviews.
"I just beat Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time, and it filled super rewarding! I warped straight to World 8..." "...had to use savestates..."
I stopped watching his video at that point. It's clear he has no idea what he's talking about.
He did play worlds 1-7 before, look at snoman's comment
I must say. When he mentioned how the game looked poor and glitched. He wasn't completely wrong.
Games Nintendo released by themselves like Mario games had very good and well functioning looking sprites. Most other games, though, just have disappearing sprites. And we didn't complain much. Also poor sound design. Either the sounds glitched out, or just don't have any. Something Nintendo didn't had that much problem with, usually.
Well, kind of just tells us how good Nintendo was.
There are more checkpoints in every level in Mega Man 11 depending on the difficulty you choose.
Mario Bros isn't the first platformer, its Donkey Kong.
Awesome video, man! One more point you could have mentioned (or if you mentioned, I didn't notice cause I'm an idiot) is the main reason I like high difficulty and the lives system: the tension you feel when fighting a difficult boss or going through a difficult part of the stage risking lose your progress and the rewarding you feel after beating it.
Everytime I beat a boss in Castlevania at 0 lives and at the last of my health, every time I beat Bowser with small Mario at 0 lives and time running out, everytime I beat Turbo Tunnel on my last life, everytime I beat a robot master in Megaman with only the mega buster and at the last of my health... man, I feel on the top of the world! It makes it worth all those times I died on those parts just for that one moment of satisfaction, when I throw a punch in the air and yell "YES!" while grinning like an idiot.
Yeah, I meant to highlight that, but I don't think I did as much. That the added tension it creates is part of what (some, not all) people enjoy.
Great video. Lives and fail states are essential components of "games." If you can't lose, it's not a game. His video was freaking absurd and he continually contradicted himself.
I really hope he watches this video. You made so many good points and I don't think Snoman really thought all of his arguments out when he made that NES video. It almost seems like he either rushed out the video or made a video about something he didn't understand fully.
I felt like his video was made out of spite for the nes like when Egoraptor did that Ocarina of time review. Ego actually admitted to this and apologized plus that vids still entertaining imo.
11:56 During the complaint about lack of telegraphing enemies; "Look at how the zombies pop up out of the ground in Ghosts n Goblins." Zooms in so we can see him completely ignore a full second of animation warning the player of incoming zombie.
The NES designs are not bad there beyond amazing and I love the designs of NES games Friday the 13TH Super Mario Bros 3,2,1 Metroid Ghoul School TMNT Megamans 1-6 Kid Iccuris Kirby Looney and Tiny Toons Disney games and many others but I can't remember them all though 💗 0u0
NES Game design practices don't make games that are accessible to many players... but just because it's not accessible, doesn't mean it's outright bad, right?
Of course, NES-style games end up being very niche in today's market as a result. In fact, the overbearing race of bigger game companies making their games as accessible as possible is what blew the door wide open for Indie markets to fill the niches left behind.
Although a lot of NES games do clumsily handle some aspects of their design - often manifested with a synergy of problems that compound on one another.
I would say that the worst example of a lives system absolutely murdering its game is not from a game of the NES Era, but the rather infamous Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 -- All that despite the fact that the aforementioned game does let you save and keep your progress between levels, compared to, for instance, the 1992 game Sonic The Hedgehog 2 sending you all the way back to the start of the game if you lost all your lives and continues.
A fair and excellent summation of pretty much my exact reaction to said video. First vid of yours I've seen, but very well done. I'll keep an eye out for more from here on out.
Hjalmar Johnson Thank you! If you catch another one, I hope you enjoy that too. ☺️
The mega man example is actually a pretty bad one for your case, considering that the developer was trying to go against the norms at the time. And shovel Knight took mostly the working parts of the old games
That one guy who’s here for no reason Consider that the game was one of the earliest NES games, and there’s an entire library of games that came out after.
@@DaveControlLive Weird, I thought it was one of the later ones because it’s a lot better when compared to most. I’m not saying the rest were bad, Megaman is just one of the least flawed NES games I know of. Mostly the good ones are First or Third party
That one guy who’s here for no reason Looked into it, and I was wrong. Mega Man 1 is around midlife for the NES. I was thinking it was earlier as there were 5 more once a year. But, NES came out in 83 to JP (85 to US) Mega Man 1 in 87, SNES 90, but NES games were made well into the early 90s . (Duck Tales 2 & Mega Man 6 came out in 93).
Thank you for this detailed response! I can tell that you really do care about this stuff. Awesome work, man!
Glad you thought so! :)
Moss
The main issue in megaman 2 is that you can't use flashman weapon on boss latter w/o farming enemies
Yeah.... but it's really not that good against Quick Man anyways. I dunno... I'd rather just use the Mega Buster against him.
(But - valid point)
@@DaveControlLive flashman weapon is more like an insurance weapon since that takes half of quickman's health
I know you've repeatedly stated you respect this guy, but he's dug his own pit here. He comes off as yet another modern gamer with no attention span who blames these games from another era for his own deficiencies.
He also tips his hand as yet another RUclipsr that thinks all of gaming revolves around Dark Souls. Name dropping the series does not automatically make a point valid or win an argument.
I actually have been working on something exactly like this-- and then I found this this morning, and realized that I don't think my voice is necessary, because you did it already, and better.
Thanks for making this video! I think maybe instead of addressing the same arguments (with a lot of the same conclusions), I'll try to rewrite mine into something more original and separately constructive!
Glad that you feel so, and I'll be interested to see your video when you're finished!
Gosh, I disagree with both of you. While Dan complains about bad design like all old games make all the mistakes he describes, you come back at him as if most NES games are fair and fun. Both are wrong.
The way I see it, every single NES game has at least a few punishing and unfair gameplay mechanics because of a difference in game design philosophy at the time. On the one hand, NES games logically flowed from the arcade games that were designed to give you just enough excitement that when you inevitably died you would put in another quarter. They were brutally difficult so they could take your money, but otherwise they would be free so you can't blame them for wanting to get paid, just that this design philosophy does not translate well to purchasing a game and taking it home, or at least, it doesn't anymore. At the time the game industry was much smaller, fewer people with less resources playing smaller libraries of games. Nowadays when you see NES enthusiasts they own dozens or hundreds of games, but back then you usually owned a single digit number and they had to last. So they were difficult and obtuse, but you had a lot more time to spend on mastering each one.
Today a dozen new games come out each week and we can't possibly play them all. And the game industry is huge with millions of people wanting to have some fun and exciting play without being beaten up and sent back to the beginning every few seconds (especially with the loading screens we often have to sit through). So good modern game design wastes less of your time and gives you more options for how you want to play so you can find what you find fun. And instead of having a game with 8 levels you have to play 100 times each before you beat them you might see 100 levels you have to try 8 times to beat. We have the resources now to make huge and varied game worlds and I love that. The NES era did the best they could with limited resources and some games of that time like SMB3 can be praised even to this day for the variety of worlds they were able to show at that time. But that is the expectation of a modern game, for it to take you places, show you things, and ideally tell a compelling story along the way.
In the end I am saying that times have changed, and while I agree that old games are not designed poorly, they are designed for a niche audience that still exists but was the entire audience in the 80s. Today the audience is much wider and more accessible and this modern philosophy is far more appealing to myself and most people who want to play games.
I completely agree that there were a lot of unfair games during the NES era, with bad game design elements. I'm not disagreeing with that. I also agree with you that a larger variety of games today is a good thing, and there are many great modern games that have innovated on game design.
I disagree with the notion that 'ALL' NES games were poorly designed, I disagree that lives are inherently bad game design, and I disagree that Shovel Knight's elements that made it stand out weren't implemented in several good NES games.
I definitely should have had a segment where I highlighted bad NES games to be more balanced. I wasn't trying to say there weren't horrible NES games (of which there are plenty), I was trying to point out ones that stood out, and that there are several good ones, as opposed to his assertion that there were none.
QuestionMarc It doesnt help that almost all of SnoMans examples were actually well designed games. Mario, Castlevania, Metroid, Megaman? Thats basically a list of the best designed action games on the system.
The games were designed to be hard with the intent of giving it a longer lifespan. If you're good at those games you can beat them in under and hour. If you lived in the 80s and would have to spend $60 to play a game for an hour, would you do it?
@@SohakmetGameplay There are other ways of making a game that gives you more than an hour of gameplay. This was just a common and simple solution for the technical issues of the time. So honestly, I don't like a lot of games from this era because there aren't many solutions to the technical limitations that I find satisfying.
@@QuestionMarc it seemed like he gave enough examples in this video to prove those games do.
If he used the time stopper, then he wouldn’t be able to use it on Quick man!!!!!
Quick Man gets owned by crash bomb.
@@Stroggoii good luck hitting that fast fricker.
@@krealyesitisbeta5642 You don't hit him, you put a crash bomb next to you and when he goes to tackle you he gets hurt by the blast.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO! ALL those points needed to be brought out about NES games. Some definitely hold up (Mario 3, Turtles 2, Kirby's Adventure, Megaman 2, 3, & 5) in every way, where others don't. You explained perfectly how there WAS GOOD GAME DESIGN BACK THEN as there is now. I watched his video first, I'm a fan of his too but this HAD to be done. PERFECT!
MegaMan doesn't hold up. At all.
there are no good 8bit games if you are young enough to still not have dementia of old age and live in the past inside alzheimer head
What a breath of fresh air this is. Like a beautiful flower sprouting from the shit heap that was the video you're responding to.
Another argument to be made is during the NES era, game designers were STILL learning to make games you could beat and not just go on and on or turn off once the high score was met. Designers were limited by the NES's hardware and that also given many game designers worked on arcade games, which were DESIGNED to be hard to suck your quarters, this would transfer to the home consoles at times, especially in console ports of arcade titles. The NES era saw a huge leap in game design, slowly but surely becoming more refined and ensuring the gameplay wasn't cheap but challenging and rewarding.
Heck lookit the big leap in the 16bit era, the SNES and Genesis not only looked better with their games but the ability for games to tell DEEP stories and better music and soundtracks improved and well... I could go on but we've all grown up with those innovations emerging as time went on.
That said, I agree with all your points Dave, while some design elements of the NES era were hard as hell, to say it was hard for the sake of hard or that every game had crummy design is a discredit to those games and their creators.
Now if we're talking about Shovelware games....then yeah bad design all around but they're a special breed of bad that belong in their own category.
This video was absolutely brilliant! I had many of the same issues with Snoman's video and you defended the often ingenious game design of NES classics very well. It really shows when someone who actually knows these games and has played them gets to talk critically about them.
My favorite part is the end when Snoman gives advice on how to improve the games. Dude, they don't make those anymore, there are no new NES games coming out LOL And platformers for newer consoles have already improved in all the areas you mentioned, and so much more. So who are you actually talking to?
Im glad you made this video. I like SnomanGamings channel also but when I saw his video I was hoping it would have focused on games with actual bad design not games that had incredible design that holds up to this day.
I haven't watched your video yet, but I'm sure i have more in common with your opinion than his based off of past taste. I was talking back to him through the screen. :) You're both fantastic creators, I'm glad you decided to take up the gauntlet. I always look forward to your uploads. Stay Awesome.
Thanks! I hope you ended up enjoying it and it was cathartic, haha. That's part of why I made the video, that's what I was doing while watching his. :P
But, I agreed - he is a fantastic creator!
3:47 I loved your video but I have to call bullshit on that one, extra lives are amazing in Mario Maker when you're playing the 100 mario challange, they even limit you to 3 lives per level to prevent levels with a million extra lives
Ah -sorry, I should've specified that I was thinking of when you play the levels individually. (As that's usually how I play the game), but I obviously didn't make that clear at all. :P My bad!
I started watching this video with the mentality that NES games were a product of their time and are poorly designed by today’s standards, but I left feeling the opposite. Honestly, this was a great video. Every point made was well informed and researched, and it was so compelling that I see this topic very differently than I did going in.
I'm happy to hear that! :)
I should point out - there are plenty of games on the NES games that were very poorly designed and a bunch of shovelware. But, that shouldn't discredit the genuinely good ones.
I feel like both sides have interesting points. Personally, I think, in hindsight, looking at all these games from a pure game designer's point of view leads to Dave's point of view, where the games are, indeed, balanced, even if the challenge isn't for everyone. However, NES games have an almost unfortunate place in gaming history because of how frequently mechanics like these were implemented and how completely strapped for another choice you'd be back when NES games were first coming out. Going back to NES games today, where we're spoiled for choice as to what kind of games we'd like to play, it's easy to lean one way or another; the games are difficult so people who aren't invested will get frustrated and see the faults, while people who are uniquely equipped for that kind of challenge will see how balanced everything is and will gladly stick with the titles. After all, the gaming climate/demographic has BROADLY expanded since the NES. Back then, really the only people playing games were those who could devote to the challenge. Now, when anyone can be a gamer, the challenges feel unfair for anyone who isn't equipped to handle them.
This video was not only great, but made me miss Little Nemo
Little Nemo is so good!
@@DaveControlLive it was my jam growing up!
Yeah im getting a vibe to go back and finish it.
Damn, I was beginning to think I was the only one to have played that. That game was awesome.
Unforgiving and hard as balls, but still fun.
The anime movie has held up surprisingly well too.
You're both right, but thank you so much for this new perspective! I like to finish a game quickly (and don't have much free time) so I like savestates and easy checkpoints. But you're right, just because people like Snoman and I hate aspects of certain games doesn't mean a game is badly designed. Different people like different games, and just because I like Kirby's Adventure because of its relative ease, it doesn't mean it's a game for everyone. Or, even though I hate Silver Surfer for being too hard for me, it's still a good game that many people do like.
This other dude just seems like he hates NES games... which is fine, but why make a video about it?
Also "unjustified deaths"? The salt is real. We don't all want to be spoon fed.
Not all of us want to be challenged. A problem with the both past and present video game era is that neither of them appeal to more than 1 type of group when it comes to difficulty. The past era didn’t provide people who just wanted a calm experience much to work with, aside from a few exceptions. However on the other hand, the present era isn’t providing people who want a challenge much to work with, again, aside from a few exceptions.
imagine you went bowling and as soon as you got a strike you "completed bowling"
Your argument about lives makes no sense to me. Getting extra lives were not rewards, they were more like a necessity or a big relief! Lives has no reason to exist if not to extend the gameplay time. So, since we don't need lives in modern gaming anymore we have the Star Coins (that you don't mention and I don't know why) to be some real rewards to the game. They feel satisfying to get, and they give you bonus levels that are usually way harder, if you're up to the challenge!
It was about time to Mario to ditch life forever!
But then, I agree with you about level design in that era.
Snoman showed games that had amazing level designs, like Mega Man, Mario (of course) and Duck Tales! And they are fun to play still today!
He showed really bad examples and situations that could be shown with another games that really fit what he was saying.
Lives are never a necessity unless you're playing poorly, or the gameplay design is so bad and unfair, you'll die no matter what. You can beat a game like Mega Man, Mario, or Castlevania without dying once. And them being a big relief makes them a reward.
I'm not arguing that games NEED lives, or games can't be designed without them. My point was, it's not inherently bad game design to use lives if you do it right, which some (not all) NES games did do.
Some games (like Contra) are about the challenge to see how far you can go on limited lives. You don't have to finish the game, it's the challenge of: How far can you go? That's the game.
Other games use lives more akin to Mega Man & Mario, where they're rewards to get that help incentivize exploration, or just to give you a general reward for collecting/doing well.
- I agree you can use things like Star Coins to give you secret areas. When I was using the Strawberry example from Celeste, my point was to showcase more-so that lives are one way you can give a more meaningful reward than 'nothing'. But, they're also a little different:
Collecting Star Coins for hidden areas (or something similar) gates off content from people who aren't skilled enough for it, so it also presents it's own problems. (I'm not sure why Celeste would have had a problem with this considering the mix tape areas, but whatever).
Collecting lives gives you an in-game reward without needing to gate content from someone as a consequence. They both have good uses. One doesn't negate the other.
Again, though: I have 0 problem with games that choose not to use lives. Both types of games can be designed poorly and both types of games can be designed well. I strongly disagree that lives are automatically 'bad' game design just because Snoman doesn't like them. I don't usually like roguelikes and find them to be tedious. That doesn't make roguelikes 'bad' design.
@@DaveControlLive That's true, some games are made based on lives, like Contra and Castlevania. Because they're one constant motion until the end (unless you die), and I actually think that is good! But games that are level-based, like Mario and Mega Man, I still think that lives are just to extend the gameplay. Why not let the player replay the level until he beat it?
Nevertheless, the times were different back then, and Castlevania, Mario, Mega Man, Contra, Duck Tales are all great games with great level design, but today I feel that lives only get in the way!
Talking about "gating off" content, lives can be the same. And even worse, lives can make the player quit the game at all, not only quit trying to find the secrets. A player that has not the necessary skill nor want to spend time repeating the level until they get good enough will not find any secrets AND will not even finish the game! That would be worse !
That's what Mario does nowadays, gives players optional collectibles that require a bit more skill, but not being necessary to finish the game. I think that's a way better solution!
Lives are a thing from the past, and nowadays we have better possibilites.
And yeah, I think that some roguelikes are really tedious too! hehe
@@Tulase I did feel that Contra and Castlevania were a tad too hard, despite having good intentions. These series were better refined on the SNES.
@@Scott89878 I think so, too! These games were way too hard!
But Contra 3 and Castlevania 4 on SNES are super doable, even with limited lives
@@Tulase Why should not use lives in some types of games in specific?, the core of the extra life system is variable in some franchise and does not apply to all of one in gaming, I mean, Mega Man by example uses lives and it somehow works, yet mainly because the good Mega Man games (Not MM2, MM5, MM2 GB, MM&B, MM8; those suck in design) have some structure in how presenting the challenge, the series was planned in that regard: Enemies and their positiong affect the environment.
First they teach you mechanics & how the enemies work, and then sure, but slowly they stop holding your hand, (A complaint I have with the Industry right now) and then is the moment you either progress towards the level or be stucked indefinitely, ¿You know why?, the difficulty comes rather with the player actions instead of the "Lives", but instead, the competence of the player. that comes down also when you get lives and HOW you get lives
So if a game suddenly has 1-ups and the design compliments it (Specially with a risk/reward system like the anterior example), we should not just be baffling about it and say it is not necesary or just a way to extend the gameplay. it also looks like you are telling me that NO Modern game extend ARTIFICIALLY the gamplay with even more tedious actions (Sub-missions that have no reward and grinding are the ones who come to mind).
Despite all of this: I say lives and their use depend more in the type of game and how it builds those mechanics. (My opinion isn´t fact, btw).
I started with a video that you're commenting on, and then watch yours.
Thanks for making it proper!
Little Nemo game, that you show up was a game, that I finish on emulator, maybe 2-3 years ago. I love it design as well with Adventure Islands series from NES (without the first one, I hated that one).
Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy was the most rewarding game for me on NES. I spend more than a year to find out how to do all the stuff without any walkthrough or tutorials, that are easy avaliable these days.
Also NES games supposed to take more of your time. Now we have a big spam of games. Then, I was playing what I had. Buying this games was soo blindly. XD