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Penny Arcade - Comic - Extremity

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited August 2020 in The Penny Arcade Hub
imagePenny Arcade - Comic - Extremity

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Read the full story here

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    dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    I assume the dialogue comes at you from random parts of the screen with no warning.

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    FireballDragonFireballDragon Registered User regular
    Is it because the dialogue is cheesy?

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    QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    It's important not to mix up nostalgia with fun. Games like Battletoads made their replayability out of ridiculously unfair difficulty.

    I loved games like that when I was 10. At that age I also beat Aladdin and Lion King in single sittings. As best as I can tell my brain at that age was the equivalent of a coke fiend who never comes down. These days though I'd make it about as far as Gabe.

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    dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    It's important not to mix up nostalgia with fun. Games like Battletoads made their replayability out of ridiculously unfair difficulty.

    I loved games like that when I was 10. At that age I also beat Aladdin and Lion King in single sittings. As best as I can tell my brain at that age was the equivalent of a coke fiend who never comes down. These days though I'd make it about as far as Gabe.

    I think for me, sitting in front of a tv screen with a video game console playing in the late 80s/early 90s, simply playing a video game was sufficiently novel to make up for the fact that I was doing the same thing over and over again. Most of the time. As the years went by, that became less true. This is much in the same way that simply watching a movie on a DVD started out impressive - sometimes regardless of the actual critical value of the movie - but eventually became ubiquitous enough that critical value became more important again.

    Another example is HDTV. It blew my mind for quite some time. I got one in my house and watched shows like Planet Earth that just absolutely floored me. But now, my brain has finally been reprogrammed that this is "normal", and that it looks like crap now that I've seen 4K with amazing shows like Planet Earth 2.

    We can never stay happy. I feel like it's really proof that evolution is a dick.

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    StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Games were made hard to combat rentals. If your game requires hours of playing to basically memorize patterns like a certain NES title, then at some point it became more economic to just buy the damn thing instead of renting it over and over.

    YL9WnCY.png
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    MarcinMNMarcinMN Registered User regular
    I used to be able to beat Battletoads pretty consistently. I wonder how long it would take me to get back to that point...

    "It's just as I've always said. We are being digested by an amoral universe."

    -Tycho Brahe
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    BursarBursar Hee Noooo! PDX areaRegistered User regular
    I played the Modern Warfare 2 remaster over the past couple of days. There was a point where I was continually loading a checkpoint-immediately dying-reloading for minutes on end where I wondered if something had changed in the remaster, or if the game had always been this stupid and I just have a lower tolerance for that kind of bullshit now.

    GNU Terry Pratchett
    PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
    Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
    egc6gp2emz1v.png
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    doompookydoompooky Wild (Let's Draw A) Horses Couldn't Drag Me AwayRegistered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Am I the only one here concerned about what has happened to Tycho? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. He's... He's attacking that poor animal's neck! That's that poor thing's tenderest, most sensual plump organ!

    doompooky on
    we7ek91hy97o.png
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    T-DangerT-Danger Registered User regular
    Personally, I kinda enjoyed the story of new Battletoads. It's not high art, but it's got some good lines, some great voice acting, and some hilariously over the top moments. The whole thing reminded me of the Sonic Boom cartoon, with the whole 'Well meaning but incompetent and egotistical heroes are frenemies with their equally incompetent and egotistical evil nemesis.'

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    palidine40palidine40 Registered User regular
    So, they couldnt pay for quality audio work and/or voice acting? (cause it just takes one of the two to mess up the other's sound) oofda

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    dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    Sterica wrote: »
    Games were made hard to combat rentals. If your game requires hours of playing to basically memorize patterns like a certain NES title, then at some point it became more economic to just buy the damn thing instead of renting it over and over.

    I think this is a bit of a myth. Renting games in Japan is actually not legal. And for a good chunk of the Nintendo era, Japan was the primary target and America was the afterthought. And yes, you can find some examples of American versions of Japanese games being harder (Ninja Gaiden III), there are at least as many of the Japanese game being the harder one (SMB3, Megaman 2 - where the hard mode is the ONLY mode, whereas Americans get a choice of hard or normal).

    I think it had more to do with justifying the high price of a game. They generally couldn't fit more game on a cartridge without increasing the price even further, so they just had to increase the difficulty.

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    BillieVeeBillieVee Registered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    It's important not to mix up nostalgia with fun. Games like Battletoads made their replayability out of ridiculously unfair difficulty.

    I loved games like that when I was 10. At that age I also beat Aladdin and Lion King in single sittings. As best as I can tell my brain at that age was the equivalent of a coke fiend who never comes down. These days though I'd make it about as far as Gabe.

    New games didn't come by very often when I was ten. If Mom got me a game for my birthday and it had bullshit difficulty, might as well try to master it because I'm not getting anything else until maybe Christmas. Today, I've got more games than I care to count, so I don't have much patience for extreme difficulty anymore.

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    MarcinMNMarcinMN Registered User regular
    BillieVee wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    It's important not to mix up nostalgia with fun. Games like Battletoads made their replayability out of ridiculously unfair difficulty.

    I loved games like that when I was 10. At that age I also beat Aladdin and Lion King in single sittings. As best as I can tell my brain at that age was the equivalent of a coke fiend who never comes down. These days though I'd make it about as far as Gabe.

    New games didn't come by very often when I was ten. If Mom got me a game for my birthday and it had bullshit difficulty, might as well try to master it because I'm not getting anything else until maybe Christmas. Today, I've got more games than I care to count, so I don't have much patience for extreme difficulty anymore.

    Ah, the memories of playing only Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (mostly Mario) every day for a year because it was literally the only game I had. :)

    "It's just as I've always said. We are being digested by an amoral universe."

    -Tycho Brahe
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    The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    dennis wrote: »
    Sterica wrote: »
    Games were made hard to combat rentals. If your game requires hours of playing to basically memorize patterns like a certain NES title, then at some point it became more economic to just buy the damn thing instead of renting it over and over.

    I think this is a bit of a myth. Renting games in Japan is actually not legal. And for a good chunk of the Nintendo era, Japan was the primary target and America was the afterthought. And yes, you can find some examples of American versions of Japanese games being harder (Ninja Gaiden III), there are at least as many of the Japanese game being the harder one (SMB3, Megaman 2 - where the hard mode is the ONLY mode, whereas Americans get a choice of hard or normal).

    I think it had more to do with justifying the high price of a game. They generally couldn't fit more game on a cartridge without increasing the price even further, so they just had to increase the difficulty.

    I don't think it was as pervasive as people think. But the developers of the Lion King game for the SNES/Genesis have said that the ridiculous monkey puzzle was made as hard as it was precisely because corporate demanded it, to combat rentals. So it's not a complete myth.

    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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    dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    The Wolfman wrote: »
    dennis wrote: »
    Sterica wrote: »
    Games were made hard to combat rentals. If your game requires hours of playing to basically memorize patterns like a certain NES title, then at some point it became more economic to just buy the damn thing instead of renting it over and over.

    I think this is a bit of a myth. Renting games in Japan is actually not legal. And for a good chunk of the Nintendo era, Japan was the primary target and America was the afterthought. And yes, you can find some examples of American versions of Japanese games being harder (Ninja Gaiden III), there are at least as many of the Japanese game being the harder one (SMB3, Megaman 2 - where the hard mode is the ONLY mode, whereas Americans get a choice of hard or normal).

    I think it had more to do with justifying the high price of a game. They generally couldn't fit more game on a cartridge without increasing the price even further, so they just had to increase the difficulty.

    I don't think it was as pervasive as people think. But the developers of the Lion King game for the SNES/Genesis have said that the ridiculous monkey puzzle was made as hard as it was precisely because corporate demanded it, to combat rentals. So it's not a complete myth.

    Hence "a bit". :)

    It's almost impossible to rule out that it ever happened. But it certainly seems not to have been the general explanation.

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    shadowysea07shadowysea07 Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Rental discussion wise a number of games were purely hard due to being designed for arcade machines first and thus to eat up quarters or insert country coin variant here. Of course since the game genie existed it made most of the difficult stuff or length more doable. Oh how I miss the game genie.

    "It's important not to mix up nostalgia with fun. Games like Battletoads made their replayability out of ridiculously unfair difficulty.

    I loved games like that when I was 10. At that age I also beat Aladdin and Lion King in single sittings. As best as I can tell my brain at that age was the equivalent of a coke fiend who never comes down. These days though I'd make it about as far as Gabe."

    Yeah I don't know how my 5 year old self managed to beat battle toads and other hard games that people apparently had trouble with. I remember as a kid in smrpglotss that my record for the super jump or whatever consecutive jump attack mario had was 36. When I replayed it later on the wii I couldn't get past 13. Granted input delay and such is a factor.

    shadowysea07 on
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    Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    The Wolfman wrote: »
    dennis wrote: »
    Sterica wrote: »
    Games were made hard to combat rentals. If your game requires hours of playing to basically memorize patterns like a certain NES title, then at some point it became more economic to just buy the damn thing instead of renting it over and over.

    I think this is a bit of a myth. Renting games in Japan is actually not legal. And for a good chunk of the Nintendo era, Japan was the primary target and America was the afterthought. And yes, you can find some examples of American versions of Japanese games being harder (Ninja Gaiden III), there are at least as many of the Japanese game being the harder one (SMB3, Megaman 2 - where the hard mode is the ONLY mode, whereas Americans get a choice of hard or normal).

    I think it had more to do with justifying the high price of a game. They generally couldn't fit more game on a cartridge without increasing the price even further, so they just had to increase the difficulty.

    I don't think it was as pervasive as people think. But the developers of the Lion King game for the SNES/Genesis have said that the ridiculous monkey puzzle was made as hard as it was precisely because corporate demanded it, to combat rentals. So it's not a complete myth.

    That puzzle never gave me any problems

    It was realising that you could double jump on the ostrich that took bloody ages

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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