Have you ever felt so frustrated that you just about picked up your TV and hurled it out the window? Ever screamed at the character on screen for so long, that you’ve gone red in the face? No? Well then you haven’t played any of the games our collective is tackling this week.
First off, all we can say is play Ghosts ‘n Goblins on the NES. I don’t think I have ever seen a main character die as many times. Not only does this game contain ghosts and goblins, but it also has ogres, crows, fairies, zombies, and plants that are more-than-vaguely reminiscent of the fire shooting plants from Mario. This game is possibly the most frustrating game ever.
Let’s take a quick walk through the average experience of a play-through. “Okay, I cleared the river, but there are crows flying at me literally every 10 seconds! Why are ogres pooping on me?! What did I ever do to them?! They are literally pooping. Onto my head!! Are you KIDDING me?? What is WRONG with this game?!” Then their magic breaks your armor. And you die. You die A LOT!!
Final count: 19 deaths for Dylan, 15 for Dodge, 46 for Cody, and the glitchy AI is about 250. We gave up pretty fast. That’s how bad it is: a total of about 80 deaths, and we played for pretty much an hour. We look like noobs trying to play Call of Duty. By the way, when did pwn stop being cool?
Alright, time for trivia. What do Star Wars and The Lion King have in common? Did you guess that both have characters voiced for James Earl Jones? If so, you would be WRONG!! It’s actually that Simba’s real father is a Wookie. Moving on.
In case that paragraph didn’t give it away, we’re now onto The Lion King on the SNES, and while the voice acting and music sound amazing, I swear that “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” is going to be the elevator music in my own personal hell. This is because it accompanies one of the most annoying levels any of us have ever experienced in a video game, where swinging from hippo tails and riding around on ostriches requires an absurd amount of skill. Let’s face it, if you were riding around on an ostrich, you’d probably be pretty pathetic as well. We still haven’t even grown up yet; little Simba can take down a hyena, but he can’t ride an ostrich to save his life.
So far every game we’ve played qualifies as being “Nintendo hard”. Defined by Urban Dictionary as being “As difficult as a typical game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System,” most games designed for the earlier systems were made intentionally hard to make them last longer due to limited space. In all seriousness, we can’t get past the second level. Everyone’s manhood is at stake here.
Nananananaaaaaa! Time for Guitar Hero! Manhood has been restored! For those of you who haven’t played, in this game you play a plastic guitar and pretend to be a rock star, despite only having five buttons and a strummer. It’s crazy fun though, and you should try it if you get the chance. This is a major break from the classic SNES and NES games, and trust us, it is a very nice break!
After Guitar Hero, we returned to Ghosts’n’Goblins. Why we returned, none of us know, but it was probably due to the knight. The knight endlessly dies, and just keeps coming back; maybe we picked up on a little bit of his persistence? But in all honesty, we really weren’t paying attention this time around. The Steam flash sale rolled over, and we were kind of staring at the screen for minutes. That sale is addicting; if you don’t know what a Steam sale is, count yourself lucky. Valve (the makers of Steam) essentially drop the price on everything, and all of a sudden your wallet is empty! For those who are immersed in the sale as well, we feel your pain.
Back to Ghosts’n’Goblins though. This play-through, we got stuck with the worst weapon ever, fireballs. You’d think that balls of fire would be amazing, but they really kind of suck. Mario waaaay overdid them. You can only have two on screen at a time, which kind of sucks when there’s more than two enemies on screen at one time.
So we would spoil the plot for all of you, but we really can’t. We didn’t make it past the second level. If you know anyone who has, please forward them to us. We need to learn! Old school NES is way too ridiculous for any sane human. For those of you who are good at it, we salute you with our boxy controllers.
While Cody and Dylan were considering the games themselves, Dodge was busy pondering life:
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a character in a video game? More specifically, what is it like to die in a game? In the stories of games such as Dead Space, Halo, and Mass Effect, the protagonist is given such an important task, that when you die in the game, even though you know that you will get a another chance, what if you didn’t? What if that was it and you messed up? Then what happens? The spaceship full of deadly aliens will reach earth and annihilate every living thing, after the last hero of the planet earth jumps into a gorge. Which means it’s all over. What do you do then? More importantly, what do you FEEL then? Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I fail in a game, especially in a stupid way (falling off a cliff, throwing grenades around purposefully), I just feel bad that I messed up. I was the one hope, I was the chosen one, and I let everyone down: Issac will never find his girlfriend because he stomped on a barrel and blew him to pieces, Master Chief dies by driving a banshee into a cliff over and over, Commander Shepherd hit an asteroid. This can go on and on. It grinds my gears a little. I’m guessing it’s a great job on the developer’s part, with an excellent amount of immersion, but sometimes, it’s too much.
I want to feel accomplished while playing these games, but when you die stupidly, you feel down, you feel humiliated, you feel ashamed as the little spirit that controlled their brain. But on the other hand, when you are killed legitimately, you are fueled: “damn mothalova, I’m gonna demolish you next time.”
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