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Old 03-10-2021, 08:32 PM   #25
Leo656
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Join Date: Mar 2003
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Oh, for sure. I remember the first time I actually made it to the end of 8-4 by myself, I was like 5 or 6 and I was so psyched out that I froze and couldn't actually do it. I just stood there staring at Bowser all paralyzed with fear like "What if I f*ck up?!" and eventually I broke down and made my older sister do it, since she'd beaten it a hundred times by then. She was pretty pissed off since she was doing something else at the time. I felt bad about it so I went ahead and did it on my own the day after that. But that first time was rough.

After that it became one of those "Eh, I got a half hour to kill, might as well beat Super Mario Bros." kinda games. Those early Mario games were like a master class in game design, "teaching" you how to play them in real-time without any need for a tutorial or even the manual. Such a revelation, especially in those days. Like, go back and try to play just about any Atari-era game without a manual besides like, Frogger, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. Pretty much impossible; those games always had some pretty funky control schemes to make up for the one-button interface, but they were pretty decent otherwise assuming you HAD the manual, otherwise you were f*cked. But then a game like SMB comes along and it's so natural and intuitive you can play it blindfolded after a while.

Pretty much a great example of "difficulty" being related to challenging level design and not "Let's just try and f*ck the player", like most Sonic games ended up being. On the surface the two series are similar, but Sonic games are full of tons of what I call "F*ck-You Gameplay" and the Mario games have none of that sort of thing.
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