Is this part really as hard to figure out as the Angry Video

No, you just have to use your imagination. I guess that could be a problem today though. But back in the 80's, people actually still read books a lot and knew what "metaphor" means.
I beat this game without walkthrough btw, which is more than I can say about Hexen (because there it really is a wild goose chase to find a lever or something you happened to miss).

>>3382892
What about equipping a certain color crystal and crouching at a nondescript wall is at all intuitive? What would make you think "I should try this"? I don't know if a towns person gives you some vague allusion to a hint about it, but if not then all the imagination in the world wouldn't point to this solution.

File: B5.gif (4MB, 2552x3297px) Image search: [Google]

4MB, 2552x3297px

>>3382895
Mountains are made or rock. It's pretty obvious, and it's the only solution left after you can't find a litteral, prominent rock. Deducion by eliminition and all that. It's just basic logic and intuition.
I don't remember anything about the crystal, because I haven't played this in over 30 years, but it must not have been that difficult if I could figure it out. Probably a hint was given somewhere.
And yeah, some of the townfolk give bogus info, but that's one of the cool things about this game. You get to figure out yourself what's true and what's not. Reminded me a lot of playing tabletop D&D, where not everyone was out to help you. In fact, I bought this game because the cover reminded me of D&D. It's heavily inspired by the cover from AD&D module I6 Ravenloft, btw).

Pic is rumor table from Basic D&D module B5 Horror on the Hill. Pretty typical stuff...

>>3382918
>over 30 years
Actually about 27 years. It was around 1989 that I played this game. It was my first Castlevania, didn't get the first game until later. Different game styles altogether...

Yes, this game is bullshit. I didn't get anywhere with it as a child until I saw a guide.

The hint was something along the lines of "Hit your head against Deborah's cliff to make a hole".

The solution is to have the red crystal and kneel at the cliff until a whirlwind takes you away.

You might know this if you solved a slightly more straightforward puzzle- getting to the dungeon beneath a river.

The hint to that one was "wait for me by the river at midnight". The solution was to have a blue crystal and kneel there until the game scrolls downwards.

Of course, the game doesn't mention anything about using crystals and kneeling, so if you didn't figure that on your own, you were stuck.

I'd also like to point out that the crystal/kneeling thing was the only time based interaction in the game. Everything else was an active event (hitting, talking, using items, etc), so it was extremely counter-intuitive to think that waiting while crouching would actually cause something to happen.

File: fozzy.png (72KB, 250x269px) Image search: [Google]

72KB, 250x269px

>>3382970
All those NPCs with bullshit or mistranslated tips too.

The only thing I figured out on my own was that holy water could break blocks. Kneeling in the right places with the right crystals had me completely stumped.

File: Castlevania II - Simon's Quest (U) [!]-0.png (4KB, 256x240px) Image search: [Google]

4KB, 256x240px

>The hint was something along the lines of "Hit your head against Deborah's cliff to make a hole".
There is also this one. The question is whether or not this is enough to give you the correct idea.

>>3383113
It depends on whether or not you're the type who needs to be carefully spoonfed exact instructions on what to do.

Usually this type of shit was hinted at by the townsfolk, who you used to have to talk to everyone in every town just so you wouldn't miss the cryptic bullshit. Same thing happened in Zelda II.

>>3383113
Yeah, so when the fucking chyron for "Deborah Cliff" comes on screen you know to...do what exactly?

>>3383239
you do the same thing you had to do with the blue crystal in a new spot

>>3383337
At best, you're giving younger you more credit than you realize.

File: baddude.jpg (14KB, 383x336px) Image search: [Google]

14KB, 383x336px

>>3382970
Pretty much fucking this.

I've met more than my fair share of people over the years who played this game when it was new, and everyone seems to remember figuring it all out without trouble at all. Oh, they can't remember specifics anymore, but that's to be expected, right? It was decades ago.

More to the point, one of the very important "specifics" that they don't remember was either reading the Nintendo Power issue with the solutions in it, or hearing them from someone at school who had. This game was notorious for its poor localization, and was one of the most requested games for an article that NP had ever received. This game is right up there with Milon's Secret Castle on the "Nintendo Power Games" list.

Worse yet are the special snowflakes who've, in recent years, found out that this was a "thing" back in the day and are claiming to have figured it out on their own in some misguided and embarrassing attempt to be the Coolest Retard of Video Games.

These are the sorts of people like >>3382918, who starts off his post with patronizing nonsense about "logic" and "intuition" only to directly lead that into an admission that he doesn't even remember the necessary item to complete the puzzle, or whether or not a hint was even given. And then -- in that weird sort of rambling that pathological liars do when they get embarrassed wondering whether or not anyone's buying their story -- starts going on about tabletop Dungeons & Dragons for the rest of the post.

Ya'll niggas need Jesus.

>>3383531
GOAT post

>>3383523
This is a game that's not even figuratively, but literally solved by throwing holy water on every tile, every single tile you see.

Of course, the younger me found one of the clues on some random tile in the middle of one of the areas between towns and said "fuck this shit."

If I had been slightly older I might have been like "Okay the game can't be that big this is fine," but instead I moved onto Star Tropics and The Guardian Legend, which I also did not finish.

The games I actually had the patience to finish back then were easy jRPGs and for some reason a lot of megaman and mario games. I always got stuck on death in the first Castlevania and just fuck the third one I can barely finish it now.

>>3382970
>The hint to that one was "wait for me by the river at midnight". The solution was to have a blue crystal and kneel there until the game scrolls downwards.
The hint for the lake mansion is "To replenish earth, kneel by the lake with the blue crystal."

>>3383574
yeah, "wait for me by the river at midnight" is the clue for the boatman when he takes you to the town full of whores.

>>3382884
Even if you find all the clues and figure out that you need to kneel by Deborah Cliff while holding the red crystal...

There are two cliffs that look like that.
One of them is explicitly shown to be Deborah Cliff via the gypsy giving you the diamond.
That one also happens to be the wrong one.
In order to solve the puzzle, you need to figure out that there are two Deborah Cliff in two different locations, and only one will summon the tornado.

>>3383626
You're right that's like what, 50/50? and then you'd have to go and try the other one if you got it wrong?

it's just impossible, nobody could figure that out

>>3383645
No you fucking idiot, the other cliff ISN'T EVEN CALLED DEBORAH CLIFF IN THE GAME.
As in, the game directly instructs you to go to the wrong place.

It's the hardest Castlevania game if you play it blind.

>>3383531
/vr/ summed up in one post

>>3383657
In before "misdirection is a feature you idiort"

>>3383657
Both of them are part of the same rock formation called Deborah Cliff.

>>3383717
>never shown in game or manual

>>3383720
>"How come you never asked her out dude? she was totally into you."
>NO SHE DIDN'T. SHE NEVER ACTUALLY SAID--

>>3383731
At least you tried.

>>3383736
both cliffs, according to the in-game 2-dimensional geography, are at the leftmost terminal point of the map, reached by separately getting off at two different locations after taking a boat across the same river.

>>3383753
but dude there isnt even a giant glowing quest marker leading me to it

how the fuck am i supposed to figure out where to go fag

>>3383803
More like there's a giant glowing quest marker leading you to a completely different place.

But since you've never played the game, you wouldn't know that.

>>3383817
to be fair, DE-BORAH and DEBORAH could be completely different similarly named places.

>>3383823
Just like ALJIBA and ALBA.

>>3382884
The NA version is rife with mistranslations.

>>3382884
probably good hint got lost in translation

>>3383572
Death is the worst boss in CV1 next to Frankenstein if you ask me.

File: what were they thinking.jpg (75KB, 636x464px) Image search: [Google]

75KB, 636x464px

>>3382884
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

https://youtu.be/BP-r6rzIWtI

>>3383531
You're just trying to rationalize your need to be spoon-fed simple stuff you should be able to figure out on your own. I doubt you could even finish an 80's text adventure by yourself, and yet we drew maps and took down notes and enjoyed solving the puzzles. Fact is, games have changed since then and they hold your hand constantly now, and any deviation or unexpected difficulty results in the modern player throwing his hands up in the air with cries of "Not fair! Not fair!" Heck, just look at how even FPS design has become completely linear and scripted since Doom.
On top of that now the games have all this "achievement" reward bullshit even though they're dumbed-down. It's a viscious cycle that panders to the lowest common denominator of society, and you shouldn't celebrate it because all it does is make gaming more boring and predictable and ultimately unrewarding. You can do better, if though you were raised and brainwashed to believe otherwise.

>>3383572
This game isn't even that hard, it's just ragged on a lot because it was in some AVGN video, so they mimic him.
I found Milon's Secret Castle much harder and frustrating to finish, but I kept at it anyway because I loved the atmosphere and style of that game.
And then there's Deadly Towers, never managed to beat that one. Cool game though.
But there's other games like Ghosts 'n Goblins that people say is impossibly hard but really it's not. I think people just give up when they can't progress easily, but back in the 80's you didn't have tons of games to choose from so you kept at it. Now they just move on to something else, because it's the path of least resistance.

>>3383914
The only rationalization going on in this thread is your incessant need to rationally shitty design as "challenge".

nobody expected to beat games back then.

my brothers and I had like a dozen NES games in the late 80s/early 90s.

do you know how many we beat? ZERO

how pissed were we that we couldn't beat them? ZERO

you played your game while waiting for dinner. mom and dad shouted "KIDS COME DOWN FOR DINNER" and whoever was playing shouted back "JUST LET ME DIE FIRST" and once you got a game over, you'd turn off the game and join the rest of the family

my family didn't have Simon's Quest, but a few people we knew did. they seemed perfectly happy with the game, besides finding it very hard.

>>3383936
This ain't no hugbox, so don't be surprised when people don't conform to shitty AVGN "opinions" (more like fake outrage that they use to garner more views).

>>3383996
"Hugbox"? Don't cut yourself on that edge, faghammer. The only surprise is you sucking a shitty game's dick so hard your lips are getting chapped. It's a shitty design now, it was a shitty design then, and in 20 years when the post-Trump post-humans start trying to rebuild society, it'll be a shitty design then, too.

>>3383984
This is how I remember them too. 1ccs are for tryhards.

>>3383926
I wouldn't know I never watch youtube people because none of them are likable.

File: castle-of-the-winds_2.gif (35KB, 1024x768px) Image search: [Google]

35KB, 1024x768px

>>3384038
Boy you must get really angry when you lose at roguelike games, because the RNG didn't give you a good deal.

>>3384038
>it was a shitty design then,

Oh is baby mad there's not quest markers and a yellow brick road to show you the way

>>3384608
No, I'm mad that the action involved makes no fucking sense, and mentally broken nintendofags like you are too caught up in your Stockholm Syndrome to admit that maybe, just maybe, something in a game wasn't perfect.

>>3383531
Basically this.

Anyone who says they have figured the whirlwind puzzle by themselves without luck is a liar. That wasn't even a "lateral thinking puzzle", it was pure bullshit design.

>>3384705
I remember being stuck for a whole school year on that game. I honestly don't remember how I got past that part, just that I know I did without help. Knowing kiddie me's mentality, though, I probably tried crouching there with the red crystal on my own at some point because of >>3383574 and the now deleted (for some reason) post mentioning the "wait for a soul with the red crystal at Deborah cliff" bit.

>>3384682
>No, I'm mad that the action involved makes no fucking sense

what doesn't make sense? Pray to the mountain. That's a mountain. How do people pray? On their knees.

2+2 =

>>3384828
>2 + 2 =
5, in the case of very large 2s.

>>3384830
No wonder you can't solve a simple puzzle.

>>3384918
Certainly, you're familiar with the concept of rounding, right? If not, rounding is where one numerical value is deemed unwieldy for whatever reason and swapped for another approximately equal numerical value. Here are a few examples:
saying that something costs 'fifty dollars' rather than 'forty-nine-dollars-and-ninety-nine-cents'
saying 'it's quarter-of-three' rather than saying 'it's two forty-seven.'
shortening pi's extensive number of digits down to a simple 3.14

That sort of thing.

Rounding generally replaces a given number with the nearest whole or round number based on whether the final digit is a value higher or lower than five. Higher than five, and you round up. Lower than five, you round down. A round number is a number with its final digit as zero.

In this case, 2.3 can be rounded down to 2 as can 2.4. So 2.3 (≈ 2) + 2.4 (also ≈ 2) = 4.7 (≈ 5).
Ergo, in the case of large approximate values of 2, such as 2.3 and 2.4, 2 + 2 does indeed = 5.
qed

>>3384953
nice

>>3383531

fucking this. i played the game when it was new. did not figure that shit out until i had the nintendo power issue.

>>3383914
Are you trying to say that Doom isn linear and scripted or that fps games before Doom weren't linear and scripted ? Because that's retarded either way.

>>3385914
FPS before Doom are pretty much shit.
FPS after Doom are pretty much shit also.
There's a reason people have made tends of thousands of levels for that game, and not nearly as much for others (not even Quake).

>>3383914
Your ridiculous assumptions about my age and/or gaming preferences aside...

>You're just trying to rationalize your need to be spoon-fed simple stuff you should be able to figure out on your own.
No one wants to be spoonfed, but they at least want something, anything that might point them in the right direction. Simon's Quest is infamous for not doing so, due to a really poor localization. That's the whole point of this thread.

As for the rest of your post, your inane ramblings about whatever the current generation of gamers wants from their games are neither relevant or sensical.

>>3386038
>no one wants to be spoonfed
The befuddling popularity of the GB installments to the Zelda series say otherwise. There's even a genuine mother figure in the Oracle ones.
>hey link! now that you did such and such thing, you should go west into the forest of linearity to find the next macguffin.
>don't go anywhere else, you naughty boy! well, you can't anyway, even if you wanted, which you don't because you actually enjoy this game. i've locked all the other areas because this is not about exploration at all and you need to do things as i tell you to, so listen to mummsy-wummsy
>oh, in case you're not sure which way west and east are, just remember that it will always spell 'we' when facing north, so if you're facing north, W-E! see? west is always to the left when facing north
>oh, and north is always up, just so you know
>if you're not sure which one is left, extend your thumb and pointer on each hand in front of you with your palms oriented away and the hand that makes a proper L-shape and not a backwards one is your left hand. L for left! nifty, right?
>also, i'm a fucking moe-ass tree
So yeah. People like spoonfeeding now.

>>3386038
You're blaming the localization but have you actually made any attempt to compare the original text?

>>3386093
>tfw my actual real life mother was not this helpful at any single point in time on any possible subjects

>>3386093
Nice hyperbole M80

File: NES.png (241KB, 800x255px) Image search: [Google]

241KB, 800x255px

The holy trinity of NES games desu senpai.

>>3383731
She said it with her eyes, not her words.

>>3386182
>implying the first two bits of greentxt weren't an exact description of the gameplay
yeah, tree-mommy doesn't tell you your left from your right, but the rest is spot-fucking-on and don't pretend otherwise

>>3382884
I figured this out 15 minutes before I had to be at a cub scout meeting as a kid. I couldn't wait to get back home and get back to it. That meeting seemed to last forever.

>>3383984
speak for yourself,
i used to rent a game on fridays and woke up very early on saturdays trying to beat them.
Im dont want to sound cocky, but i tried very hard to beat them and failed most of the time; but i beat some.
The joy you feel after beating them is great!!

>>3383531
Fuckin' truth

File: 1438843414461.jpg (57KB, 709x538px) Image search: [Google]

57KB, 709x538px

>>3383531

>>3386093
Let me be more clear, no one HERE wants to be spoonfed. As in, this thread or this particular board.

But, at this point, I've accepted that you really want to talk about spoonfeeding and the current generation rather than the actual topic at hand, so get it all out of your system.

>>3386101
Yes, as have many others over the years. Here's a pretty neat example of such...

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/diff

File: 1468540387148.gif (988KB, 500x350px) Image search: [Google]

988KB, 500x350px

>>3383531

>>3386884
Gasp, not directional hint. And a goal. How awful. How dare they point me to the meat of the game, I want to waste time dicking around in places I'm not prepared for! (Which you can do, in Seasons at least, after a few dungeons.)

>muh linearity is hand holding
You do realize the only reason Zelda 1 was able to get away with it's open world was because the weapons were only weapons and the dungeons were bland as fuck? When weapons became tools and dungeons are designed around them, they had to be introduced linearly so each new dungeon could include the previous weapon in puzzles.
To even it out, there are a ton of hidden, optional shit to find.
I'd rather play creative dungeons in order than a bunch of enemy rooms that I could do whenever.

By the way, if I remember correctly, eventually both games say something like "Fuck you, figure out the next dungeon yourself."

File: tfw.jpg (11KB, 236x229px) Image search: [Google]

11KB, 236x229px

>>3387115
>tfw you will never be finnish

>>3383984
>mom and dad shouted "KIDS COME DOWN FOR DINNER"

Did you live inside a Norman Rockwell painting? I ate my TV dinners WHILE playing my games. Best of both worlds.

>>3383531

spotted the millennial

File: bronson.jpg (35KB, 600x402px) Image search: [Google]

35KB, 600x402px

>>3383531
>Worse yet are the special snowflakes who've, in recent years, found out that this was a "thing" back in the day and are claiming to have figured it out on their own in some misguided and embarrassing attempt to be the Coolest Retard of Video Games.

This whole post needs to be engraved in gold or something.

>>3387292
And how old are you, Grandpa?

>>3387292
I'm still not entirely sure what a millennial is, as the definition seems to keep changing based on the argument at hand, but I'm 38. I'm probably not a millennial by any definition.

>>3387327
38 is Gen X. The generally accepted definition of Millenial is "born after 80 but before 2000". It used to be called Gen Y I think.

>>3387338
Well, that's a more clear explanation than I've ever gotten before. Okay, I'm Gen X. Whatever that means.

>>3383531
I'm late to the party, and I know everyone else is sucking your dick, but I love this post.

>>3387327
millennials are actually 37 or younger, so you just barely missed it.

>>3387338
That's stupid as fuck. So it encompasses anyone from 16 to 36. I'll say right now those two age groups have almost nothing in common. It's like saying a 30 year old and a 10 year old are the same demographic. The ONLY way this stupid term makes any sense is if it refers to people born since the millennium began. I just don't see how a 35 year old grown ass man with a family and kids can be part of the same group as a kid in high school who can't drive or even legally work in most states. Hell he could have a kid of his own that's 16. Are they both millennials? How dumb.

>>3387348
I don't know, the easiest way to kind of explain it, is basically anyone who spent their formative years around technology, so basically if you were fucking around on computers by your teen years, which is almost every born in 1980 and onward.

The problem is that can now be said for literally anyone born, and millennial itself is used as a slur more than anything now, even people that don't realize they are "stupid millennials" themselves, because like you said, the age gap is so huge.

>>3387348
Demographic generations are traditionally about 20 years. Baby Boomers are from '40-'60, for example.

I once found here a website that compared the english and the japanese version, and while the japanese version had some issues on its own, it seems that it also had easier clues, if I do not remember it wrong; basically, the english version suffered from a cheesy translation, where they Also added false clues because why the fuck not; making the game way harder

If I'm not wrong, it Also showed the reaction of japanese viewers to The avgn video, and they said that in their version the clues Were simple

So, while it is possible to beat it, false clues and a bad translation make it harder

Yeah, Gen Y was the previous name for Millenials.

But sometime along the road, when millenials didn't exist and Gen Y was becoming a thing (like Gen Z today), Gen X and the new Gen Y got mixed up.

That's retarded.

Before, me and my older 8-year brother were different generations and now we both millenials. He still thinks he's Gen X though.

>>3387361

And that's retarded. People don't get that it is a loose definition. That means, people FROM that 20 year time period could be considered from that generation. Not that everyone borth in that period are the same gen. Most baby boomers are from after the 50s though.

>>3387340

Because it's an oversimplistic explanation

It's weird to be called a millennial. When I think of one I think of somebody who was born with their iphone glued to their face and publicly post their life story on facebook and twitter. I don't get the hate for millennials since I assume they were raised the same way I was and were taught to keep things private when talking to strangers.

File: 2792011-8076100338-Ninte[1].jpg (222KB, 457x640px) Image search: [Google]

222KB, 457x640px

>>3382892
>No, you just have to use your imagination.

BULLSHIT

Nothing in the entire game gives you one fucking clue that you have to take a crystal and duck near a wall.

Let me tell you how shit worked back then, kiddie, because your age is showing.

I'm 35 years old and I played this game on release.

The fact of the matter is that they expected you to buy Nintendo Power or a game guide to tell you how to get by once you got stuck.
It was the perfect way to sell magazines, and get kiddies to call the Nintendo Help Line (for a fee, of course)

The only other way was word of mouth.

The first Zelda game was notorious for this as well. There was no fucking way of knowing exactly where there was a wall you could bomb, a bush you could torch, or where to play the flute to make a secret appear and it was all very cryptic except for the tip you got every once in a while from an old man.

>>3387410
The term for those people are "gen Z." Millennials are comfortable with technology, but spent their formative years before the internet of things (Smartphones, tablets, smart watches, smart tvs) became big.

>>3387383
It might be that it's easier to fit more Japanese text in those dialog boxes.

>>3387413
>There was no fucking way of knowing exactly where there was a wall you could bomb, a bush you could torch, or where to play the flute to make a secret appear

also, I would like to point out that this meant that I went THROUGH THE ENTIRE MAP bombing EVERY FUCKING WALL and torching EVERY FUCKING BUSH (which was a pain in the ass because the blue candle only allows one flame per screen!)

All because I did not have access to a guide or Nintendo Power.

At least the dungeons cut you a break because breakable walls were only in the middle part of each wall. With the outside, I had to make a little chart of spots on the map where I had bombed every wall. If I ran out of bombs I had to either kill enemies for bomb drops or go buy more.

Luckily, as a little kid, I had 3 advantages:

1. I had lots and lots of time on my hands,

2. I was extremely persistent.

3. There wasn't much else for me to do besides videogames and sometimes cartoons when I wasn't in school, so all my time was spent exploring or getting gud at the difficult games

>>3387413
>I'm 35 years old and I played this game on release.

I had the same experience. Rented it the day it came out. This was not intuitive at all. I had a group of friends over (3-5 people taking turns playing, I cannot even comprehend doing that now) and no one could figure it out. We correctly guessed the cliff but we did not figure out the exact sequence needed to proceed.

Weeks later I was talking about it at the game store and someone had called the nintendo help line, and the store now included a little sticky note on the manual explaining it to other people who rented it.

The game was hated by almost everyone at the time it was released, especially fans of the original castlevania.

>ITT retards try to hide the fact that they're retards

>>3387413
>The first Zelda game was notorious for this as well. There was no fucking way of knowing exactly where there was a wall you could bomb, a bush you could torch, or where to play the flute to make a secret appear and it was all very cryptic except for the tip you got every once in a while from an old man.

I've read that was the developer's (developers'?) intention. It must be true because I read it on the internet.

>>3387440
They're not hiding it at all. Just look at >>3382918

>>3387430
>The game was hated by almost everyone at the time it was released, especially fans of the original castlevania.

I did like how you could take different paths and explore different places, but I felt the enemies were repetitive.
At my young age, I also didn't understand the concept of grinding for resources and experience. This also became a huge problem for me in Zelda 2 because I would rush into battles without being leveled up properly for the upcoming enemies.
This caused me lots of frustration.

I was definitely relieved when Castlevania 3 came out and it went back to its roots, although that was hard as balls too.

>>3387450

Villagers not telling the truth is one thing, and a neat idea, but fucking up the translation of a vital clue is another issue altogether.

The word "artifical difficulty" is thrown aroudn a lot in retro gaming but in this case it was 100% legit. The translators shit the bed on this one and ruined he game for many people.

Ultimately what's tragic about this game is it is fun. It's quite challenging, has just enough grinding not to be annoying. If it was a little clear it would be a top tier game. However they did get lazy as fuck with bosses.

>>3387465

A month could go by before anyone would rent zelda 2. It was hated almost as much as simon's quest was. The grind you desribed really did turn off a lot of gamers.

Personally I liked that aspect. I was a pen and paper players since around 1982, and had some experience on PC RPGs before they started emerging on the NES. I embraced the grind.

File: images[1].png (4KB, 240x210px) Image search: [Google]

4KB, 240x210px

>>3387489
>However they did get lazy as fuck with bosses

Oh fuck I forgot all about this

>grim reaper just sits there like a bitch while you whip the shit out of him
>after being rock-hard in Castlevania 1

I guess he was just so down about his defeat the first time he just kind of gave up on life

get it? The grim reaper, giving up on life? HAHAHAHAHAHHH

Wait, you're not laughing...

>>3387507
Not one boss was hard. It's like they all didn't give a fuck same with Dracula who you could stunlovk and beat in seconds.

>>3387491
>>3387430
Ah, Castlevania 2

If Simon’s Quest mimics the shape of an RPG, Mansions play the role of dungeons. Five of them dot the countryside, and each one contains a different key relic

No one seems to have put any real thought into the actual layouts of the Mansions. Think on Castlevania, a game where each and every background tile was clearly arranged with care and consideration. Each level carried its own theme, with minor (and sometimes major) visual changes telling a kind of story as you progressed through that stage. You moved from underground waterway to courtyard to dungeon service entrance in one stage, then from dungeon to alchemy lab to grand hallway the next. The “interactive” elements of each level — the blocks Simon walked across — occupied specific space by deliberate design. Background tiles connected to foreground blocks to justify each and every platform and hazard. Castlevania brought logical architectural design to platformers, and I love it for that.

Now, throw all that away for Mansions. Evidently drunk on the ability to scroll the screen freely in all directions due to more advanced NES tech and programming, the level designer(s) behind Simon’s Quest created the Mansions as five willy-nilly messes. Each one functions as a kind of maze, and that’s all well and good, but they’re all haphazard and lack the obvious care and consideration that went into Castlevania. But hey, free-scrolling!

Cont.

>>3387516
Cont.

Mansion design falls short on several levels. Despite the complete lack of visual variety, the real issue is simply that the layouts are uninspired and workmanlike. Mansions feel less like interesting, “real” spaces to navigate and more like paths designed simply to make the player cover a lot of ground in order to acquire the MacGuffin within. Their internal architecture doesn’t obey any sort of logic — especially that one top-heavy Mansion with the large, pointless void in the center of the upper area — and they’re packed with cheap traps. The game loves to throw illusory floors at you, which will kill you the first time you wander into one and plummet to the spikes or water below. You can avoid these by watching enemy movement patterns (skeletons will never walk over a mirage) or chucking holy water liberally… which you kind of need to do anyway, since clue books and secret paths are hidden inside blocks.

The free-scrolling design of the Mansions usually creates more trouble than benefit, unfortunately. Enemies do that 8-bit thing where they respawn if their spawn point is within x number of pixels of the screen’s edge, so you fight the exact same enemies constantly. A good many of the interior spaces link up via staircases, which Simon climbs slowly and in a very vulnerable way. The game loves to spawn enemies which mingle at the top or bottom of staircases, roaming back and forth in a way that guarantees you simply can’t avoid taking a hit once you reach the top (unless you use a very expensive Laurel). And to top it off, the music isn’t even that great.

>>3387519
Cont.

Functionally, the most useful thing about Mansions is the way the game clock stops while you’re inside. This makes them good places to farm for cash and experience (which are weirdly linked: You don’t get experience for killing enemies, just for collecting hearts) without mucking up the endings. Or mucking them up worse than the programmers did, anyway. Each Mansion/area of the game has a level cap, so you can’t grind all the way up to maximum experience in the first Mansion, though. Konami is on to you and your cheating ways.

Anyway, the point of each Mansion is to buy an Oak Stake and plunge (throw) it into a relic container on a pedestal and claim the warm Dracula nugget within.

>>3387523
Do you think Nintendo ordered their teams and companies to make the sequels widely different? Castlevania 2 Zelda 2 and is you want to include the Western Mario 2 were widely different than the first. I wonder if that was a requirement.

>>3387532
Not him, but yes they did. Deliberately so, under the simple premise that they didn't think anyone, in any of the markets, wanted "more of the same" in sequel titles.

To be fair, those games were, in almost every respect, the first of their kind. I don't think Nintendo really understood where to go from there, so they made a choice and followed through on it. It wasn't the "right" choice in hindsight, but someone had to figure out how it all worked.

>>3387532
>Do you think Nintendo ordered their teams and companies to make the sequels widely different?

No. Honestly I think Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 saw the success of games like Dragon Warrior and other RPG's and they wanted to give players a deeper playing experience at the expense of sacrificing the relatively simple formula that made the games successful to begin with

I feel that these franchises were just starting out and they didn't want to do basically the same game for their sequel after having a well-selling original IP

In the case of Mario 2, Super Mario 2 Japan was basically a level expansion for Super Mario 1. I don't even think the difficulty was that big an issue, although Mario 2 Japan did throw a lot of shit right off the bat and would have been very very hard for someone who hadn't mastered Level 8 of Mario 1.

TLDR;
I feel like they were some of the first game franchises and they were trying out new ideas that they saw other games use and didn't want to make a sequel too much like the original

Funnily, the third installment of all 3 games went back to the original formula with expanding and building on that, and it worked out really well for all 3

>>3387532
Well Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 both had subtitles, so it's possible the original developers intended them to be spinoffs and marketing teams threw in the 2 for good measure.

Nintendo was constantly paranoid of another collapse which is why they were anal about how many games a company can shovel onto their system a year so I can see them demanding innovation. Many companies hated working with Nintendo for this reason.

>>3387532
I was around to play some Atari games on my dad's Atari when I was 5 or so and I was able to get my first NES at around 7 or 8.

I made the transition, and let me tell you, you gotta realize that this was the dawn of a new era in videogaming.

When Mario 1 came out there weren't a lot of console franchises and some sequels to early games were basically the same game with different layouts/mazes/levels

Konami and Nintendo probably didn't know what to do with the sequels and wanted to, again, avoid some of the pitfalls that Atari fell into so they wanted to make something fresh and new for the sequels of their biggest franchises

>>3387564
Until they figured out that taking your "B Team" of designers, programmers, artists, etc. and making a subsidiary company out of them could skirt Nintendo's release restrictions.

Shoutouts to Kona... err... I mean Ultra Games.

>>3387550
>TLDR;

Your post wasn't near long enough for a TLDR

>>3387352
I didn't get a computer until I was 14, so I didn't really "grow up" with technology, other than a TV and NES. Big difference than having the internet in your pocket like nowadays.

>>3387523
cont.

Anyway, let's talk about the towns.
They're very silly-looking when you stop and think about it: Stacked, three-story façades, like high-rise strip malls in the middle of the forest. But, you know, 8-bit limitations and all that. You make your allowances and accept the fact that this is surely meant to represent a more logical, real-world construction.

Towns in Simon’s Quest work exactly like you’d expect to see in an RPG. They’re combat-free zones where you can speak with NPCs, recover health in a centrally located church, and find merchants who’ll sell you essential goods. They’re not entirely without hazards; the platforms seem to have been designed specifically for the purpose of sending you plummeting to your death in the river if you miss a jump.

Also, towns (more than any other space in the game) reflect the day/night cycle; villagers only walk around during daylight. At night, zombies appear. Zombies suck. They offer no meaningful experience points and very little cash, but they cause NPCs to shutter their doors. Towns effectively become worthless at night; Simon can’t even trade with merchants or stop in the church. What kind of crappy church keeps banker’s hours? This is exactly why we needed the Protestant Reformation.

cont.

>>3387613
Simon’s Quest begins in the town of Jova. Coincidentally, the game’s problems also begin in Jova. Well, maybe “problems” is too strong a term, but it’s here that you get a sense of how unconventional Simon’s Quest will turn out to be. With no preamble or foreword (aside from an attract mode enticing you to “step into the shadows of the hell house” — no thanks?), Simon finds himself simply plopped down in a village where old people wander aimlessly and a weird, low-tempo, almost harmonica-like variation on “Vampire Killer” plays. You can easily fall into the water and die. Most of the people you talk to make no sense or outright lie to you. There are no immediate threats. No score or stage info appears, only a discreet health meter. You can’t whip the candelabras! What kind of mad world is this?

At the same time, you have just enough time to thoroughly explore Jova and get a sense of how things work before the game’s first nightfall, so despite the initially discombobulating sense you take away from the beginning of the game it does its job quite nicely without ever leading you by the hand. “Discovery” is the keyword here. You begin near the west/left edge of town, but should you head out that direction you will quickly discover what a bad idea that is: A pair of powerful, two-headed, fire-breathing monsters will smash into you and throw you back into town with damage recoil before your feeble starting whip can hope to take them down. It’s not fatal, and the church “upstairs” will allow you to recover, but the message is clear: Don’t go left yet.

>>3387616
Inside of Jova, you find yourself forced to make your first interesting decision. You can buy three items in Jova in total — the Holy Water, the White Crystal, and the Thorn Whip — but the sum cost is 200 hearts. You begin with 50: Enough to buy either the crystal or Holy Water, but not both. The first time you play, you won’t know what either item does, so it’s all more or less the same and you’ll mostly likely stand around to the east of town farming cash. In subsequent playthroughs, however, you’ll know both the purpose of each tool and about the overall game time limit as well, so you’ll have to decide which to take right away and when it’s best to return. The Holy Water is probably the most useful tool in the game and has value almost immediately, but unless you’re very lucky or very good at memorization, you need the White Crystal to complete the first mansion. These tradeoffs in the name of efficient play help make Simon’s Quest interesting to revisit.

By and large, every town more or less takes the form of Jova. Some are bigger than others, some smaller. Some have hidden merchants. Some have more helpful citizens than other. The most interesting town, I think, is Ghulash; an almost completely abandoned village immediately outside Dracula’s castle. It’s desolate and grey (surely inspired by Dragon Quest‘s town of Haukness), with the cemetery immediately outside its western walls considerably larger than the town itself. The one resident of Ghulash is a crazy man who invites you to live there with him. Uh… thanks for the offer, dude.

>>3387619
cont.

Now, on to the NPC's
Long story short, Transylvania is populated by a bunch of jerks. I get that living in the shadow of a cyclical undead horror bent on conquering the world by transforming humanity into a race of snack-pack slaves can be pretty harrowing, but that’s exactly why you’d assume these guys would be a little friendlier to the one man who can save them from becoming ambulatory juice boxes. But no; something like half the NPCs in the game are either actively hostile toward Simon or simply lie to him.

I always assumed the game’s wildly inaccurate hints came from the 8-bit tradition of terrible localization, but it turns out these guys are a bunch of liars in Japanese, too.

The idea of unreliable in-game characters isn’t a bad one, but it doesn’t work out as well here as I think the designers intended. The problem? Castlevania II doesn’t offer enough detail and clarity to help you effectively sort out truth from fiction. While it’s all well and good for someone to tell you that you should hit your head against Deborah Cliff to make a hole to mislead you, that tip would be more obviously ridiculous if not for the fact that the real solution — kneeling in front of the cliff with a Red Crystal equipped for five seconds — is no less arcane or ridiculous. Simon’s Quest employs too much 8-bit logic to give deliberately misleading tips; rather than shake your head ruefully once you figure it out, you’re far more likely to shake your fist in annoyance because the real solution is equally dumb.

>>3387628
cont.
By and large, you can safely ignore any brown NPC. That’s not racism! I just mean the villagers who offer primarily lies and useless remarks wear clothes in an earth-tone palette. The brown-clad folks who don’t actively mislead you mostly offer empty pleasantries that burn through your clock time.

On the other hand, NPCs in other color schemes — grey and blue, primarily — offer beneficial advice and items. In most cases, you need to shell out precious money for their help, but others will simply give you things. One dude begs you to take 50 hearts’ worth of Laurels for free. Another will turn your Morning Star into the almighty Flame Whip. A couple of tall, grey guys scattered throughout the game allow you to trade up your crystals to solve the next puzzle in the chain of progression.

Others function as riddles in themselves, like the ferryman. Talk to him normally and he cackles and takes you to one area (including a town where you can buy the Morning Star, which is right decent of him). Talk to him while holding Dracula’s Heart and he takes you to the third Mansion. I suppose if a crazed-looking man came up to me with a bloody heart in his hands and demanded a ride, I’d take him wherever he wanted to go, too.

>>3387630
Cont.

A lot of the game’s lies can be worked through with patience and trial-and-error. I played this game enough as a kid that I tried out pretty much everything. For instance, the guy who tells you the ferryman likes garlic? If you try to use garlic while on the boat, it falls through into the river. If you drop it on the shore, nothing happens besides you having wasted 50 hearts. And others are just amusing; I always liked the lady who promises Simon a midnight rendezvous on the riverbank. Go to the river at midnight and she’s nowhere to be seen. Turns out she was just giving him the brush-off, the medieval equivalent of giving him the wrong phone number.

In the later towns of the game, the tone of NPCs becomes more directly hostile (including demands to straight-up get the heck out of their house). The introduction to Dracula’s Curse expands on this, describing in detail how the people of Transylvania distrust the holy powers of the Belmont family almost as much as they fear Dracula, and that the clan forever lives as pariahs in the land they protect. It’s a nice bit of world-building that begins here. Maybe that's why everybody lies to Simon and so many are assholes to him, but it still doesn't justify hating the one man who can slay the beasts that trouble your innocent village

>>3387516
>>3387519
>>3387523
>>3387613
>>3387616
>>3387619
>>3387628
>>3387630
>>3387638
Are you Moviebob?

>>3387643
>>3387647
I just played this game A LOT on release

You gotta realize that back in those days you rented a game or you begged, begged your parents to dish out the $50 - $60 for a game, and sometimes you only got one for your birthday or Christmas.

Castlevania 1 was so damn good that I thought 2 would be a sure thing so that's what I begged for that Christmas

This also meant that this was the game I was stuck playing for a long, long time, and there was absolutely no going back.

I played it, explored it, and replayed it years later as an adult and had lots of time to think about it and analyze it.

>>3387643
No, he's http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2012/08/26/anatomy-of-a-simons-quest-iv/, or at least pasting from there.

>>3387613
>Anyway, let's talk about the towns.
>They're very silly-looking when you stop and think about it: Stacked, three-story façades, like high-rise strip malls in the middle of the forest

I always figured that they were built like that with high walls around the sides, you know, to keep the monsters out.

I know the zombies still get in somehow but at least the werewolves, fishmen, and skeletons stay out of the towns.

>>3387413
If you can't beat the first quest of LoZ without Nintendo Power or a hintline, you might have a severe brain condition.

>>3387685
Well that's good because that means I don't have a severe brain condition, seeing as that I was able to do so without a guide.

Notice my post never included any part that said I couldn't beat the game without a guide, I simply stated that I went through the tedious task of bombing every wall and bush until a secret randomly popped up.

The developers must have realized at some point that this was bullshit too because A Link To The Past featured cracks on walls to tell you it was a wall that could be bombed instead of just bombing every wall and hope for the best.

>>3387680

he could of just not been a shit head and shared the link

>>3387719
But then you might not have read what he had to say. Better that he spams it here, because his insights are way too important for a pleb like you to miss out on.

>>3387115
>Let me be more clear, no one HERE wants to be spoonfed.
>As in, this thread
>>3386182, >>3387224 and >>3387690 would beg to differ.
At least as far as >>3387690 is concerned, he only wants to get through half of his strained carrots with mummsy's help. He's a big boy and can eat the rest all by himself!!

>or this particular board.
The innumerable numbers of posts and threads extolling the virtues of Link's Awakening and the Oracle games would, similarly, beg to differ.

>"you really want to talk about spoonfeeding and the current generation"
>he thinks the gameboy is "the current generation!!!"
Newsflash fampai: LA turned 23 years old last month. And the Oracle games will be 16 coming February. They're certainly not part of the current generation. I never mentioned current games because I've never played them. Spoonfeeding began LOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooong before current gen video games. For example, I remember being very dismayed when I popped Link to the Past into my SNES and saw all those fucking cracks in the walls. "Great," I thought, sarcastically. "They literally /tell/ me what to bomb now. Fuck this shit."

>>3387224
Just fess up: you have an adult-baby fetish and want to be strolled about in a pram á la the Oracle games.
>How dare they point me to the meat of the game, I want to waste time dicking around in places I'm not prepared for!
No, I want to explore where I want to explore and not wait for some new area of the map to suddenly no longer be blacked out indicating mummsy has enlarged my play area.
Also
>areas i'm not prepared for
You figure that shit out right quick that you're not meant to be there yet. I don't need baby gates to prevent me from falling down the stairs and cracking my head open. I'm not retarded.

>"introduced linearly so each new dungeon could include the previous weapon in puzzles"
Why not just let me get to the puzzle when I want and realise on my own that I lack something to solve it?

>all these people demanding more spoonfeeding in games
You're the same sort of people who think you can cook because you followed a recipe from the back of a can. You disgust me.

>>3387826
>LA turned 23 years old last month. And the Oracle games will be 16 coming February
Jesus way to make me feel old. Spot on post though

>>3382895

Video game reviews make idiots think posts like this are a good way of communicating anything

>>3387652
This is why I feel you'd be much better off with a Commodore 64 or Spectrum living in the 80s.
Sure, the NES has a lot of great titles, some of the best platformers really. But instead of paying ridiculous prices for games that statistically probably suck, you could enjoy widespread piracy of tapes and play decent arcade ports and some good original titles.

Since I was born in the 90s I can obviously only speculate, but yeah, as a European I'd probably get a lot more playing time with a computer.

> Background tiles connected to foreground blocks to justify each and every platform and hazard
I always thought this was neat, too.

I like how in the third level, you can see crumbling walls and staircases that lead nowhere; giving the impression that this is one of the more ruined and neglected areas of the castle.

File: yes my friends....gif (579KB, 480x480px) Image search: [Google]

579KB, 480x480px

>>3383531
YES! Hell yes!

This is so awesomely on the ball, I gotta add a bit to it...

I for one never thought that Castlevania 2 was unlikeable. I might have been shocked that the ANN decided to pick on it that way, but I might be getting it mixed up with DD3, which he was dead wrong about. But even that jester had a good case regarding C2.

For sure, it was a nice product, the artwork was amazing, pushing the NES to earnestly do a theme that you wouldn't expect from an 8-bit console, but then it had been building on the original Castlevania. The music was great too, in fact, the midi renditions of it are pretty neat to check out:
http://www.vgmusic.com/music/other/miscellaneous/piano/
I wonder to what degree it was conceived as for real instruments or tweaked for the NES.

In fact, I never had a gripe with it, unlike some other games that I found infuriatingly frustrating. But then, I did have a strategy book or two which explained the weird parts, which also blasted the bad translation, even back then.

So that's just a bit of the reasons people would get defensive of it, on top of boasting from behind the murk of memory and nostalgia.

In fact, I felt compelled to make a "way to go enforcer" image macro in response to this, but could pull out a good enough source, so I settled on something kind of similar, maybe comparably neat.

>>3388710
>>3383531

>YES! Hell yes!

There's no need to same fag

File: 353.jpg (52KB, 400x300px) Image search: [Google]

52KB, 400x300px

>this whole thread

>>3387985
>I like how in the third level, you can see crumbling walls and staircases that lead nowhere; giving the impression that this is one of the more ruined and neglected areas of the castle.

Makes sense because it's an outside level, exposed to the elements

Kind of hard to get re modelers to come out and fix your dilapidated castle when you're the motherfucking prince of Darkness himself

>>3388772
Lmao I wouldn't be surprised if most of those replies were him.

>>3384953
>What are significant figures
At least get your autism right fag.

>>3382884
Yes. How the fuck would you know to EVER do that? It's a dead end. The only way you'd figure that out is through a one-in-a-million happenstance or looking up how.

File: 1469572907503.jpg (141KB, 640x480px) Image search: [Google]

141KB, 640x480px

>>3383531
>>3388710
>YES! Hell yes!

Your blatant samefaggotry is pathetic.

>>3389460
>calls someone else autistic
>unable to recognise satire
Well, if you're not a 'tist, you're at the very list a 'tard. A 'tard who knows what significance figures are. Good for you.

>>3389502
>at the very list a 'tard
Err...
>at the very LEAST a 'tard
Fix'd.

>>3389497
Okay, fine, really I just wanted to throw in my bit, okay? Shoulda read past the first line if you wanted to make judgements.

>>3388772
There's no need to get get buttblasted just because two people have a sane perspectives on a damn game, maybe even with others agreeing.

File: nu-male cringing.jpg (55KB, 638x640px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 638x640px

>>3388710
>YES! Hell yes!
>Th-this is so awesomely on the ball

Who the hell do you think you're fooling?

>>3387826

There is a middle ground between ridiculous hand-holding and the incredible amount of obscure horseshit in Castlevania 2. This is not an either-or choice.

File: 004[1].png (6KB, 256x224px) Image search: [Google]

6KB, 256x224px

>>3389567
>>3389567
>There is a middle ground between ridiculous hand-holding and the incredible amount of obscure horseshit in Castlevania 2. This is not an either-or choice.

That's what I'm saying. It obviously wasn't good game design, and they saw that in retrospect, because they cut that shit out, and that's just further proof that it wasn't good game design.

Like I said before, in Zelda 1 you couldn't tell where to place a bomb to find a hidden cave, so in effect you had to either have a guide or literally bomb EVERY FUCKING WALL on death mountain, and burn every bush and hope for the best.

It was a great game, but that part wasn't good design.

Not good design at all, evidenced by the fact that every Zelda game thereafter including the 3d Zeldas show cracks on a wall that you can bomb or otherwise the wall looks weird, out of place, or makes a different sound when struck by your sword, so you don't have to go through that bullshit, and I don't see that as hand-holding at all, it's just avoiding unnecessary frustration and redundancy.

>>3389520
See: >>3389510
and
>In fact, I felt compelled to make a "way to go enforcer" image macro in response to this

Besides, it sums up so well how fanatically people bullshit each other about games and similar stuff.

Especially RPG leaning stuff. It's recognised that neurotic behaviour revolves particularly effectively around RPGs. Of course, this wasn't all that much of an RPG, though it did have great RPG-atmosphere, just look at how it got compared to Ravenloft right at the top of this thread. I knew a few people who repeatedly played Baldur's Gate to tome characters up to 25s. So even the few people who actually figured that out are likely just freaks. It also likely looks too much like an RPG because of hindsight.

Same people act really touchy about games, on the one hand they get defensive of games they heavily invested themselves into, on the other hand they're prone to feeling very betrayed by companies.

So, take a clear look at what's at play here... this consensus around is that Castlevania was one of those common series that was rock solid at the start (peaking with the CD add on versions) and then sold out or just tripped up. Some people specially exclude Simon's Quest from this, but not doing so simplifies the view.

And this board does not fail to show some of that nuttery, people do act very betrayed by companies. Just look at the NES-mini threads!!

>>3389593
>or literally bomb EVERY FUCKING WALL on death mountain
I remember not having a problem with that, I think it just felt fitting for an RPG of that era, and I didn't even play it on my old NES or even later on Nesticle.

>>3389626
Me neither.
It was all very realistic to me, how you could be going through, say, an ancient ruined temple and the walls you could bomb through wouldn't be conveniently marked for you

That's just how things were and I accepted and loved Zelda 1 just the way it was.

Don't get the wrong impression, I love Zelda 1 and how cryptic it was at times.

Still, I'm just pointing out that subsequent games changed it for the sake of avoiding redundant bombing of every wall.

>>3389636
General repetitiveness just got harder to forgive later on. I believe that was one of the things about Simon's Quest that made it look so bad.

>>3387826
Are you okay?

lol

>>3389424
Nah, I'd be willing to bet it's mostly >>3382918 trying to be "ironic" and soothe the asshurt.

File: mfw.jpg (48KB, 410x380px) Image search: [Google]

48KB, 410x380px

>>3389593
>and I don't see that as hand-holding at all

>that's because you don't have mummsy to help you eat your adult-baby fetish in your /pram/ stroller!
>you're just a /strained carrots/ big boy falling down the stairs because of all those /LOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooong/ cracks in the wall!

kek
that guy is off his meds

File: lol.jpg (327KB, 640x480px) Image search: [Google]

327KB, 640x480px

>>3382970
>It's extremely counter-intuitive to think that waiting while crouching would actually cause something to happen
Sonicfags BTFO

>>3387413
>The first Zelda game was notorious for this as well. There was no fucking way of knowing exactly where there was a wall you could bomb, a bush you could torch, or where to play the flute to make a secret appear and it was all very cryptic except for the tip you got every once in a while from an old man.

If a stone looks out of place, move it. If a bush looks out of place, burn it. If a lake lacks a faerie and has a single enemy moving around, just like the entrances to 78% of the other dungeons in the first quest, try your items. You may not 100% it, but you'll definitely beat the game without a guide if you just think for a minute rather than wait for everything to be spoonfed to you.

Two things that simultaneously pissed me off and excited me as a kid, however, were bombable walls and walls you were meant to walk through. They pissed me off because there was so much to bomb/try to walk through. They excited me because when I found one that could be bombed/walked through, I got a huge sense of accomplishment and awe. I loved that feeling.
But I especially hated walk-throughable walls.

>>3389593
>the fact that zelda games have become increasingly easier and more linear is proof that earlier games had bad game design
wut

>>3389567
Of course there is. But literally telling me where to go, what to do, how to do it and why is not it, either. I'm not sure if this was in any of the 3D Zelda games as I've not played them much because they've all bored me to tears (yes, even Ocarina), but I think the sword-hitting-bombable-wall-makes-a-different-sound was in them, have I got that right? If so, >>3389593 mention of that would be a great middle ground between being completely stranded and bombing every wall.

>>3390074
>that would be a great middle ground between being completely stranded and bombing every wall.
>that would be a great middle ground between being completely stranded and bombing every wall and being told where to bomb.
Fix'd.

>>3389946
I'm the one who posted that D&D message, and let me assure you, I wouldn't waste my time posting so much, because quite frankly it doesn't buy me anything to convince you or anyone else of anything. The sole reason I even posted is because I genuinely enjoyed the game, it was a highlight of the NES era for me, and I can't help but feel joy when I think about it, same with Zelda 1-2, Faxanadu, and the first installments of Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy.
What you take out of all this is up to you. If you want to get angry and lash out at people just because you couldn't figure out a simple puzzle, that's your problem, not mine. I've finished games that were much harder than this one, and I didn't do that by adopting a victim mentality like you and others here are inclined to do. And you'll never understand where I'm coming from until you drop that mentality, but I'm not holding my breath. Chances are pretty good that you'll die of old age before that happens.

>>3383531
I'm responding because everyone else is.

>>3390187
>The sole reason I even posted is because I genuinely enjoyed the game, it was a highlight of the NES era for me, and I can't help but feel joy when I think about it,

That was already addressed.
See:
>>3388710
and>>3389615
>though it did have great RPG-atmosphere, just look at how it got compared to Ravenloft right at the top of this thread.

>just because you couldn't figure out a simple puzzle, that's your problem, not mine.
Simple puzzles are generally not supposed to be a bitch to figure out, there's complex puzzles for that!

>>3390014
That part was impossible too. I could never get past that level.

>>3383731
Was Simon's Quest really about trying to score poon?

>>3390878

Congrats, you're a retard.

File: b1c6097aa13c84cb44640a074e8293fa[1].jpg (14KB, 236x352px) Image search: [Google]

14KB, 236x352px

>>3390187

You're like a grown up version of 'that kid'.

>"Pfft. Castlevania 2? I beat it in my sleep. It was easy, I never even got stuck."

Oh yeah? I had to use a guide. How did you figure out you had to crouch there with the crystal?

>"Ugh. Don't make me spoonfeed you. It's n-not my fault you can't figure out a s-simple puzzle."

Yeah man, rest assured, nobody in this thread actually believes you, just like nobody IRL believes you when you say shit like this. We are all cringing very hard though, and there is entertainment value in that for sure, so just keep on doing your thing.

>>3391295
Hey, I believe him, I think. Though I don't know how Simon's Quest was his favourite game, there were so many among my limited set that I liked comparably or better, besides just Double Dragon 3.

>>3391295
Wow, she's really hot.

>>3391295
What I find odd is that you think it's entirely impossible for anyone to have beaten CvII or Zelda without guides. I did both. Many other people did, too.
Now, lemme tell you some NES games I owned that I never beat:

Batman
Conquest of the Crystal Palace (at least not all three times to supposedly get the real ending)
Contra
Ghosts n' Goblins
Ninja Gaiden
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

You know: games that were actually difficult.
The only one of them I've beaten was Ninja Gaiden a few months ago. Still haven't beaten the rest.
CvII isn't a difficult game. Sure, some of the hints are a bit... shall we say... obfuscated, but being tenacious kids as many of us were, we eventually figured shit out. It's not that unbelievable at all when you're dealing with an eight year old with nothing much else to do. He'll figure it out on his own at some point.

As for spoonfeeding, I'll put it this way: they released DuckTales a few years back. During testing, kids had to be told to look for hidden passages because they wouldn't have, otherwise. They just want to finish the game and have no interest in exploring. On the other hand, when I found shortcuts or hidden areas and shit like that in DT, it was a wondrous feeling. Like whoa.
Kids that want to be spoonfed will never feel that awe. I feel bad for them.

>>3391295
Just because you couldn't piece it together doesn't mean no one else could.

>>3391564
They probably feel that awe from other things and so don't need to sit there for 6 hours clicking on every pixel to see the next bit of the level. I say this as someone who does pretty much nothing but play games, but I know loads of people who aren't idiots, aren't impatient people, but they're not going to do that to get a sense of fulfilment when so many other things give them an equal or greater sense.

I also wonder if it's to do with games being cheaper now. Back then a game was the equivalent of about $100 or more and you'd basically have one that you'd have to play for months on end. Now you can get games for a fraction of that price, or even legally free, and so the need to do something exceptionally boring for a very long time just to see some new content just seems ridiculously pointless.

>>3391587
No one is saying to click every pixel, but, again, if you see something odd/peculiar or out of place, give it a once-over and see if that does anything.

What I find baffling is how often I'm called a bullshitter for saying "yeah, I figured out the glass tube thing in Super Metroid without a guide" but then get called a moron because I didin't know about the grappling beam trick with that area's boss or because I've never 100%ed that game. If I used a guide, wouldn't I have found every item? Wouldn't I have known the grappling beam trick? Seems far more likely that a player would figure out how to smash that glass than to use the grappling beam to electrocute a boss monster or instinctively know where every single item is.

Shit, I was exploring the game recently and I found an area I've never seen before and got all excited and had to change my pants. That stuff gets me leakin', lemme tell ya.

I will never understand why people have to make things out to be more difficult than they are and refuse to believe that I've some savant-like ability for figuring out game puzzles.

>>3391581

Yeah, you get a lot of people here saying that they did it when they were a kid. And I don't doubt that some people actually did figure it out by themselves. I just think they'd have to be extremely, EXTREMELY persistent and more than a little lucky to figure out this mistranslated, cryptic shit. And no, I honestly don't believe anyone here when they said they did it without a guide. Especially when they say this but have no actual recollection of the "logic" they used to solve it. And doubly so if they have a stick up their ass about it and use it to feel superior about themselves.

>"Pffft. You just have to use your head, you moron. Kids these days, huh?"

Yeah, nah. They're bullshitting. I may not have the persistence to try absolutely every single combination of items and actions in every single area of a video game just to progress, but I can tell a bullshitter when I see one. Protip: acting like this puzzle is logical or easy to figure out is a dead giveaway. So is the self fellating attitude.

>>3391665
>And doubly so if they have a stick up their ass about it and use it to feel superior about themselves.

Oh fuck off. You're the ones bitching about shit be too hard for your little baby brain. Don't act smug and refuse to accept it when people tell you they managed it without help you're not making yourself look better by blaming the game.

>>3390187
lol, you are such a liar

>>3391638
>I will never understand why people have to make things out to be more difficult than they are and refuse to believe that I've some savant-like ability for figuring out game puzzles.
Err...
Should be an 'I' in there somewhere.
>I will never understand why people have to make things out to be more difficult than they are and /////I///// refuse to believe that I've some savant-like ability for figuring out game puzzles.
There we are. I don't think I'm some vidya puzzles genius. I think I just pay attention.

File: 1407687458850.png (178KB, 283x270px) Image search: [Google]

178KB, 283x270px

I'm surprised so many anons managed to overlook OP's mention of AVGN and actually discuss whether or not Castlevania II is good rather than which e-celebs are faggots. You're still replying to obvious b8, though.

>>3382884
90% of the time, assume AVGN lies. AVGN is not an expert in NES games at all, he is usually pretty ill-informed about stuff - e.g. Silver Surfer is not really a bad game nor is particularly harder that most shmups of the era;
And even when he DOES know shit, he loves to exaggerate negative (e.g. entire episode on Battletoads is just bitching about two-player mode, when game is perfectly playable in single player, and is a really great, if balls hard, beatemup/platformer hybrid) to make things funnier.

I mean, watch this crap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHgzP4tPWwA
- just look at this crap. He repeatedly thinks that cool engine tricks hacker did are unintentional and thinks it just glitches(if they were, hack would be unplayable), admits he has never player Sonic on SMS (and then proceeds to form opinion on it)... It's bad. He's entertaining if you want entertainment, but he is about as good of a measure of game's quality as CinemaSins or Nostalgia Critic are a measure of movie quality.

>>3391521
dude what the fuck

>>3387851
It was that long ago??? Jesus...

>>3384038
What the fuck does Trump have to do with anything you mongoloid? And how dare you insult the God Emporer.

>>3390014
Skip to 2:22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXwbN--6udQ