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Big fan of these projects with throwback aesthetics. One thing I really commend them for is that, in my personal experience, they also remember to not carry ove

Big fan of these projects with throwback aesthetics. One thing I really commend them for is that, in my personal experience, they also remember to not carry over the positively silly difficulty curve from those older games. The games are made to look and feel like older ones, but play like a modern, well-designed title. That's crucial to making an enjoyable game.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
I don't remember Gameboy games having quite such a terrifying difficulty curve; in fact some of the magic of e.g. Super Mario Land on the original Gameboy is the simultaneously precise and forgiving nature of control. Ray Man for the Game Boy Color (which I mentioned in a comment elsewhere on this post) had the titular figure teeter on the edge as if about to fall, to help with playability when jumping between small platforms. Now, some original 8 bit Spectrum games were absurdly fiddly right from the start -- Hewson/Rafaele Cecco's Cybernoid springs to mind, as does FTL's Hydrofool. I remember some very playable games too of course -- Imogen from Micro Power/Superior Software on the BBC Micro was beautifully drawn, very playable, and still has me by my wistful heart.
- esrauch 5y ago
  There was a Gameboy original platformer of Ren & Stimpy in space that when I was a kid just never beat, despite the persistence of a kid with nothing else to do in the preinternet era. More recently I tried it in an emulator and it really is just like harder than Cuphead. I used snapshotting to get through it and the whole game is only 3 levels, so I think they cranked the difficulty to try to give it some longevity but they really overshot it.
- WilTimSon 5y ago
  I was speaking more broadly about the retro aesthetic, not just GameBoy. Games from Sega and Nintendo consoles used to be pretty brutal, to the best of my recollection. Although maybe I was just a bad player, I was quite young after all.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    > I was speaking more broadly about the retro aesthetic, not just GameBoy. Yeah -- likewise. And I think you're right about the evolution between then and now about discoverability/playability/difficulty ramps.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

I don't remember Gameboy games having quite such a terrifying difficulty curve; in fact some of the magic of e.g. Super Mario Land on the original Gameboy is the simultaneously precise and forgiving nature of control. Ray Man for the Game Boy Color (which I mentioned in a comment elsewhere on this post) had the titular figure teeter on the edge as if about to fall, to help with playability when jumping between small platforms. Now, some original 8 bit Spectrum games were absurdly fiddly right from the start -- Hewson/Rafaele Cecco's Cybernoid springs to mind, as does FTL's Hydrofool. I remember some very playable games too of course -- Imogen from Micro Power/Superior Software on the BBC Micro was beautifully drawn, very playable, and still has me by my wistful heart.

esrauch 5y ago
There was a Gameboy original platformer of Ren & Stimpy in space that when I was a kid just never beat, despite the persistence of a kid with nothing else to do in the preinternet era. More recently I tried it in an emulator and it really is just like harder than Cuphead. I used snapshotting to get through it and the whole game is only 3 levels, so I think they cranked the difficulty to try to give it some longevity but they really overshot it.
WilTimSon 5y ago
I was speaking more broadly about the retro aesthetic, not just GameBoy. Games from Sega and Nintendo consoles used to be pretty brutal, to the best of my recollection. Although maybe I was just a bad player, I was quite young after all.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  > I was speaking more broadly about the retro aesthetic, not just GameBoy. Yeah -- likewise. And I think you're right about the evolution between then and now about discoverability/playability/difficulty ramps.