Current Events > Why were games based on kids shows tough as nail back in the day?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yogi Bear for the SNES

games were shorter in length, so making them difficult extended their longevity. imagine buying a game for $50 USD in 1992 and beating it in 3-4 hours.

The idea was the same as arcade games
By making them hard, a user couldn't beat them in one try or 'token'
so you'd rent it several times to try to beat it

Most of these games were only like 45 minutes long, making them insanely hard kept kids from feeling ripped off since they would spend hours upon hours trying to beat them

Games had a required length for publication and difficulty is an easy way to create length. Lions King is famous for this as they made every other stage brutally hard to make the length hit the requested amount.

MC_BatCommander posted...

Most of these games were only like 45 minutes long, making them insanely hard kept kids from feeling ripped off since they would spend hours upon hours trying to beat them

But difficulty options are a thing. If I like a game enough I'll replay it on a harder difficulty.

well on the nes the difficulty was based on arcade machines which had to be hard to eat the quarters. an arcade game that could be beaten with 1 quarter wasnt going to make much money

but snes games took video game rentals into account so games like lion king were designed to not really be beatable in a single rental period and would either need to rent it multiple times or just buy the game and i believe the video game companies got a cut of rental profits

MC_BatCommander posted...

Most of these games were only like 45 minutes long, making them insanely hard kept kids from feeling ripped off since they would spend hours upon hours trying to beat them

A lot of games outside of RPGs then were short
Mario SAS can be beaten in like an hour or two max each game
Sonic 1-3 was the same
Stuff like Zelda or Final fantasy to longer but even metrid and zelda can be done in like 3-4 hours casually

I replayed Super Castlevania IV and found the difficulty relatively tame compared to a lot of SNES game titles.