I agree with your take, but none of these games are as frustrating as Bayou Billy. I wonder if some dev at Konami just hated Americans?
The NES version is harder than the Famicom version; enemies in the beat-'em-up stages are more aggressive and have more health, the player starts the shooting stages with less ammunition, and the driving stages have narrower roads. The driving stages in the Famicom version also give Billy’s jeep a health gauge, allowing it to withstand collision from enemy vehicles and road hazards, a benefit not available in the NES version.
thingsiplay@kbin.social 7 months ago
Exactly. Battletoads isn't unfair, its just extremely hard (not different from Dark Souls). It's different kind of hard, compared to Turtles, which had bad controls in example.
KuroiKaze@lemmy.world 7 months ago
There are definitely control issues with like the sticky walls level. Some of the jumping has like completely bullshit edge detection and the rocket riding is way harder than the turbo tunnel, but you never hear anyone complain about it because no one ever makes it there.
thingsiplay@kbin.social 7 months ago
Here is a very good technical video about this topic: The Bad Jump Design and 30 FPS Gravity of TMNT (NES) - Behind the Code
teft@startrek.website 7 months ago
This was a great watch. Thanks for posting it!
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
I very much disagree on the Dark Souls comparison. It is a large part of why there has increasingly been the distinction between “Nintendo Hard” and “Hard but Fair” with (From) Souls games very much being the latter.
In a From-Souls, every boss short of the later DLCs (and puzzle bosses) have multiple viable paths. You can carry a tower shield or use ranged attacks or whatever.
Whereas, in the god awful speeder sequence especially, there really is one real path and it is to memroize the pattern and enter in the specific sequence.
The closest From-Souls got was Malenia and needing to know how to counter her Water Fowl attack. There was still the way to stagger her to death, but that was very build specific and a LOT of that game has the Dark Souls 2 problem of enemies with way too much poise. Combine that with dodging her dive bomb in phase 2 and she was VERY “sequence-y”. Which is why she got nerfed pretty heavily over the first few patches.
thingsiplay@kbin.social 7 months ago
My point is, that Battletoads controls precise and is about learning patterns and reacting fast enough. It's obviously not the same and Dark Souls is way more complex as well. These games are not hard, because the game is bad.. But my point was, it's not broken in the implementation and bad game design like in TMNT.