Hi Dark, Yeah, some of those games you mentioned were insanely difficult, but most of the games I played weren't. Most games were balanced to the point you could go pretty far before running into a point where you couldn't complete it.
For example, let's take Pac-Man. Most of the game was spent avoiding the ghosts with the ability to chomp a power pill now and then and eat the ghosts. However, after a while the power pills really didn't have much effect on game play and it was better just to run and hide when the ghosts were around. I could reach level50 or so before getting killed off, but I know some of the Pac-Man champions made it to level 256 or something like that which means it is possible to do, but extremely challenging. Now, the thing that made Montezuma's Revenge a bit different from your average "avoid the monsters" game is that it wasn't just speed you had to worry about. The further you made it into the Aztec temple the darker and darker the rooms got. By level 10 the level was completely blacked out and you could not see items or monsters. Therefore you had to collect torches throughout the prior levels in order to see where you were going and couldn't see the spiders and such until they were practically on top of you. It was challenging, but not impossible to play. Speaking of Berzerk that was probably one of my top fave five Atari games as a kid. I loved that game even though by today's standards it is fairly simplistic. Of course, I got a kick out of running my robot into the walls and watching him get shocked. :D Still, I take your point. Once and a while a nice simple game of running around a maze or open arena blasting up robots can be fun now and then. Especially, when you just wantt to blow off some steam without a in depth game and complex storyline etc. Perhaps a Berzerk clone or something like it would bring the audio arcade games out of their current rut. Cheers! On 11/18/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > Well some of those old games were going a bit too! far in difficulty, I mean > > the ones where you couldn't actually progress without real trouble and many > > tries. i never played original montizuma's revenge, but some of the old > amstrad avoidance platformers, games like manic miner, jet set willy or > spikey the hedgehog, ---- games that in retroremake parlance are now called > > avoidemups were horribly! difficult. > > This is why I am such a fan of games like mega man that got this balance > exactly right, hard enough to be pretty dam challenging, but not so that you > > would be utterly turned off, sinse you'd get further each time, --- -though > > of course megaman isn't really an arcade game (original the original 1986 > one which did! have a scoring system), sinse the hole point was! to complete > > it and see all the levels and bosses. > > Myself, i love extra content, but it's got to be worth working for and not > just like a film you stick on and essentially play to the end then never > watch again because you've seen it. > > This was one thing I felt about grizly gulch and chillingham, as well as > some other space invaders games, ---- especially the simple ones like > mudsplat. Even terraformers suffered from this problem a little I found. > however good the game, if it's going to be finished the first day, then > achievements aren't really going to achieve much :D. > > There is also for me however an element of exploration, even it's barest and > > most simple sense. > > I don't know if you ever played the atari game berzerk, in which you > wandered around a maze the size of one screen shooting robots. I used to > love Berzerk, jsut because even though they were a pregenerated set of five > > or so mazes with robots scattered at random, the chance to work through > them, blasting the nasty rrobots, avoiding deaths when the game generated me > > slap back next to a robot etc was really stimulating. > > This is something of course I grew to enjoy far more with games with their > own maze layout like turrican and metroid. > > then of course, there is the fact that arcade wrack up score games are > simpler and easier to play than harder ones. I have just bought king of > dragon pass as you know, and in general the detail and complexity of the > game is everything I could want. However, I can guarantee there will be > times when I'm simply not mentally up to the challenge of very detailed > management and story, and want to just murder some robots for a bit of fun! > > This is also I'll add though where progressive achivements can help, and > where platforms like the Iphone are bringing back that sort of game, ---- > > sinse if I for instance were playing berzerk and there was a trophy to urn > for blasting ten thousand robots or completing a tthousand rooms of the > maze in successive games, not only! would a five minute blast be fun on it's > > own, but it'd also be contributing to an over all statistic and thus giving > > a sense of accomplishment. > > As witness this with audio games, look how well Liam's arcade games with > trophy's have done. I probably wouldn't have bought judgement day myself if > > it hadn't had the trophy system, sinse in the end it is! just another space > > invaders game, and it is the trophy system that would incline me to buy > super egghunt (though currently I'm a little busy with my Iphone to > considder arcade games). > > So, I wouldn't say it's a case of the ability to have! extra achievements or > > content that is the culprit, rather people's inability to work for them, or > > to enjoy other aspects of games such as exploration. > > Btw, one thought does occur to me about arcade games. Part of the problem in > > access terms, is that everything we have is either a space invaders sterrio > > targiting fest, or a varient on egghunt. > > I've often thought that an arena shooter like robotron 2000, or indeed > berzerk (provided it didn't get bogged down in maze mechanics), would be a > great idea for an audio arcade game. the fp perspective would give the same > > kind of absorbing experience as in packman talks, but players could really > let rip with the amo, run around the arena and blast at speed. > > Heck, to speed up the game it wouldn't even need to be a complete! first > person game with 360 movement, 8 way running would be more than adequate, > with a strafe feature to blast away in front of you as you shuffled > sideways, sinse in those sorts of games fast movement and shooting on the > run was what tended to be the best style of play. > > Super deakout was I think the game that came closest to this, but even then, > > there was no actual weaponry to be shot in the game, much less weapon power > > ups, and there were only a max of two enemies in play at once, where as with > > those arena shooters there could be literally hundreds, and even in audio > you could probably get away with more. > > Maybe something like that would help get audio arcade games out of their > current rut. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. 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