"Games that, as a whole, are incredibly difficult." Then why isn't it YMMV? Difficulty is subjective.
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I believe this has to do with Grandfather Clause. Since the trope has been around since 2007 and no one bother to change it ever since, resulting a YMMV trope that isn't Audience Reaction.
Hell, there are tropers in here asking if the definition on the main page even is valid, it said "Example has to be difficult even for skilled player and must have high enough difficulty rating on Game FAQ.". The issue is that it difficulty is like you said, subjective stuff. For example, some may think The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild isn't much challenge while some said it's hard. But you will not know if the people said it's easy even played the whole game, so the difficulty rating on Game FAQ is very inaccurate.
I would want to have this page on TRS, but consider the number of wick this trope has, I would say it's very difficult to have a solution for it. Beside, I don't think a difficult game is enough for it's own trope.
The editor who primarily focus on video game tropes
"I would say it's very difficult to have a solution for it." You can say, it's Nintendo Hard. *Joke sound effect*
General
So how difficult are we talking about? Unwinnable difficult? As in so difficult that no one, not even skilled players, can win? If this is so, you might as well call this trope "Unwinnable Game".
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4.00 difficulty rating by user votes on Game FA Qs? or 3.88? or 3.5? Dependant on genre or not?
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: TropeDecay
, started by Spark9 on Jul 23rd 2011 at 2:45:04 AM
I grew up during this era, and nobody that I knew in school played the games the 'hard' way. We all bought gaming magazines such as Nintendo Power for newest cheats and exploits. At least third of each issue was full of those. Which must've been part of their marketing strategy: make the games 'too hard' by default, so that players would buy the magazine.
Shouldn't it at least be mentioned in the article that just about every console game had cheats back then?
Saying that old games were harder is blatant nonsense. Harder without cheats, maybe, but everyone cheated. And not just in console games. Nearly everyone who played Doom recognizes the code IDDQD, because they used it.
Whereas console games nowadays don't usually have built-in cheats, which makes them much harder.
Edited by Zaltys
I'm proposing to rename this trope to "Just Like Dark Souls" lul
Roses are red Violets are blue Trying to rhyme But I can't Hide / Show Replies
I agree. Difficulty tropes in general seem to all be YMMV. A game that is Nintendo Hard for some might be easy for others. For example, SMB 1 and SMB 3 both seem relatively easy to me. N is mostly easy and only has a select few Ninteno Hard levels, with That One Level being a user-designed level.
The same goes for YIDS. It is mostly not too hard except for a few potential Brutal Bonus Levels.
In general, this trope is very subjective.
Dead
THIS TROPE SHOULD BE CALLED "CAPCOM HARD". THE FRIGGIN' BUBBLE PART OF WAVE MAN'S STAGE.
RIP RashandFierce December 24, 2015 - November 17, 2016 She shouldn't talk about little girl furries or 7 year olds crushing on toys
This trope is now scientifically proven.
After More Than 20 Years, 1980s Video Games Officially Hard by Jay London on March 22, 2012
A research team that includes Professor Erik Demaine and doctoral candidate Alan Guo analyzed the computational complexity of classic Nintendo video games, including the first three Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and the Legend of Zelda franchise. Their math-heavy study, “Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-) Hard,” discovered that many games fall into a category of mathematical problems called “NP-hard,” or equivalent to the most difficult solvable mathematical theory.
“Basically, the researchers mapped out every hazard, every bottomless pit, every flying enemy, every bullet bill, as a ‘city’ and discovered that, while there is a mathematical way to solve the most efficient route, it is pretty darn difficult.”
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If we're going to mention NP-Hard on the page, should we at least give the definition or link to wikipedia or something? What NP stands for isn't even listed on the linked pages. I googled it, and there's no way anyone who doesn't know that NP-Hard stands for "Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard" is going to figure that out.
I don't know if there's some policy I missed on this sorta thing so thought I'd ask before adding anything.
The trope name is practically an oxymoron in current gaming, and the trope goes far beyond Nintendo games. Wouldn't a name like "Retro Hard" be far more fitting?
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I think it's supposed to be "NES Hard". "Nintendo Hard" irritated me, too.
Persistance and Courage
Gotta clean up this page. Too many examples of either a game being hard on the hard difficulty or a single level being hard.
GAME OVER
"Stiff, clunky, and perhaps somewhat unresponsive controls (but only when applied to the original 8-bit, 16-bit, and (to a small extent) 32-bit generations: in more modern games, it ceases to be expected and veers right into Fake Difficulty.)"
Wait, what? Why is it somehow not fake difficulty when an older game has stiff, clunky, and/or unresponsive controls? I thought fake difficulty referred to how certain factors could result in a game being unfair, not the intentions on the part of those who designed the challenges, anticipation of unfairness, nor the time at which the game came out.
Unfair is unfair. Older games do not deserve a free pass on this simply because of the standard back in the day.
Edited by InsertHandleHere2
Practices proof-relevant Trope Arithmetic
Should this be included as an amusing "proof" of Nintendo-hardness?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.1895v1.pdf
Do you think Capcom should have its own category? A lot of their games seem to be awfully difficult.
likes the cheeses.
This page is being split due to length. It has reached a size where it is in danger of causing server performance issues. See this thread for details.
To alleviate this, I split off the current content along the lines of the current folder structure. New examples should be placed in the appropriate media sub-pages.
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Can we either get a page for RTS or change the turn based strategy sub-page into a catch all 'strategy games' page ?
I'd like an RTS page too, but I think that a lot of the potential examples could also be summed up by The Computer is a Cheating Bastard
I'm Gene Slamm, and this i my place.
Shmup guy here. Just going to passively note that a lot of the examples in the shmup section seems to be almost arguing over which is the hardest. This does not conform to this trope; a game being hard does not necessarily equal Nintendo Hard.
-Touhou is not Nintendo Hard. Most other shmups, including Dodonpachi and Mushihimesama, are also not Nintendo Hard. Gradius, however, is.
-Touhou fans need to stop putting Touhou into every trope they can think of. More of a general query rather than trope-specific, but it's getting kind of annoying seeing Touhou slandered over pages upon pages essentially all saying the same thing; this being said as a dedicated Touhou fan.
-Just because Touhou is super-prevalent in TV Tropes does not mean you are being superior by saying *insert shmup* is better/harder than it. Quote, "Touhou has NOTHING on many other Shoot Em Ups". Don't do this.
-Trope folders are not dickwaving contests meant to express what shmup is the hardest and how hardcore you are if you beat it. This also has nothing to do with being Nintendo Hard.
I'm not here to edit the crap out of pages or anything, but really some of this is getting far too ridiculous. Manage your damn pages to keep discussion relevant and sort out your facts and opinions.
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Yeah... Halo is not this Trope. If you have trouble playing it on Legendary then you are purposefully upping the difficulty to a point where the game is hard for you. Some parts of Halo 2 are kind of like this on legendary, as well as various parts of the other games, but the game itself is not designed to be an unnecessary burden to those that want to complete it.
I guess it depends on how extreme the difficulty setting are. These days there really aren't any games that are unrealistically difficult on all settings, primarily because they have much better game design and need to appeal to casual gamers in order to really fly.
I would agree that Halo doesn't really belong here, nor does anything that is only very very hard on its very very hard setting. On the other hand, games that escalate from challenging at normal to near (or actually) impossible on 'regular hard' deserve a mention, because it is expected that a lot of people will play that setting.
Hard is basically the standard if you are experianced in the genre (in fact many games tell you that exact thing when picking difficulty) and so while it is kinda duh that they are challenging, ones that go into the realms of impossible without prior knowledge or blatantly too hard even for highly skilled players belong here.
Always Right
Why is Order Of Ecclesia listed as an example in this page? The only games Order Of Ecclesia is harder than are the easier than easy Castlevania games in DS before it...
"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."
Would game shows notorious for the difficulty of their questions fit this trope, either competitive or 'team against the show'?
Per TRS
, this is now YMMV.
Update: A No Recent Examples, Please! restriction was added, so examples must be at least one month old before being added.
Edited by GastonRabbit You can't always get what you want.