Hurt Me More

I've been seeing this A LOT lately.

Lately I've been playing some games that haven't been on the easy side. Being an old-school gamer, I'm very familiar with Nintendo Hard games so I'm no stranger to frustration, but I usually know when to call it quits. However, the last few weeks I've been a glutton for punishment.

The first Mega Man game is considered one of the hardest in the series. Most people point to the first Dr. Wily stage boss, the Yellow Devil as the reason for the game being so hard, but he's far from the only culprit. Guts Man and Ice Man's stages has some of the most aggravating platform segments of any video game. I NEVER go through Ice Man's stage without the Magnet Beam adapter. Placing your faith in those Foot Holders is akin to trusting the Joker not to kill you when you know full well he's a murderous psychopath. That I and I really cannot be bothered with the disappearing blog segments in Ice Man's level. If you can get past those tricky moving platforms on wire's in Guts Man's level, you're home fry. I actually got a game over in that stages. A game over. In Guts' Man's stage. That has not happened to me in years. Maybe I was off my game or something but that wasn't the only place I had trouble. I lost most of my energy before battling Cut Man so I got another game over on his stage. And Elec Man made short work of me because I didn't have much energy left when I reached him, but then, Elec Man can kill you in three hits if you have full energy so, yeah. Yellow Devil returned to giving me a hard time here like he always does, which is strange considering I owned him a while back. 

Contra III is my favorite Contra game but the challenge on higher difficulties nearly crosses over to insanity. Beating the game on Easy is no problem but Normal takes some work. It's always fun to have a buddy watching your back in 2 player mode, but I don't have the luxury so I gotta lover over my own shoulder. It's been some years since I've really played Contra III as of late, but I do know that I could never beat the game on Hard. I often wonder, did Konmai's American branch even play Contra III on Hard before they decided to take out the Konami Code and infinite continues that was left in the Japanese version? I mean, I like a challenge, but that stuff is no cake walk and I'm not a masochist.

And the thing about being humbled time and again with continuing after my defeats in Mega Man and Contra III? I kept on going. Infinite continues in Mega Man helps a lot, but I've gotten multiple game overs on Contra III because my continues are limited. A day or so late, and I'm back at it again, shooting up aliens and whatnot.

I recently bought Bangai-O on the Dreamcast. It's one of the few Treasure games that does not have an adjustable difficulty setting. The first two levels were pretty easy but as of level 3, the difficulty has jumped up. There are far more enemies and the boss has even more health to deplete before he goes down. In spite of this, I keep on going because Bangai-O is a lot of fun and I want to see more of what the game is like. Usually I don't retry too often because I have no shortage of other games to play, but I must have been bitten by the never-give-up bug. Well, I'm off to go die again. And again. And again...