Was thinking that for nasty forced scrolling areas, where one mistake = lost weapons and life, save states might have, um, saved some of my ex-controllers

Save states can skew your enjoyment if overused imo, I think you definitely need to get a feel for the difficulty to give a fair opinion.

I tend to try and use them sparingly, and when I do try and take into account how long it would take to get back to that point if playing on original hardware.

Sparkster on SNES is a good example, the Axel Gear boss fight really took away from what was an otherwise a top game. I went into more detail in my Review, but basically it broke the game, luckily it had a password feature as without it my score would have been very different.

It might be easy to blast through these hard games with save states, but if they are bordering on impossible without them then surely they're broke to a certain extent.

There's hard, but then there's those games that push it a bit to far, to the extent you get little to no enjoyment from it.

I'm no gaming god, but after putting hours into Contra Shattered Soldier and seeing the true ending, it's a little perplexing to struggle to get the the 3rd level on Contra 4 on DS.

F-Zero GX is another. X on N64 wasn't easy on Master difficulty but I managed it, but I didn't even see the end of GX.

I think I tried to do each Cup on every difficulty before moving on to the next, I can't remember either tbh, been a long time but I definitely got put off of finishing it.

I do know that and Contra Hard Corps have always held that stigma of being too hard.

At least with the Japanese version of Hard Corps you can take multiple hits. I blame Blockbuster Video.

Eric wrote:

I played Contra Hard Corps last night and bounced off it hard. It's just too difficult, I don't know how you did it Moot unless it a save state fest, it seems just as difficult as Probotector to me.

I just had a go to see how far I could get without save states.  Got past the highway boss without running out of lives, then had to use a continue on the first sub boss in the next level (the ROM I'm using gives you five continues, I think Probotector offered less).  I'll link the video I watched a couple of days ago later, I think it really helped.

Tiny Toons - NES (1hr)
Excellent 8-bit platformer from 1991 that serves as a reminder of the quality to be found in the vast NES library.  I knew this existed, sure, but there are so many similar titles on the platform it never registered with me as a podium contender.  Outside of the two GOAT Mario games the scuffle for third place has games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Asterix, Duck Tales and Castle of Illusion rolling around kicking up a pile of dust, and that's without mentioning the genre outliers like Megaman, Batman, Castlevania, Shatterhand and Wonderboy in Monsterland (platformers, but platform shooters/hack 'n slash platformers).  For straight ahead jumpmans this is well in the mix, and has a chance of being crowned champion of the underdogs when the dust settles.

That's a belter and the one moot has just completed. Make sure you play rising mode over the arcade version though otherwise your in for a shock!!

I'm trying it with a save state at the start of each stage. It's definitely super tough, especially considering I'm picking the easiest route. Terrific game though. I reckon I can do the first couple of levels without losing a life now, so the training montage has started.

Save states everywhere on this bollocks.

@Eric this is the vid I watched before playing, was very useful.

I don't mind Save Stating a game like Contra: Hard Corps or any hard game, just to get through it, but it would be in between levels, not every section of the game.

But if the game was originally intended to be beaten in one sitting, then that's what you should do before claiming you've beaten it.

Enjoy the start of level 2 fella.

ScourgeBringer, Huntdown, Cuphead. Complete the uncompleted pattern.

Lol

Cross-post from 52 games thread

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster’s Hidden Treasure (MD)
Doesn’t quite do the business. Very Sonic-influenced but doesn’t really do much with the character’s speed. Buster also takes an age to get going. And when you’ve got him up to full-pelt you’ll almost certainly come a cropper at the end of it. Either an enemy collision, missing your path in the level or tripping over one of the many comedy props lying around (rakes, cans, etc) which trigger a slapstick animation. It improves a bit towards the end when there’s more platform jumping than running. Overall, it leaves little impression apart from the superb job on Buster’s animations. Fine.
74%

World of Illusion (MD)
I think I booted this up a year or two ago straight after playing some old gem and was instantly put off by the slow movement and unsatisfying attack. But I gave it another chance (as Mickey Mouse in one-player, it apparently has different levels with Donald Duck, and a third set with two-players). And it’s alright. The movement is very treacly but the game never enters into areas where you need it to be better. It’s short, simple, easy, great pixel art and animations, not too twee, quite a haunting atmosphere to a lot of it. But the gameplay is dull.  
63%

Animaniacs (MD)
I’ve tried a lot of crappy licensed cartoon games from the 8 and 16-bit systems. Most Warner Bros stuff is terrible. Speedy Gonzalez, Daffy Duck, Animaniacs (SNES). All turned off in disgust somewhere around the middle of the first level. So congratulations to Megadrive Animaniacs for making it through. Fuck knows how because it belongs on that same scrap heap.

It looks quite good. And it’s sort of doing something interesting in that it’s a puzzle platformer instead of a regular platformer. It’s bad though. You switch between the three characters and each one has one special ability. You use that special ability to advance past a puzzle or get rid of a baddy. There’s a dog blocking the door. Make Dot blow it a kiss. There’s a bomb placed by a wall. Wacko has to hit the fuse with his mallet to set it off. There’s a bird blocking a platform. Make Dot blow it a kiss. etc There’s many very fiddly sections with Yakko pushing boxes about. 

It’s tedious but not terrible until about two-thirds in where you now have to start chaining these moves together in quick order. Blow Dracula a kiss to stun him(?) and then leg it over to a button to whack with a mallet to move the platform he’s on before he launches his next assault. Sounds ok. But you have to swap through the characters in sequence and most of the puzzles seemed primed to make you swap to the unnecessary character first. Wait for the game to let you switch again. And then switch again. And then do the thing. And now you’ve run out of time so you’ve got to switch back to the first character and repeat. There’s a lot of that and it makes it stupid and fiddly and crap.
Then there’s all the rest of it. Bad movement, dodgy collision detection, obscure fail conditions, nothing happening of interest. It’s well-animated, I’ll give it that.    
42%

Got halfway through lvl2 on Hard Corps, need a break now though. Took my ages to hook up my 360, reset my pw, reset my store data, download the game etc. But, Moot called me out and I'm not going to back down from that. Will aim to have arcade mode finished by end of next week.