Up The No. of Lives or Leam 'em at Default?

[RegSNES]

When you have a game that gives you the opition to increase the lives do you do so or not mess with them at all?

For years I'd always up the number of lives if a game gave me the option to. Lately, however, I've decided to leave the number of lives at the default setting to give myself more of a challenge, or in the case of old-school compilations to leave things more faithful to the number of lives you started with in the arcade.

What are your thoughts on this topic.

[Chaz From Phantasy Star 2]

I take it to the max. I have a duty to save the game's worlds along with its inhabitants. I can't jepoardize that just for a selfish challenge!

[Technosis]

I'm a firm believer in the number 3. A carry over from the arcade coin-op days I guess :-D

[Moo Cow]

Depends on the game. When I beat it on max, if I still want to play, I lower the difficulty.

[Garry Silljo]

Default, or even bring the number down sometimes. Too many lives makes the game to easy. If there is no challenge, it's boring. If the game is too hard on default, PRACTICE.

[bangtango]

For a lot of games that actually give you the choice, I bump up my lives to the max. Once I have an idea of how hard the game is and how many lives I may need, I adjust it from there. There are just some games that I ain't able to beat with three lives, pardon my grammar. Like Life Force, Bad Dudes & Double Dragon II on the NES or Final Fight One on Super Nintendo. Yet there are other games I can beat without dying so it just depends on the game.

This is a little off-topic but I do something different in games which let you adjust the difficulty but not the lives. If I can't adjust the lives but can adjust the difficulty, I almost always start on the hardest possible mode and work my way down. Did that with Doom on the 32X last week.

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Aussie2B]

I feel like I'm cheating if I'm not playing on the default settings. If it's a super hard game, like entries in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, sure, I'll bump it up just to try it out, but I won't say I've actually "beaten" the game until I can get through with the standard settings. Same goes with the difficulty.

[GaijinPunch]

Default. Your a pussy if you change to anything else!!!

[Fuyukaze]

First I like to make it as easy as posible. Once I've played thru it, then I like to either make it as hard as posible or gradualy increase the difficulty to the next difficulty till it's as hard as posible. That or I just stop playing and move on to the next game.

[skaar]

Real men use default.

Then again, we always used the 30 lives code in Konami games.

Time to ask myself some serious questions, I guess.

[Garry Silljo]

Real men use default.
Then again, we always used the 30 lives code in Konami games.


Speak for yourself. None of my friends would play Contra with me because I'd refuse to use the code. They would die in level 2 or 3 and have to sit there and watch me beat the rest of the game. Even tapping the button to take my spares didn't by them much further. After playing the game near nonstop for two or three weeks it got to where I could loop it without dying until I just got bored. Did the same with Life Force.