Konami programmers - were they masochists?

[Greg2600]

So I completed Contra Hard Corps and Castlevania Bloodlines last night on the Sega Genesis. I say completed because even on easy mode, these games were so ridiculously difficult, I can't get anywhere in them. The later Castlevania bosses and mini-bosses are absurdly hard. I had to crack out the Game Genie (infinite lives), and even then it STILL took me forever.

Where Konami programmers sadists??? Ha ha ha.

[goob47]

7029

I know that Hideo Kojima has nothing to do with Contra or Castlevania, but perhaps...

ROFL

[Aussie2B]

Contra is pretty ridiculous and Konami realized it because they made the Japanese version easier. Bloodlines, eh, I think it's pretty average as far as Castlevania difficulty goes, and there are definitely harder Castlevania games than that. I beat the game for the first time just a couple years ago, and I found the default difficulty pretty manageable with a bit of practice. The only thing that's annoying is the lack of infinite continues, which Castlevania games usually have. It forced me to replay stages a lot more than I normally would in a Castlevania game since I wanted to get a good password after each stage that preserved some continues and lives for the stages ahead. Oh, and it's also annoying that you can't get the full endings without beating Bloodlines on Hard. Still haven't done that myself.

[lkermel]

I often wondered about that myself as well :)
Maybe some of the Konami designers came from the arcade world, where difficulty is necessary to cash in. This may explain why the difficulty was (generally) on the hard side, even for home productions... but I'm like you, after I complete any one of those games on an emulator with save-states, I often wonder how I was supposed to finish them with no cheats!

[Kitsune Sniper]

I've seen some of the horrible shit they did to their games just so people wouldn't pirate or hack their games, so they were sadists, not masochists.

[SparTonberry]

I thought extreme difficulty was more of an anti-rental thing.
But stuff like Dream Penguin Story's hard mode was definitely anti-piracy (is the first level even possible in pirate mode, it seems like it might just be barely doable if played PERFECTLY. Any TASers around? :)
Of course, for those who haven't seen it. Kid Dracula for the Famicom has a literally impossible pirate mode. It removes all non-player sprites from all levels, except the first level, which they left alone just to screw the pirates who were hopefully too lazy to check further.).

[Kitsune Sniper]

I thought extreme difficulty was more of an anti-rental thing.
But stuff like Dream Penguin Story's hard mode was definitely anti-piracy (is the first level even possible in pirate mode, it seems like it might just be barely doable if played PERFECTLY. Any TASers around? :)
Of course, for those who haven't seen it. Kid Dracula for the Famicom has a literally impossible pirate mode. It removes all non-player sprites from all levels, except the first level, which they left alone just to screw the pirates who were hopefully too lazy to check further.).

Oh, tell me about them. No wait, don't. I already experienced them myself. :p

[bb_hood]

I thought extreme difficulty was more of an anti-rental thing.


I thought the increased difficulty in contra (us version) was so that people who rented it wouldnt complete it, and therefore buy a copy or rent it again.

[Tanooki]

To me the easy answer was a sign of the times, replay value and value for the dollar. Pre-internet, pre-gaming media for most people, you got it from word of mouth and if you're a kid blowing $40-50 on a game do you want it to last 90min or 9hours? Good stage design, good mechanics and play control work wonders, but if you add in some hard to sadist level challenge that'll keep people coming back for more as it shows with all the Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and so on fans.

[SparTonberry]

To me the easy answer was a sign of the times, replay value and value for the dollar. Pre-internet, pre-gaming media for most people, you got it from word of mouth and if you're a kid blowing $40-50 on a game do you want it to last 90min or 9hours? Good stage design, good mechanics and play control work wonders, but if you add in some hard to sadist level challenge that'll keep people coming back for more as it shows with all the Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and so on fans.

Of course, challenge is a good thing only when paired with the others.
Though there were companies far worse about it (THQ is my pick for bad game company), good thing Konami didn't release Phoenix (Hi no Tori) in the west. It's got a suicide button, which a good platformer should not need. It's possible to get stuck in a pit you can't jump out of, and there's an invisibility power-up that will let you walk through walls (and get stuck in them if you don't get out before it wears off). I also played through four levels and it returned to the start, and I was like okay, another short looping '80s game, but I later read that no, that's not the end and you actually have to find invisible doors to warp between levels because apparently there's a present as well as past and/or future version of levels (I forget). Couldn't at least give some sort of notice?
I hear Astro Boy for Famicom is also fairly terrible, especially for being a famous property by a company as reputable as Konami. A company that could turn even forgettable licenses into good games.

[homerhomer]

Look at it this way. You beat the game on easy so you have a whole lot of gameplay left on normal and hard. I also think they made artificially made games longer by making them hard. Otherwise you'd beat the game in 30 minutes and be pissed that you just pent $40 dollars.

[brysonclay]

Yes, I experienced them myself.

[sixwayshot]

It's a holdover from their arcade days. A lot of NES games were arcade conversions (including the majority of Konami's games), so those games were initially designed to eat quarters. If an arcade game was too easy, it meant that the machine made less money. And when an arcade machine isn't making enough money, you're gonna have a bad time.

Naturally, Konami adopted this strategy to their NES library. In this case, it's meant to give more "value" to the customer by making their game difficult to complete, to justify the high price tag for an average game.

[MetalFRO]

To me the easy answer was a sign of the times, replay value and value for the dollar. Pre-internet, pre-gaming media for most people, you got it from word of mouth and if you're a kid blowing $40-50 on a game do you want it to last 90min or 9hours? Good stage design, good mechanics and play control work wonders, but if you add in some hard to sadist level challenge that'll keep people coming back for more as it shows with all the Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and so on fans.

Easy games can still be fun and keep you coming back, depending on the context. I purchased TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan for Game Boy as a new release from a Kmart store about 30 minutes from my house. I had my GB with me, and I plugged it in and began playing it on the way home. I beat the game before we even pulled in the driveway, but because I was a huge TMNT fan and because I had fun playing it, I played through it again a couple dozen times before selling it off over a year later to help fund my purchase of a Genesis. Not every easy game is that way, but if they're well designed and fun to play because of other elements (i.e. atmosphere, character, music/sound, graphics, fun of controlling the stuff on screen, etc.) it can still be fun. I consider the original Super Mario Land game to be a cakewalk, but it's so fun I've probably played through and beat the game more than 2 or 3 dozen times because I enjoy it so much. It's nice to have a break from Contra-level challenge sometimes for something that is just fun to play because of the other elements that make games enjoyable.

[FFStudios]

I understand this is a bit more modern but Uncharted 2 on the most difficult setting was easily one of the most difficult stealth games I've ever played. Many of the levels require 100% silent kills to get by otherwise you'll get shot to bits by enemies with both a higher amount and more powerful weapons. Gradius was absolutely punishing for me and I still remember getting so frustrated at Gradius III-IV on my PS2 that I pulled the disc out of the drive and chucked it across the room because I was so sick of it.

I'm a lot more patient with games now, but I can definitely look back fondly (and embarrassed) at my younger days.

[Tanooki]

Metal for I agree entirely with you and I prefer a good pile of easy to finish quick kill games as they're awesome to return to because of such a well made fun ride they provide and still can giv eyou that feeling of accomplishment finishing the stuff. My points were just digging into the Konami thing.

[E Nice]

So I completed Contra Hard Corps and Castlevania Bloodlines last night on the Sega Genesis. I say completed because even on easy mode, these games were so ridiculously difficult, I can't get anywhere in them. The later Castlevania bosses and mini-bosses are absurdly hard. I had to crack out the Game Genie (infinite lives), and even then it STILL took me forever.

Where Konami programmers sadists??? Ha ha ha.

They weren't that hard. Bloodlines, use Eric, the guy with the lance. Much easier to beat the game with with the lance than with the whip. As for Hard Corps, yeah, the game is a struggle but it's mostly pattern memorization with the bosses. That and Brownie. Brownie is the easy mode in this game. He's the shortest, which can help avoid some incoming bullets, plus all of Brownie's weps have some sort of homing or screen arc effect. Next in line would be the girl, then the guy and lastly Fang. Fang would be the toughest one to use when trying to beat the game.

[Neb6]

It's a holdover from their arcade days. A lot of NES games were arcade conversions (including the majority of Konami's games), so those games were initially designed to eat quarters. If an arcade game was too easy, it meant that the machine made less money. And when an arcade machine isn't making enough money, you're gonna have a bad time.

Naturally, Konami adopted this strategy to their NES library. In this case, it's meant to give more "value" to the customer by making their game difficult to complete, to justify the high price tag for an average game.

True true!

There was always that fine line for coin-ops. Definitely the feeling that there needed to be enough challenge to get plenty of coins out of players. Of course, in the case of Defender and Gravitar, it almost backfired. Apparently Defender was so hard that it was going to be pulled from the arcades. That is, until Jarvis saw a kid beat the crap out of one of the machines released to the test arcade locations. As for Gravitar, a number of history books claim that it would have done better in the arcades if it hadn't been so tough.

Konami had a strong arcade presence, so I imagine they were working from that tradition. It's funny watching children playing classic games. More often than not, the first words out of their mouths are comments about how difficult the game is.

Personally, I've found most Japanese games to be fairly reasonable with a graduated skill level increase. It's the British games that I find to be brutally difficult. I think it's because their game reviewers make fun of them if the games aren't tough enough.

Having said all this, I still can't get through Strider or Rolling Thunder. As for Konami, I found Time Pilot, Time Pilot '84, and Gyruss to be not too terribly hard.