Priceguy
I believe you. But, I want details! I’ve been playing for years! I want infinite lives! I want to get past that ^&%&^$ little girl!
I have vague memories of a game for the Atari 2600 where the player was supposedly tasked with guiding in planes to a safe landing like an air traffic controller.
Well, I couldn’t get the game to do anything besides move one dot across the screen over a series of lines that I guess was a runway. Frustrated the crap out of me until I decided that my cartidge must have some dust in the wrong place or something.
gonzoron - You know, it never fails to astonish me the kind of things some players will put up with.
Please don’t tell me you never had to deal with the following:
- Getting a color when none of the bubbles of that color anywhere on the board are accessible. And getting it again. And again. And again…
- Getting a color in the “next” slot that you’re about to clear with the one loaded, meaning that unless you have Agent Falcon accuracy, you’re going to have to clear that color again. And again, when that damn color apears in the “next” slot again. And again. And again…
- ONE shot that’s off by a tenth of a hair that COMPLETELY RUINS YOUR ENTIRE ROUND.
- Looking great for about 98% of the board, then getting one shot a little off and failing right then and there.
- Needing one color to bust open the entire board and getting approximately 999,999,999,999 bubbles WITHOUT GETTING THAT ONE FREAKING STINKING ROTTEN LOUSY COLOR.
- Board that are just an ungodly clusterflark of muticolored bubbles, meaning that you have to work like a dog and sweat and grunt and continue nine times and die a thousand million deaths just to eventually clear it at all.
Oh great, you’ve resurfaced painful memories of all my past pre-“cheat” code PB experiences. Thanks for nothing. 
(No, seriously, it’s that painful. It was exactly games like these that made me insist on devices like the Game Genie. Now I feel almost naked without codes.)
Some of the Infocom’s were pretty tricky. I absoluted loved Deadline and Infidel.
I got pretty far in Tapper, but I don’t think it ends. It starts to get pretty annoying.
NETHACK!!! Dispite trying off and on over a period of DECADES (Well, 1.5 decades) I’ve never even gotten HALFWAY to the bottom of the dungeon, leaving getting out totally out of the question.
Another vote for the demonic Ghost’s & Goblins. I actually got thorough the NES version, emulated, over a period of WEEKS. Even that was by hidiously abusing the save feature, but never got the ending. I just kept getting sent back, and after the second time, (and YES I was using the @#$@ cross) I just couldn’t take it anymore.
The hardest game I’ve played recently was Jagged Alliance 2, and that was hard mostly cause I’m not very patient. 
That’s leaving out games that were hard only because of bad design. Mechcommander, for instance, was a bitch, but only because levels took 3 hours to finish, with no save option, and you could easliy loose people to ambushes . . .
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‘I solved Myst in 10 minutes, why can’t I do this?’
DocCathode: Didn’t recall the novella, so ignore the spoiler box. Like I said, it’s been a long time since I played that one. May have to trip over to HOTU m’self and re-visit it.
Priceguy: You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, bub. You can waste three-four days productivity just browsing the game descriptions, and re-discovering games you’d forgotten years ago.
[sub]Anyone else still irked that Knights of Legend never did get any o’ those nifty expansion packs released for it? Especially since there was no weapons trainer available to get you past the middle levels of Greatsword proficiency?[/sub]
Would you hate me a lot if I told you I beat all three storylines, on the highest difficulty level, without cheating?
Use your flares and/or nightvision, and blast the generator (big boxy thing against the left wall) powering that fan from a safe distance, then go down and get the ammo, or whatever was down there.
Or just skip it. You can easily complete the first Marine level with just your starting equipment, once you’ve mastered the art of not jumping halfway out of your seat every time an Alien comes hissing and screeching your way.
That was my worst enemy the first few times.
Once you startle enough to lose your grip on the mouse, or let your left hand drift off the WASDX keys, it’s all over, baby.
The third Marine level is the real bitch.
[sub]Oh yeah… customizing the keyboard controls was a must for me. Might help you, too. The defaults require three hands to play.[/sub]
I’ve already wasted an evening trying to get the damn games to work! I hate backward incompatibility. One of the games even had the audacity to claim that I didn’t have enough memory to run a 12-year-old game that came on one floppy for the Amiga 500.
Ah, a DOS virgin.
It’s absolutely right - you probably don’t have enough base memory. PC architecture designates the first 640Kb of memory as the memory DOS programs use to run; the rest of your honking crotchpack of RAM is extended memory, used for data. (It’s not quite that simple, but it’ll do for now.) You can usually get the old games to work through trial and error.
Hey! While I’ll admit that I’m certainly no DOS wizard (didn’t get truly into computers until Windows was the standard (and yes, I know that Windows is a graphical shell for DOS)), I have used it quite a bit.
By juggling the memory allocation?
heehehee… maybe I’m a masochist.
Yeah… so you shoot it off to the side somewhere out of the way, then throw the next two at it and viola, it’s gone. Or if there’s only one or two, not three, hang it off of something you’re going to knock off soon and let it drop.
See #1, or develop Agent Falcon accuracy. Part of the game, man. Not bad design.
OK, yeah, that’s a bit annoying. It’s sometimes tough to tell whether the bubbles going to catch on something or not. But it gets easier with practice.
It happens… I usually try not to get in a situation where one bad shot could cross the line of doom, but yeah, it happens. But so does missing a jump in mario and falling to your doom. Doesn’t mean the game is poorly designed.
Eh… work with what you got. Yeah, the one shot, 2 second, board clear is fun to do, but there are other colors on the board, or they wouldn’t give them to you to shoot.
Yeah, those are the pain in the ass boards, but they’ve got to do something to make it tough.
you’re welcome.
And yet, you kept playing… addictive, ain’t it?
And if you haven’t played 2-player, you haven’t lived. Sooooo deliciously vicious.