Playing with My Son (2014)

https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3

by Tomte • 5 years ago

50 32 5 years ago

dang• 5 years ago

A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489423

tgb2• 5 years ago

I have an embarrassing question: can people actually beat Mario games without arcane knowledge of short cuts? I tried Super Mario World and literally struggle to get through the second world. Every stage is a try, try again affair. Am I just crap? I've haven't shied away from tough games but man Mario crushes me and I feel like it's targeted at kids.

Tomte• 5 years ago

I'm in the same boat. Almost all Nintendo games are too hard for me. My girlfriend just breezes through.

Also other games. I'm just a bad player and have to find games that are fun nonetheless (Crusader Kings III), or very easy.

Food for thought: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/easy-mode-guilt

andi999• 5 years ago

I just realized why I am bad at them. I play defensively, like clearing all the enemies then move on. This is much harder than move fast hit everything and you will be fine.(at least Zelda and Mario Galaxy are like that)

zrail• 5 years ago

I’m terrible at basically every game except very casual phone games (ex: It’s Literally Just Lawn Mowing, an entirely real iOS game).

I get frustrated and impatient with my lack of progress and give up, which is of course entirely a personal problem. My wife loves video games though and I’m sure will bring our children up right.

kop316• 5 years ago

I assume you mean for the SNES. I grew up playing Super Mario World, and while I would argue to be able to 100% it requires this knowledge (IIRC that's how they encouraged you to subscribe to Nintendo Power), but just going to beat the game was not terribly difficult.

But it could also be because I grew up playing them, I'm used to the gameplay style. Some newer games are like you describe, I cannot get past some levels and I quit in frustration.

base6982• 5 years ago

Yes, my wife and I actually played through without chests in the last decade. It's quite a fun experiment and yes it is difficult.

FillardMillmore• 5 years ago

I think you're thinking of Super Mario Bros. 3.

KozmoNau7• 5 years ago

I beat Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island legit with no crazy shortcuts or save state scumming, with 100% in Yoshi's Island. I didn't play them as a kid when they came out, but as an early-20s adult through emulation, and while SMW was difficult, it never felt unfair or impossible. Yoshi's Island is more like a story, not really that difficult, it's probably my all-time favorite game overall.

A Link to the Past was significantly harder to beat.

Earlier NES-era and older games could be absolutely punishing. The original Metroid is bonkers hard and Super Mario Bros. 3 is much harder than Super Mario World.

I think it's a matter of acclimatization. I grew up playing mostly platform games (mostly on PC), which I think has given me an innate sense of how the 2D world physics and interactions work most of the time. I remember the jump to 3D games being like learning to ride a bicycle all over again.

Fun addendum: because I grew up playing Commander Keen and Duke Nukem and so on, using directional keys with my right hand is hard-wired for me, I simply cannot do it with my left hand, and I'm actually left-handed. I can use a mouse equally well with both hands, but I just can't do WASD normally for 3D games. I have to remap and flip the controls to IJKL. Today I just play most games with a controller, aside from FPS games.

tgb2• 5 years ago

Interestingly, I was going to blame my inadequacies at Mario on having grown up only playing PC games and therefore relatively little in the way of platformers. I'm not sure there was a big-name platformer for PC was released in my entire formative years, and if it was, I certainly didn't play it.

Link to the Past was also quite hard, but I cheated at that (abusing the saving/loading from the Switch emulator version) so I can't compare. But I blamed it's difficulty on its old-fashioned controls: you can't attack in a direction unless you move in that direction. I find this extremely frustrating and limited after playing more modern top-down action games like Hotline Miami.

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

someone must have beat it to learn the arcane knowledge of short cuts.

wsc981• 5 years ago

Back when I was a kid, I found most of the Super Mario World SNES game doable with some practice, but there was some really hard stuff in the Star Road Special [0], I don't think I finished that part.

But just finishing the game and beating Bowser as a kid, definitely did that.

P.S.: If you know one of the secret spots in the second world (near top ghost house), you can get practically unlimited power-ups (flowers, feathers, mushrooms and a Yoshi) and lives.

---

[0] https://www.mariowiki.com/Special_Zone

eloisant• 5 years ago

Some people can.

I was a kid during the SNES/Megadrive era, and I didn't beat most of my games. That's fine. Since there were no saves for platformers, you would play from the start each time, and get better.

Sometimes you would get further than you usually go, so you would discover new content, and it was harder, the thrill was really nice.

Then when you finally beat a game, the feeling of accomplishment was really awesome. Something to brag with your friends during recess. Because most games weren't meant to be finished by the average player, finishing one really meant something.

licebmi__at__• 5 years ago

Regarding super mario world, I think is doable. I was able to get it all done by myself when I was a kid, and I don't consider myself some hardcore gamer, in fact, SMW is the only mario game I managed to finish, but probably I wouldn't be able to do so today.

jon-wood• 5 years ago

Yes, but that’s because as a 10 year old I spent many, many hours with a friend playing it on the original NES. Even 25 years on I can still clear the first couple of worlds without really thinking about it.

Games back the were really hard, especially without any sort of saving, there’s no shame in finding them difficult.

jpdaigle• 5 years ago

I have the same problem: I tried in 2020 to play the games of my childhood (Super Mario Bros 3 being a favourite) on an emulator, and I keep dying in the early, easy, levels. I'm 30 years older than when I first played the game, am I that much worse? Maybe.

NES platformers rely on precise timing, and the controls just _feel_ sluggish and laggy. I can absolutely believe that some combination of delays introduced by the bluetooth stack for the controller, the OS' input event queue, the emulator itself, and the whole modern video pipeline add up to a few frames worth of delay compared to the original game drawing itself on a CRT.

dustymcp2• 5 years ago

We are replaying it now and its brutal :)

auslegung• 5 years ago

Before we got married I told my (now) wife of some of the experiments I had planned for my future children, and she made it clear in no uncertain terms that I was never to do any sort of strange experiment on our children :( I married her anyway lol

ChrisKnott• 5 years ago

An enjoyable read but I couldn't stop thinking of this Onion article https://www.theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-...

My son is 6 months. The only non-negotiable part of his media diet will be the LucasArts point-and-clicks.

watwut2• 5 years ago

Kids are introduced to media of their generation by their friends. No matter what you do, you can't do that, because you are not their peer.

In order for then to be out of touch from their generation, you would also had to isolate them from peers basically. Other then that, influencing media they use and hobbies they have is just run off mill parenting most parents engage in at least to some extend.

vulcan012• 5 years ago

Kids are introduced to media of their generation by their friends

Look, this is somewhat true. But as a kid, I assure you that parents who treat their children like best friends (like my dad does) are very capable of influencing their kid's interests. Forcing or pressuring a kid into doing x never works long-term.

FriedrichN• 5 years ago

If my kids are anything like me, they have zero chance of fitting in anyway. I feel that is a sentiment that might be shared by a lot of people on this site.

Zafner• 5 years ago

As a middle-aged man with no real workout plan up to a couple of years ago who's now going through a blood pressure scare, this idea of scaring your kid away from physical activity, even in jest, feels like the first half of a horror story.

JKCalhoun• 5 years ago

I can relate though. I suck at sports and was worried I would have sports-minded kids.

Nonetheless, I raised my kids on a diet of geocaching, bike riding, hiking, skiing and other outdoor activities in addition to the more sedentary variety.

ip26• 5 years ago

I always sucked at sports and wasn’t motivated to improve. But neglecting fitness was one of my biggest mistakes. I hope to instill some sports into my kids. Getting them into math and science will be the easy part. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Igelau• 5 years ago

But can he use a can opener?

knolax• 5 years ago

He should use a hammer and chisel like a real man.

dustymcp2• 5 years ago

This is why i built an arcade machine loaded with Sega,med,snes All the gamepads for each er started on Sega Master system tho but same idea, on a side note gaming was brutal back then! :)

Playing with My Son (2014)

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