I Swear I Used To Be Good At This Game...

[sprazzi]

I was better at games when I was younger of course out of snappier reflexes and sheer coordination, but now they are more fun, because I'm more relaxed, and I enjoy them a lot more.

The simpler, the better. Make me focus on things

Zen and videogames lol.

Edited January 9, 2014 by sprazzi

[Jess Ragan]

I've never been, you know, good at video games, but I used to be a lot more persistent. I spent hours beating games like Milon's Secret Castle and Fester's Quest, but these days, I've been spoiled by emulation and save states. If I can't make headway in a game, I just quit and play something else. It's kind of sad, really, but at least I'm enjoying myself.

 

What's heartbreaking is that I used to be pretty good at Sinistar. I was intimidated as hell by the insult-spewing, spaceship-swallowing, chrome-plated monster, but after getting Midway's Arcade's Greatest Hits (or Williams, whatever!) for the Saturn, I practiced and eventually discovered that Sinistar was not the threat he once seemed to be (now the Warriors, on the other hand...). I think I might have reached the Void Zone once, but now? Pff, forget it. I can't even beat the first Sinistar in the Genesis game... the first Sinistar. Talk about losing your touch!

[nanochess]

I used to be good at Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but recently I discovered I had forgotten all the Chun-Li and Blanka special moves, and I looked like an old man trying to get a grasp of videogames

[BydoEmpire]

Showing my 5 yr old boy the classics, as any good parent should, I was replaying SNES Super Mario World & having a hell of a time getting past one of the places on the ledge in the cave, I frustratedly said "I swear I used to be WAY better than this" as I died repeatedly, & my son stated "yeah, it's a lot harder now that you're older, huh Dad!"

 

Hah, when I came into this thread, I was going to post that I had a heck of a time getting through some of the cave & ghost house levels in Super Mario World when I picked it up for Wii VC a few years back. Much harder than I remember. I just don't play many games anymore, so it's not too surprising my "skills" - to the extent they existed at all - have deteriorated.

[Lendorien]

I used to be able to take out Contra on the NES without using the Konami code. I went back and played it with a fried this past year and had lost all of my lives after about 10 minutes of playtime.

[+GoldenWheels]

I spent years playing XE Joust--I picked up the very superior 7800 version recently and got my ass handed to me. Badly.

 

Even playing it safe and "spawn camping"--I'm lucky to get 20 levels in.

[+Gemintronic]

Athena on the NES. It's a horrible troll of a game. I got to the end somehow as a kid but unless you perform some secret voodoo the end boss is indestructible. Now I can't get past the first quarter of the first level.

[+davidcalgary29]

Toki on the Lynx. Game mastery requires careful timing and planning, and I spent hours with the game mapping it out. That's lost with time...

[Cynicaster]

I used to kick ass at "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" and now I have trouble with Mr. Sandman. But now I'm playing on emulator and I blame either my LCD monitor or some other lag for not being able to dodge Sandman's triple uppercut. Lag isn't a big deal in most games but it's a killer here. I also suck at the original "Castlevania" now. When I was a kid I beat this game over and over. Now I can barely get past Frankenstein and have trouble reaching the Grim Reaper. But that's probably just me, not the emulator.

 

 

On the other hand, I was never able to beat "Crash Bandicoot" back in the day on a real PS1 and I finally beat it in emulation. That felt good.

Don’t feel bad, there is definitely something up with the emulation of that game. This has been talked about here before. In the vast majority of games, I don’t think frame-perfect timing in emulation is critical in the sense that micro-second inaccuracies will not noticeably bolster or hinder your performance at the game—but it does matter with MTPO. I beat the game on real hardware when I was a kid, but playing it in emulation through the last 10 years, I have struggled to even get to Tyson, even when actively trying. I could sometimes beat Sandman, but Super Macho would get me every time.

 

I figured I was just getting old and slow, but then last year I hunted down a physical copy of the game and decided I was going on a mission to take Tyson down once again, as an adult. I was fully expecting it to take hours and hours of frustration and failure, but hand on my heart, I beat him the first night of trying, and almost right away at that. I posted about this here when I did it and can’t remember how many tries it took, but I’m 99% sure it was fewer than 5 tries. I strutted around my basement like a bad ass geek for the rest of that night.

[NE146]

On that note, just read this tonight. Someone going through the game blindfolded. Check out the vid

 

http://kotaku.com/incredible-gamer-takes-on-mike-tysons-punch-out-while-1499030611

[Mxyzptlk]

I never played the rip-off that is Sinistar on anything other than the arcade version. What is the "void zone"? It must be after the 4th level as that is about as far as any gamer I know has ever reached.

[cncfreak]

World Karate Championship for the Atari 8-bit computers. Back in the day I remember clearing all scenes and getting back to the first one and getting 95k+ as a score. Now I can't even get off the second screen. Sigh... still love the game though....