Forty (or more) tries later, I was able to get to the end of the first level. Then, I was faced with a giant turret that sent a steady stream of laser blasts at my Schwarzenegger-lookalike. After ten tries of this, I pushed my computer aside and officially rage-quitted the game.
When the older generation of gamers states that they are more willing to struggle with a challenge, I readily believe it. Part of it goes to their credit, but at the same time, I can not help but laugh at the ridiculousness of some of these game's difficulties. A older gamer would toil for hours at a seemingly impossible challenge while my generation would more likely yawn and adopt the classic "TLDR" attitude. With a game like Contra, these differences are more pronounced. It was immensely frustrating to successfully navigate my way around the entire level in order to reach the finish and repeatedly fail at defeating the final boss. That, in itself, was probably the most frustrating part: if I failed at beating the boss, I lost the game and was sent right back to the beginning, without a token for my accomplishment. If that happened with today's games, there would be a very unhappy gaming community.
With all of that criticism being said, there were some really cool facets about Contra as a game. Besides being another step in platform gameplay, it was an interesting step in gamer-control to be able to rotate the bullet's trajectory in eight distinct direction. This was helpful and necessary in order to defeat the enemies that were attacking from multiple directions. Even more trivial aspects like the flipping of the character as he jumped made the game more entertaining to play. This game frustrated me quite effectively, but it was fun to play, if only for a little while.
As it is with most ancient games, the attacking formation of the enemies in Contra is a little illogical. The following video points this out and other humorous parts of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_sGhhUrJc
Mega Man 2 = Mission Impossible 2
If the Anti-Christ comes to Earth in the form of a video game, it will be a spinoff of the Mega Man series. This is a game that, although the controls are not terribly difficult to grasp, presents challenges that seem plain impossible for a mere mortal.
One of the more interesting aspects of the game is that the player may choose the order of the levels. Each level is represented by the boss that resides at the end of the level (Heatman, Woodman, and other creative names). This is actually the most crucial and cruel parts of the game for a very important reason. When the player defeats a certain stage, they gain an ability as a reward. For some stages, it is nearly impossible to champion the level without having already acquired a certain ability; therefore, a despairing player can try to beat a level multiple times, never knowing that it is unattainable.
Thankfully, my gaming pride compelled me to keep trying with this game. I was unable to defeat the first level that I attempted, and the second, and the third after that. It was not until my seventh attempt at beating a different level that I was able to complete it. After that, it was slightly easier to navigate around the levels and defeat the menacing monsters that challenged Mega Man.
Although this game accurately represents the evil of some gaming developers, it did provide some concepts that I throughly enjoyed. The most important one was allowing the player to choose the level that they wished to conquer; along with the mind game that it presented, the player was required to spend more time with the game in order to advance successfully. In a time when more time at a particular arcade machine means more money for the manufacturers, a game like Mega Man is gold.
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