Gaming pet-peeves

[number47]

I guess it's a common thing for japanese games that you respawn as somewhat disabled - Bellmonts have short whip, Ricky in moon crystal has fewer lives and no jumpboots etc...

[P]

Metroid cartridge version may be forgiven that it can't save your energy since that maybe would require even longer passwords (I'm not sure if the FDS version saves your energy) but Zelda 1 probably has no excuse.

In Metroid it gets easier to grind for energy later in the game since you can absorb more life energy from stronger enemies (not mentioning metroids themselves). I think the biggest flaw with the game is the overly confusing mazes, with tons of identical rooms.

I think many modern games are bit too forgiving though. I almost never die in any of the newer Zelda games. Majora's Mask is probably the only 3D Zelda that is challenging battle-wise.

[zmaster18]

Metroid cartridge version may be forgiven that it can't save your energy since that maybe would require even longer passwords (I'm not sure if the FDS version saves your energy) but Zelda 1 probably has no excuse.

In Metroid it gets easier to grind for energy later in the game since you can absorb more life energy from stronger enemies (not mentioning metroids themselves). I think the biggest flaw with the game is the overly confusing mazes, with tons of identical rooms.

I think many modern games are bit too forgiving though. I almost never die in any of the newer Zelda games. Majora's Mask is probably the only 3D Zelda that is challenging battle-wise.

I agree, in the newer Zelda games you rarely die.

In Metroid, you can go in the rooms before the ones with Chozo statues and upgrades to keep killing those giant bugs that swoop down from the ceiling. That's probably the best and safest way to energize Samus. Sometime in the game, certain tiles are the wrong color. Once I came into a room that dropped me all the way to the bottom with no way to get back up. It was a dead-end. I had to reset the game... Once you have the screw attack, the game gets much easier. You really can't go to Kraid or Ridley until you have all the power ups. You get your ass beat if you do otherwise.

[P]

The bugs are useful before bosses and earlier in the game but late in the game when you have many energy tanks it takes forever (especially the weak bugs in Brinstar). But around that time you should have screw attack so you can beat tougher enemies and absorb bigger energy orbs. At the end of the game I just farm metroids for life and missile energy (a bit risky though).

Are you sure there was no way to get up? I think there are a few pitfalls that requires the high jump boots to get out of. But they are in places that normally requires the high jump to get to in the first place. I guess you used bomb jumping to get there. Try bomb jumping out of it.

You absolutely don't need all the power ups to beat the bosses, just a good strategy. For Kraid you might want to have taken most of the power ups in Brinstar and also taken a trip to Norfair to get High-Jump Boots so you can get Varia in Brinstar. That way you should have enough energy and missiles to beat Kraid in a game of endurance. My strategy is to get as close to him as possible and bombard him with missiles. That way you are past his shooting horns and you can shoot many missiles more than he can shoot spikes. You don't even need to dodge if you have enough energy.

Ridly is even easier. If you keep the Ice Beam you can freeze his beams and shower him with missiles or if you take the Wave Beam you can dodge his beams and shoot him with either Wave Beam or missile showers. If you want to be more sneaky you can go into the lava below the bridge he stands on and exploit the fact that the Wave Beam can shoot through walls. He should fall before you take much damage from the lava.

[Zycrow]

I always just roll right up to Kraid in morph ball mode and bomb him to death. I face Ridley first, though, since it's better for speed and he's much easier than Kraid. That way you also get to Kraid with a lot more health.

The 30 restart points in Metroid never bothered me much, and in Zelda the overworld is pretty forgiving in most areas so it's not too hard to warp to a fairy pond.

Now my real pet peeve is when games feel the need to constantly remind you that you are low on health. I recently played both Startropics games (loved them btw) and the second one in particular had a very annoying sound. To make matters worse, the sound would restart every time another sound played, so when shooting at bosses you'd just get this horrible machine gun of beeping.

Oh, and someone mentioned Akumajou Densetsu - I couldn't beat the NES version of this game without the "help me" extra lives code. The FC version is a bit more forgiving, starting you outside of Drac's chamber if you die. You still go back to the beginning of the final stage if you get a game over, though. Pet peeve: NES games that were made arbitrarily harder for the American version.

[MaxXimus]

Micro transactions are pretty annoying.

[zmaster18]

I'm not sure if I said this already, but I hate when people call a DS a Gameboy. It's a completely different line. I was watching Two and Half Men and Jake calls his original DS a Gameboy... Pretty dumb considering the product placement in the show is a form of marketing. Get the name right. Nintendo has made multiple appearances in the show, ranging from GBA to the Wii.
Post Merge: July 09, 2015, 06:39:19 pm
Another classic gaming pet-peeve for retro gamers is when noobs call anything that is pixelated '8-bit'. No matter what the resolution is, or amount of colors, it's just '8-bit'. That really pisses me off, you have no idea... 

[fcgamer]

I hate the modern smartphone games, which are now all the rage.  I see people playing these games all the time on the bus, train, etc, and I just don't see how it is fulfilling to play such a game, just moving one or two fingers across a touch screen.  To me, that is not how games are supposed to be played, and that wave of casual gamers annoys me to no end.

[MaxXimus]

I agree with you Dave. Those games are gimmiky at best, though I will admit that fruit ninja has helped me kill a few hours in the past.

[M-Tee]

I wouldn't hate smart phone games if they weren't so terribly amateurishly made. Most look like they should part of those utterly generic bartop arcade machines.

I also am not a fan of games full of micro transactions or without adless versions to play.m

That said, I put serious hours into Words with Friends, which just goes to show that EA completely dropped the ball with their Scrabble license.

[P]

Yeah there's so much trash among them. And smart phones are only good for some types of games. Playing action games without real buttons doesn't do it for me anyway. If I play a touch-screen-only game it's mostly backgammon or similar games.

[zmaster18]

A big pet-peeve of mine is when retro-game articles you see uses the word 'dusty' to describe retro stuff. For example:

"Get your dusty NES Zapper out of the closet"
"Dust off your Gamecube controllers again"
"Dusty original Gameboy"
"Dusty old Super Nintendo controllers"

Just because it's retro, it must be dusty? I myself have good hygiene and also keep my belongings clean. None of my stuff is dusty. Is 'dusty' funny? To me it has a negative and insulting feel. Why make the assumption old things must be dirty? 

[Zycrow]

To be fair, I did just clean off a significant layer of dust from my Genesis. Poor neglected thing.

[zxin]

I haven't heard this one recently, but growing up I would hear a lot of kids say they "beat the game" when all they had done was finish the first level.

Oh my god... [Facepalm] ... Who in the... WHAT? 

PSX and GCN are the platform codes that were used by retailers.  Not sure where GCN came from as such (you'd expect it to be NGC), but it used to irritate me as well.

My pet peeve?  Slow intros.  Let me into the game dammit!  You even find these in some retro games and they are infuriating.

Reminds me of level 1 of I Wanna Be The Guy: Gaiden.

People who pronounce NES as "ness" and SNES as "sness." N-E-S and S-N-E-S, people!

Sorry but, I do this, N-E-S does NOT roll of the tongue easily.

Does 'DS Phat' bother anyone? As in the original DS?

I also don't like when people say May-ree-oh. It's Mah-ree-oh.

I HATE when people call Lakitu Lah-keee-too. It's pronounced Lah-kih-too. Many people butcher the pronunciation of Mario characters.

Never heard 'DS Phat' before, sounds kind-of dumb, like calling the Xbox One the X-Bone. (Which sounds wrong on so many levels.)

Personally?  I hate it when people say Po-ker-mon or Poke-E-mon, it's Poh-kay-mon.

[Zycrow]

Personally?  I hate it when people say Po-ker-mon or Poke-E-mon, it's Poh-kay-mon.

Whassat? Some a them Poke-uh-man cards??