Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 11 hours ago
When done right, hard mode in video games can be a great challenge that pushes the player to achieve excellence while still being fair. However, hard mode is sometimes just an exercise in frustration and a big mistake in certain games. So in this video, I'm going to break down some examples of the latter, based on my personal experiences playing hard modes and hard games in general over the years. I'll get into unintentional design flaws as well as more deliberate ones such as input reading in fighting games.
00:00 Intro
00:36 Hard Mode Exposes Design Flaws
06:27 Fake Difficulty Is Real
Games shown in order:
Unreal Tournament (PC, map is AS-Overlord on Godlike difficulty)
Cool Spot (Sega Master System)
Timesplitters 2 (Gamecube)
Final Soldier (PC Engine, Expert Mode)
Mortal Kombat II
Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition (accidentally said Championship Edition in the video)
The King Of Fighters 94
Art Of Fighting 2
Gradius (via Gradius Collection on PSP)
Sources/Further Reading:
Article about fighting game AI today: gamesradar.com/future-fighting-game-ai
TV Tropes Entry on Fake Difficulty: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty
Articles about SNK Boss Syndrome:
atrociousgameplay.miraheze.org/wiki/SNK_Boss_Syndrome
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SNKBoss
When done right, hard mode in video games can be a great challenge that pushes the player to achieve excellence while still being fair. However, hard mode is sometimes just an exercise in frustration and a big mistake in certain games. So in this video, I'm going to break down some examples of the latter, based on my personal experiences playing hard modes and hard games in general over the years. I'll get into unintentional design flaws as well as more deliberate ones such as input reading in fighting games.
00:00 Intro
00:36 Hard Mode Exposes Design Flaws
06:27 Fake Difficulty Is Real
Games shown in order:
Unreal Tournament (PC, map is AS-Overlord on Godlike difficulty)
Cool Spot (Sega Master System)
Timesplitters 2 (Gamecube)
Final Soldier (PC Engine, Expert Mode)
Mortal Kombat II
Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition (accidentally said Championship Edition in the video)
The King Of Fighters 94
Art Of Fighting 2
Gradius (via Gradius Collection on PSP)
Sources/Further Reading:
Article about fighting game AI today: gamesradar.com/future-fighting-game-ai
TV Tropes Entry on Fake Difficulty: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty
Articles about SNK Boss Syndrome:
atrociousgameplay.miraheze.org/wiki/SNK_Boss_Syndrome
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SNKBoss
![Flicky [Sega Genesis] - First Loop 1CC Playthrough 966,460 pts](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P44GirVGaY0/mqdefault.jpg "Flicky [Sega Genesis] - First Loop 1CC Playthrough 966,460 pts
Before Flicky became known for appearances in many different Sonic games, most notably Sonic 3D Blast, Flicky had her own arcade platformer back in 1983. That game eventually got a port to the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive in 1991, the same year that Sonic The Hedgehog made the Sega Genesis a serious threat to Nintendo. This port is probably more common than the arcade version at this point.
The purpose of Flicky is to control Flicky, a blue bird, through a small area in order to collect several chicks known as Chirps and bring them to the exit. Your big threats are the cats that roam the stage as well as the tiny green bugs that move quickly up the ceilings and on the floor. This is a simple concept that is similar to Namcos Mappy, which this game was supposed to be Segas response to, except that youre collecting these Chirps instead of valuable items. Also, while Mappy is probably inspired by Tom & Jerry, this game is more like the Looney Tunes shorts with Sylvester and Tweety in terms of cartoon inspirations.
Whenever you grab a Chirp, it starts a chain of Chirps that follow you until you go to the exit. This chaining is what a large portion of your scoring each stage is based upon because the more you bring back to the exit at a time, the more each Chirp is worth in the chain. If you bring back all of them at once, you get a large amount of points. However, this can be difficult to do in later stages as the enemy cats can break up your chain by making contact with it, forcing you to go back and reclaim your Chirps. If you get touched, you die in one hit.
Speaking of scoring, your score comes down to bringing back chains of Chirps as long as possible, as quickly as possible, and the bonus rounds. The bonus rounds require you to grab as many of the Chirps falling from the sky as you can. Perfect bonus rounds fetch a nice bonus.
Part of the challenge has to do with Flicky herself. Her movement is a bit touchy with a little bit of slidey inertia. She also has a tendency to bounce off a wall if you jump against them, making her easy prey for the cats that roam the stages. Also, you have no control over how high she jumps.
However, Flicky goes have two things going for her. One, her movement speed is pretty good so youre not as a dramatic speed disadvantage. Two, her jump, though it only has one mode, is higher than the cats, so you can jump up to safety in certain situations. This along with the generous collision detection on ledges also allows to make some longer jumps than youd expect at first.
The two main keys to beating this game comes down to learning the movement and having routes for the harder stages. Some stages dont need much routing while others require strict routing like in a shmup. Plus, the enemies spawn in the same places so you need to learn these spawn points for certain stages. If your timing is slightly off, that can cause you to hit a green bug and die unexpectedly instead of being safe. Another thing you can leverage is the fact that the stages scroll infinitely from side to side despite being tiny, so you can get back to the other side of the stage very quickly.
Even though the stages are small and short, there are 48 of them to beat in order to get to the ending screen, which the arcade original lacked. After that, the second loop begins. It is a lot of stages to learn, but the first loop is still less than 30 minutes. From my experiences, the hardest stages of the first loop are rounds 16, 25, 28, 32, 36, and 42. Another thing is that later on in the loop, I played more for survival, taking less chances by making more than one run to the exit in order to collect the Chirps safely, and I had issues pulling that off at times. I got all the way to Round 58 in the second loop before I hit Game Over, and you dont get continues to begin with so a 1CC is the only way to beat this game.
00:00 Intro
00:26 Rounds 1-3
01:31 Rounds 4-7
02:59 Rounds 8-11
04:43 Rounds 12-15
06:28 Rounds 16-19
08:19 Rounds 20-23
10:36 Rounds 24-27
12:48 Rounds 28-31
15:52 Rounds 32-35
18:07 Rounds 36-39
20:49 Rounds 40-43
23:57 Rounds 44-47
26:24 Round 48 + Ending
27:44 Loop 2
#flicky #segagenesis #segamegadrive #retrogaming #classicgaming #sega #segaclassics")
![Pole Position II [Gamecube/Arcade] - Fuji/Namco 1CC with Commentary (Namco Museum)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P8nEMOKPRew/mqdefault.jpg "Pole Position II [Gamecube/Arcade] - Fuji/Namco 1CC with Commentary (Namco Museum)
0:00. Intro
0:53. Qualifying
1:49. Race
As I stated in the 1 Year Anniversary video, I have a goal of finishing every single Pole Position II course. Ive done Suzuka, Test, and now Fuji aka Namco Circuit if youre playing Namco Museum. For this run, I decided to piece together some commentary for qualifying and the full race. I may do the same thing if I clear Seaside in the future.
Also, special thanks to everyone who watched my previous video and especially those of you who subscribed recently. I have been blown away by the influx of views and new subscribers. I appreciate the feedback as well. In fact, I made sure the audio levels were good for the background music and sound effects and not drowning out the commentary.
Music: GROOVE-FM - これ大好きCITY
#poleposition #namco #namcomuseum #retrogaming #arcadegames #arcade #arcadegame")
![Marble Madness [Gamecube/Arcade] - First 1CC 78,170 pts (Midway Arcade Treasures)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PFa013kgGjI/mqdefault.jpg "Marble Madness [Gamecube/Arcade] - First 1CC 78,170 pts (Midway Arcade Treasures)
Played on Dolphin via Midway Arcade Treasures using a Hori Fighting Commander (Switch version).
This is an important milestone for me because this is my first 1CC of a Western arcade game. This means a lot to me because Ive been playing this game on and off for over 18 years since I first got Midway Arcade Treasures for my Gamecube, and I used to be done by the end of the third stage or halfway through the fourth one.
It may be a short 1CC, but it is an intense one as you have to be fast and precise while navigating some ridiculous mazes, with the hardest being the last stage. I played this on a Hori Fighting Commander, which has an excellent D-pad but still does not perfectly replicate the original trackball controls that this game had in the arcades.
I died a lot, which hurt my score at the end, but Im proud of how clutch I was during the last stretch of the final stage. Also, I got the harder left route in the beginning of that stage thanks to RNG, but I still got through it!
Last, Marble Madness is a good example of why Atari Games were brilliant. They made plenty of influential and original games like this, Paperboy, Roadblasters, the Rush series, and Rampart just to name a few that I would recommend to anyone.")
![Cherry Bomb [PICO-8] - ALL Clear 69100 pts (Basic Shmup Showcase)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P_J3B2UEW9g/mqdefault.jpg "Cherry Bomb [PICO-8] - ALL Clear 69100 pts (Basic Shmup Showcase)
Link to game: https://krystman.itch.io/cherrybomb
Cherry Bomb is a fixed screen wave shmup for the PICO-8 created by Krystman as a submission for his own Basic Shmup Showcase thats he hosting on itch.io, which you can learn more about here: https://itch.io/jam/basic-shmup
This is a wave shooter reminiscent of Galaxian and Galaga with some modern touches like bombs, which are really more like a limited use spread shot, increased bullet count getting it close to bullet hell at times, and some extra scoring bonuses for killing enemies that are moving. Its a fun but simple wave shooter thats pretty well-polished without any major issues.")
![Fantasy Zone [Sega Master System] - First Loop 1CC 2,548,900 pts.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Pm-YhjzahOQ/mqdefault.jpg "Fantasy Zone [Sega Master System] - First Loop 1CC 2,548,900 pts.
Fantasy Zone is an arcade shmup created by Sega originally for arcades in 1986. It is known for having infinitely side scrolling levels like Defender and also for being one of the first ever cute-em-ups. The game was ported to the Master System soon after by Sega. It would also be ported over to the Famicom and NES, by Sunsoft and Tengen respectively.
Every level in Fantasy Zone, with the exception of the final stage being a boss rush, involves destroying bases that spawn enemies and avoiding other waves of enemies and their bullets. After you take out the bases, you have a boss fight. During the stage, youll also have the opportunity to go to a shop where you can buy weapons and engines with the coins you earned from killing enemies and bases. The more you buy items, the more the prices go up and theres limited stock for items.
The Master System version is a very solid port of the original arcade game. It controls well, runs well, and the graphics are quite nice for the 8-bit era. This version does have different bosses for Stages 4 and 6 and does not have a radar. However, it is pretty faithful to the original otherwise.
One important note about this run is that I did use the infinite weapons trick during this run. In order to do this, you need to buy all of the engines and then buy a weapon. If you buy the 7-way shot, youll get to use it for as long as you want without the usual time limits that would apply otherwise. The 7-way shot is especially powerful with this trick when paired with external autofire, which I did use. This makes the game even easier than it already is, but you usually cant take advantage of this trick until around Stage 4 or Stage 5 when you have enough money to do it.
After you beat the final boss at the end of the boss rush on Stage 8, you get an ending and then, the game loops infinitely. The difficulty does not appear to get harder with subsequent loops. My run ended only because of dumb mistakes, not because it got harder on Loop 2. Also, this game can be counter-stopped as the score counter does not go higher than seven digits.
Played in RetroArch via the PicoDrive core. 20HZ autofire was used from my Brook PCB.
00:00 Intro
00:10 Stage 1
01:24 Stage 2
02:35 Stage 3
04:30 Stage 4
06:13 Stage 5
07:51 Stage 6
09:06 Stage 7
10:15 Shop Before Stage 8
10:36 Stage 8 (Boss Rush)
13:43 Loop 2
#sega #mastersystem #fantasyzone #opaopa #retrogaming #shmups #shootergames #shmup #segaclassics #1986 #80sgames #1980s #classicgames #classicgaming")
![Sonic Wings Special [Playstation 1] - Normal Mode 1CC 590,500 pts (Kowful The Viking)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q9du93IETL8/mqdefault.jpg "Sonic Wings Special [Playstation 1] - Normal Mode 1CC 590,500 pts (Kowful The Viking)
Recorded with SimpleScreenRecorder.")
![California Games [Atari Lynx] - A True Hidden Gem](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QBQJ5FqtNOI/mqdefault.jpg "California Games [Atari Lynx] - A True Hidden Gem
California Games for the Atari Lynx was one of the few launch titles for the Lynx when it launched in 1989. While the system was not successful, there were quite a few real gems on it, like this version of the famous home computer game. So in this video, I break down the game and why it is still worth playing today.
Steam re-release: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399480/California_Games_C64DOSAtariLynxNESSMSGenesis/
Nintendo Switch re-release: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-epyx-collection-handheld-switch/
GameSpot Hall Of Fame article via the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20070112130021/http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/greatestgames/p-36.html
00:00 Intro
01:00 BMX
02:34 Surfing
04:04 Halfpipe
05:48 Foot Bag (Hacky Sack)
07:09 Final Thoughts")
![Raiden Trad [Sega Genesis] Normal 1CC - 1.8 Million (without Special Stage)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QalLbKrqvXc/mqdefault.jpg "Raiden Trad [Sega Genesis] Normal 1CC - 1.8 Million (without Special Stage)
I no-missed the main eight stages and did not start dying until the Special Stage after the ending, which is widely considered to be one of the hardest shmup stages ever. Once I started dying, that was it.
As for the game itself, its a pretty faithful port of the original. The only serious issue is the harsh checkpoint system in a game where its already hard to recover from death. Otherwise, its easier than the arcade version, mainly because there are less enemies on screen despite the bullet speeds being fast and the bosses are more exploitable, but its still among the toughest shmups Ive ever beaten. The only shmup that Ive 1CC so far thats tougher than this is Dragon Blaze, and that was just for a 1-ALL.")
