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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

Especially with a game where you die with one hit, this seems too mentally exhausting to actually play enough times to improve.

You'll play 100 times and only get 10% of the way in, so you still need to practice the later parts just as much. A bit like agile software development, really!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

SNES world.

We are replaying it now and its brutal :)

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