So apparently I work for UCSD now. Yeah, the big fancy university. I taught a summer camp there about making video games, which technically makes me university faculty. So from now on, you all have to call me Professor Berman. (Just kidding. Please don’t. That would be weird.)
BTW, making games today is SO much easier than playing them when I was a kid. You want to know pain? Try Ninja Gaiden on the original Nintendo. That game was basically designed by someone who hated children. You’d fight through an entire level, dodging birds that appeared out of nowhere just to knock you into pits.
Author: Mr. B
Then you’d finally reach the boss, die immediately, and get sent ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING. Not the beginning of the boss fight. The beginning of the LEVEL.
And we loved it? Somehow? I still play ridiculously hard games today. (Shoutout to Elden Ring for making me question my life choices 237 times last year.)
Here’s the wild part: those old games weren’t hard because game
designers were evil. OK maybe they were a little evil. But mostly it was because Nintendo cartridges had about as much memory as a potato. They couldn’t fit lots of levels or fancy
graphics. So how do you make a game worth the money? You make it so hard that what should take one hour takes a hundred hours instead. That $45 game in 1987? That’s $135 in today’s money. For
ONE GAME. Your parents would’ve grounded you if youbeat it in an afternoon.
The game I made for you rascals? It’s actually beatable. I know because I’ve beaten it myself. Multiple times. (Had to make sure it worked, obviously.) But here’s my challenge: if anyone can ACTUALLY beat it and prove it to me with a screenshot AND answer my secret questions about the ending, I will be genuinely impressed. Like, write a letter of recommendation to NASA impressed. You’ll get a special sticker that basically says “I beat Mr. B’s game and all I got was this sticker and eternal bragging rights.”
Think you got what it takes? Prove it. I dare you.
(But seriously, take breaks every 30 minutes. Those old Nintendo kids didn’t and now we all need glasses.)
Here is your new nightmare click on the panda
