[HN Gopher] Playing with My Son (2014)
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       Playing with My Son (2014)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2021-01-29 09:49 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | tgb wrote:
       | I have an embarrassing question: can people actually beat Mario
       | games without arcane knowledge of short cuts? I tried Super Mario
       | World and literally struggle to get through the second world.
       | Every stage is a try, try again affair. Am I just crap? I've
       | haven't shied away from tough games but man Mario crushes me and
       | I feel like it's targeted at kids.
        
         | jpdaigle wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | wsc981 wrote:
         | 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.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | [0]: https://www.mariowiki.com/Special_Zone
        
         | licebmi__at__ wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | jon-wood wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | bryanrasmussen wrote:
         | someone must have beat it to learn the arcane knowledge of
         | short cuts.
        
         | Tomte wrote:
         | 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
        
           | zrail wrote:
           | 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.
        
           | andi999 wrote:
           | 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)
        
         | kop316 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | base698 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | FillardMillmore wrote:
           | I think you're thinking of Super Mario Bros. 3.
        
         | KozmoNau7 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | tgb wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | dustymcp wrote:
         | We are replaying it now and its brutal :)
        
         | eloisant wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | Igelau wrote:
       | But can he use a can opener?
        
       | dustymcp wrote:
       | This is why i built an arcade machine loaded with Sega,med,snes
       | All the gamepads for each er started on Sega Master system tho
       | but same idea, on a side note gaming was brutal back then! :)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ChrisKnott wrote:
       | An enjoyable read but I couldn't stop thinking of this Onion
       | article https://www.theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-
       | media-...
       | 
       | My son is 6 months. The only non-negotiable part of his media
       | diet will be the LucasArts point-and-clicks.
        
         | watwut wrote:
         | Kids are introduced to media of their generation by their
         | friends. No matter what you do, you can't do that, because you
         | are not their peer.
         | 
         | In order for then to be out of touch from their generation, you
         | would also had to isolate them from peers basically. Other then
         | that, influencing media they use and hobbies they have is just
         | run off mill parenting most parents engage in at least to some
         | extend.
        
           | vulcan01 wrote:
           | > Kids are introduced to media of their generation by their
           | friends
           | 
           | Look, this is somewhat true. But as a kid, I assure you that
           | parents who treat their children like best friends (like my
           | dad does) are very capable of influencing their kid's
           | interests. Forcing or pressuring a kid into doing x never
           | works long-term.
        
             | watwut wrote:
             | Yes, I said so in second paragraph. And there is nothing
             | wrong with that. It also won't make you out of touch from
             | peers nor harm your social development. No matter how
             | unusual your parents hobby or interests, parents making you
             | interested does not do harm.
             | 
             | The social harm can potentially happen if parent is
             | preventing contact with peers and their culture too much.
        
               | vulcan01 wrote:
               | > The social harm can potentially happen if parent is
               | preventing contact with peers and their culture too much.
               | 
               | Yep. But, the best thing my parents ever did for me was
               | not allowing me to use a phone until I was 16. I still
               | had a laptop I could communicate with friends from, but
               | the physical barrier to constant communication was
               | incredibly important to help me not develop an addiction
               | to all things internet.
        
         | FriedrichN wrote:
         | If my kids are anything like me, they have zero chance of
         | fitting in anyway. I feel that is a sentiment that might be
         | shared by a lot of people on this site.
        
       | auslegung wrote:
       | Before we got married I told my (now) wife of some of the
       | experiments I had planned for my future children, and she made it
       | clear in no uncertain terms that I was never to do any sort of
       | strange experiment on our children :( I married her anyway lol
        
       | dang wrote:
       | A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489423
        
       | Zafner wrote:
       | As a middle-aged man with no real workout plan up to a couple of
       | years ago who's now going through a blood pressure scare, this
       | idea of scaring your kid away from physical activity, even in
       | jest, feels like the first half of a horror story.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | I can relate though. I suck at sports and was worried I would
         | have sports-minded kids.
         | 
         | Nonetheless, I raised my kids on a diet of geocaching, bike
         | riding, hiking, skiing and other outdoor activities in addition
         | to the more sedentary variety.
        
           | ip26 wrote:
           | I always sucked at sports and wasn't motivated to improve.
           | But neglecting fitness was one of my biggest mistakes. I hope
           | to instill some sports into my kids. Getting them into math
           | and science will be the easy part. The apple doesn't fall far
           | from the tree.
        
       | weeboid wrote:
       | Bro but what is his COD KDR
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-30 23:02 UTC)