In our last "Was it Really?" we took a look at the Virtual Boy, widely considered a complete bust of a console and one of the worst stains on the gaming industry.
In the end, I determined that it wasn't nearly as bad as it's reputation, though it's still pretty bad. This time, I'm going to pivot from a console to an individual game, one that many gamers know and one I'm intimately familiar with.
Silver Surfer, a shoot em' up for the NES, is widely considered one of the most difficult video games in history, so much so that it's become legendary amongst the internet gaming community. It was one of popular YouTuber "The Angry Video Game Nerd"'s first targets and if you go back and watch the video he made today, you'll see that his anger and frustration with the game, normally embellished, are as real as it gets. I can't say I blame him. This was one of the earliest NES games I ever played, my cousin had it and we spent HOURS trying to just beat a level. Not the game, a single level. And we couldn't. He would eventually bequeath his Silver Surfer cart and NES to me, a mandate from my aunt after he received a Sega Genesis for some occasion. Now I had the opportunity to practice, to hone my skills and to some day just clear one level in this damn game. And I still couldn't do it. I have made it my mission this week to change that.
But is Silver Surfer really THAT hard? I mean, that was a long time ago and I was very young, probably about five. My son is almost five and he can barely complete a race in Mario Kart, so that had to be it, right? I just hadn't developed my motor skills. And besides, I hadn't yet cut my teeth on some of the more difficult games out there. I'm not a hardcore gamer who strives to play and beat every game on the highest difficulty, but I've beaten some tough games. Everything from Mega Man to F-Zero GX to Street Fighter II Turbo cranked up to the highest difficulty at full speed. Silver Surfer's high difficulty has to be grounded in my nostalgia, right? Wrong.
Before I go any further, I'm going to throw out a caveat that I'm not very good at shoot em' ups. But that doesn't matter. Silver Surfer has to be the most brutally difficult, unfair game I've ever played, possibly second only to BattleToads. It's impossible to adequately describe how hard this thing is, because it doesn't really look that hard when you see videos of it. Some of these bullet hell shoot em' ups make this look like a cakewalk...in theory. But in practice, Silver Surfer puts them to shame.
I think the best way to describe it is as such: There are games that are difficult because of the way they are designed. Games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, etc. I sometimes knock on games like this as being hard for the sake of being hard, but they are usually well made and intentionally designed for gamers who want to maximize their challenge. They're hard because they're supposed to be. Then, you have games that are difficult because of a flaw (the jumping during Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads) or unintended consequence of a design choice (knockback in Ninja Gaiden). Whether they render the game completely unplayable or just add an additional layer of challenge, these unintended things tend to make games difficult in the most frustrating of ways. They're hard because of poor design decisions or lack of testing. The problem with Silver Surfer is that it fits into both of these categories.
The enemy patterns here are ridiculous, some of the creatures you fight almost look like they have opposing players controlling them they are so random. I've actually been recording some gameplay footage, so you will see what I'm talking about. Enemies pop up with what seems like no rhyme or reason and they come at you with such speed that you have no idea what to do. Don't get me started on the bullets. There may not be as many as there are in something like, say, Ikaruga. But they are fast, tiny and impossible to see. The constant scrolling is also a pain, there's rarely, if ever a place to stop. But the biggest deal breaker here? You can't touch ANYTHING. I know a lot of people complain about one hit deaths, that's a problem but it's not that unusual for shoot em' ups. But the fact that you die from so much as accidentally touching the ceiling or floor is ridiculous. There are so many stage hazards that shouldn't kill you, but they do. In some levels, you can't even touch part of the background.
And now comes the "hard because it's flawed" piece. At no point are clear boundaries established for what kinds of things will kill you and which won't. You may think you are going to harmlessly pass through an object, only to get knocked off your board. Sometimes the opposite happens as well, but it's much less frequent. A lot of the stages have obnoxious background effects, like the water in the second part of the Reptyl stage, that cause enemies and bullets to blend in. It's always frustrating to get hit by these, but it's especially brutal because the hit detection is so biased. If even one pixel of your character touches something, it's curtains. It isn't so bad in the horizontal scrolling stages, but in the top down vertical stages, Silver Surfer's board sticks out, making him an incredibly easy target. But your bullets need to hit flush, which is damn near impossible with some enemies.
But no matter, it's time to get to the actual gameplay footage. I decided that now is the time, I'm going to beat one of these levels if it kills me. As I said, I'm not really into the super hardcore difficulty stuff. Part of the whole reason for this blog is because I wanted to offer the perspective of someone who's a regular person that just really enjoys video games and doesn't feel the need to take stuff like that so seriously. Also keep in mind I haven't touched this game in probably 15 years. I did make a couple practice runs before I recorded, but trust me, none of them ended well. I decided to start out on the Mephisto stage and I gave each of them several tries. Remember, my goal is to just beat one of these. Which is why I quickly gave up even trying with Mephisto. Because this kept happening:
Yeah, forget about it.
Next I moved on to Possesor, who looks suspiciously like Brett "Hitman" Hart after spending way too much time in a tanning booth. I half expected his level to be bright pink and have flying maple leafs and hockey pucks to block my path. It didn't but it still didn't end well:
2nd rope elbow, pickup, Irish whip, atomic drop, trip, Sharpshooter, I tap. Next.
I had much more success with the other three stages, Firelord, Emperor and Reptyl. My first run on Firelord went okay and I was able to clear the first section.
The same was true for Reptyl:
I actually found the Emperor stage to be the easiest up until the mid-boss fight. I just could never get the cadence of his missiles down and decided against trying to beat this one:
Side note, is it just me or does Emperor look like an evil version of the jolly green giant? Whatever.
So I took a few more shots at the others, focusing mostly on Firelord. Think I was able to do it?:
Finally! It only took 25 years, but I finally beat one of these stupid levels! And I have video evidence of it too! I'm sure there's someone out there that's like "so? I beat dark souls on the hardest difficulty with one hand behind my back and my left eye glued shut while standing on my head in a pool of rabid chinchillas. Now THAT'S real challenge, git gud." But I stand by this being a real, actual accomplishment. I love video games, but I admit I'm not great at them and a lot of my formative gaming years were spent playing RPGs, so I don't have the reflexes you'd think I would. Maybe I'll try and beat the rest of the game?
Yeah, that's probably not going to happen. Simply put, I just don't have the bandwidth or desire to invest time into what would be required to do that. One of the tricks to games like this is that they aren't nearly as skill based as they seem. It's really more about memorizing exactly where the enemies and bullets are and when, then positioning your character to avoid them or easily take them out. Sounds simple, but not at all. You can see in the videos there were a lot of points where I "solved the puzzle" of what to do in those specific cases. That's a lot of memorization. And on top of that, if you quit out of a level, you have to go back and clear the ones you already did again, adding to the whole "this game is stupid and unfair" line of thinking.
Which is really what the point of this was. I'm sure there's folks out there that would disagree, but this game is as difficult as advertised. It's relentless, unfair and unbalanced, though I wouldn't call it a bad game. That I'm this excited about clearing a single level should tell you all you need to know about how hard Silver Surfer is. I'm just happy I never have to play this again...
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