Rayman: Missing limbs since 1995

I bought Rayman for the Atari Jaguar shortly after it came out in 1995, hopeful it would bring some Mario-style platforming magic to Atari’s “64-bit” machine. While lushly illustrated with a deep color palette, I found the gameplay and the controls a little kludgy, and I had trouble advancing past one of the first few stages. I gave up and moved on to other games.

Shorty thereafter, I lent Rayman and my Jaguar to my brother and his roommate to play at college, and they beat it within a few days. Determination was just as important as skill when it came to completing video games in those days, and I had no motivation to torture myself with a frustrating game.

Which brings me to a tangential point: When I was a kid, if I couldn’t beat a video game, I thought it meant that I was a bad video game player. I thought it was my fault. But years later I realized that the games that frustrated me most were just poorly designed.

Not to say that all difficult games are bad games — in fact, I’d say there’s a big difference between “difficult” and “frustrating.” Merely difficult games are still fun even if you fail; they make you want to try again to complete a challenge. Frustrating ones feel unfair and make you want to smash your game console with a hammer.

One of my friends did that to his NES once. He also threw it off his second story apartment balcony. Ah; those were the days.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever visited physical violence against a video game console or controller?