I know, I’m late to this one. I’ve been busy but didn’t want to let this one go by without saying my peace on the subject.
A week and a half ago Mike Matei (of Cinemassacre fame) posted a tweet which became a pretty “hot take” for a while regarding the use of “rewind” features on the Nintendo Switch when playing NES games, saying that you didn’t “really beat the game” if you used such.
His exact words are: “Retweet if you agree: If you use the “rewind feature” that’s now standard on many NES and SNES games available on Switch, you DID NOT by any stretch of the imagination beat the god damn game.”
I absolute hate attitudes like this. While I certainly love gaming history and our memories of playing these games, they were difficult. Sometimes incredibly so, to a point where 30 years later there are still some games many of us simply have never completed due to the difficulty.
Sure, with challenge comes a feeling of accomplishment when one gets past a hard part, but let’s be real — this isn’t 1990, when these things were new. We’re 3 decades past that point, and more importantly, we’re not children anymore.
That goes two ways. For one, as gamers, we may not all have time to spend all day every day playing games (unlike Mike, who has a bit of a career helping James Rolfe with projects as well as doing his own gaming videos.) He’s certainly got skills, I’m not speaking against that, but he does have all the time in the world (within reason) to play games and perfect them — most of the rest of us don’t have this time, or choose to spend it differently. Assistance features like rewind help us practice difficult parts or finally make it through a challenging area so we can experience the rest of the game.
The second point I’d want to bring up is that, with us not being kids, this kind of elitism and gloating should have left the gaming scene two decades ago. At this stage in life I realize that the important fact of a game is to have fun. Sure, rewind features and state saves (note: not “save states” as many will incorrectly call them) make things easier, but they do this by helping limit the punishing factor of difficult parts of classic games. For example, a jump that’s hard to do in one game may, if failed, result in the player having to play a whole section of the game over again. A punishment, to say the least, in some cases. Rewinding or saving the game state just before that point will let someone not have to endure that section again, thus letting them practice the jump.
Did they do it without assistance of any form? No, of course not. They still had to do the action properly, of course, at least once, so they still did the jump — they made it past the hard section, just with a little help.
Again, I’m not saying anyone who uses assistance did the same thing as someone who played the game straight up. I am saying, however, that it isn’t that big of a deal, and that the way Mike worded this was incredibly elitist, as if this is grade school again. Look again at his phrasing: Retweet if you agree: If you use the “rewind feature”… you DID NOT by any stretch of the imagination beat the god damn game.
It reeks of someone screaming out in anger that someone would dare say they “beat” a three decade old game using an assistance feature. For one, I reject the idea of “beating” games as childish in and of itself — the game isn’t an individual entity, it’s a set of challenges which one surpasses, hence why I use the phrase “complete” to mean “finish the game to a personal satisfaction point or to a certain measurable level via in-game metrics.” It isn’t a single enemy, like Bowser at the end of Super Mario Bros. so no, you don’t “beat” the game to me.
Secondly, while mike denies this in a later post, it does have an air of “don’t play the game how you want to” attached to it. It’s as if the most important factor of the game is being possibly frustrated or unable to experience later parts all because one section might be an unfair challenge to you; not to have fun with it.
That being said, when you take out the vitriol and childlike rage that Mike has in this tweet, I actually do agree with him fully on it – if you used an assistive feature don’t hide it. Be honest about it. It’s fine, I’m glad you enjoyed the game and would rather you, or anyone else, have fun than never finish a game because of difficulty, but please just be honest about it. I just don’t agree at all with how Mike phrased it. It’s incredibly hostile, entitled, and elitist, missing the point of games, in my opinion, entirely.
That being said, I do challenge the attitude that one shouldn’t use a “rewind” feature or state saves by saying, if that’s the case, shouldn’t you also not use extra lives, continues, passwords, or battery backup?
That’s right. Go through every game without losing a life. Use no continues. Play every RPG in one sitting. Playing Mario 3 on Super Mario All Stars on SNES? Be sure to never start on world 1 while you already have items from a previous level, that’s cheating too! Does the game give you a password to continue from the last level? Nope, don’t do that — you have to start over from the beginning every time!
The funny thing is, for games he is really good at Mike has done just this on many occasions — or at least attempted it. As I said, he certainly has skills – no one can deny that. I do think, however, his perception on the way people game, and the point of gaming on a personal level, is a bit skewed, to say the least.