RetroGaming

I can't think of any games that were particularly long that didn't have save systems (like Zelda and PC games) or password systems. Plenty of fuckin' hard ones that only had like 6 levels tho. And those you really are meant to bang your head against until you beat them because they hadn't quite left the design of arcade games behind so they were still making them like you were putting a quarter in every time you got a game over.

In one sitting. You'd have to get good at them by playing them over and over and over again. And they were really hard so that it would take a long time to get that good.

This was intentional. Games from the 80s had a lot more technical limitations compared to today and this was a way to increase their replay value. Otherwise you'd spend $30 on a game ($93 today) and beat a game in a couple tries, and it wouldn't be worth it.

There were some games you were supposed to complete in one shot. The one from my childhood that comes to mind was Super Double Dragon on the SNES. It was built like an arcade game, you got so many lives at the start, and you had to beat it in that many lives. Your health on your current life would be recharged on each new level. The game had seven levels.

Others had password systems. They weren't really passwords; what they were was basically a hash or encrypted string that represented the game's state. Depending on the game, at the end of a level, or at any point during gameplay in the pause menu or something, it would display a password which you then wrote down on a piece of paper with a pen like a Mesopotamian. Restarting the game, you could find a password entry screen that would launch the game with those parameters. Metroid on the NES worked this way, and it was early enough and popular enough to become kind of infamous for it, Metroid included the entire alphabet, number and some symbols, so you could spell entire words, some of which produced interesting results. ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER FUCKER is technically invalid but it generates interesting results, as does MOTHER BRAIN? FUCKIN TOASST. A young man named Justin Bailey found that his name works surprisingly well, and NARPAS SWORD0 000000 000000 must have been hard-coded. These passwords got passed around and even printed in the gaming press, so later games omitted vowels from their password system to prevent them from spelling coherent words.

Still others hid secrets that allowed skilled or knowledgeable players to skip levels. The poster child here is of course Super Mario Bros; they figured newer players would play the first few levels to the point they gained proficiency, and then would discover the warp zones that let them warp ahead, thus skipping the parts of the game they've played already.

POKEs. Plus most games were like an hour, tops.

MOAR QUARTERS.

I used to book full afternoons to do complete runs of Super Mario Bros 3. No warp, no skip.

If I didn't have that time, the warp zone was there.

In general, games without passwords or a save system back then were not meant to be very long to complete.

Take Star Fox, a full run is like maybe an hour or so? Same for 64. The trick is that you might need several runs to be good at it, and you're supposed to find secrets, take harder routes and get better scores. And of course when those are remade or played today you've got many people complaining about how short these are.

I just kept the console on overnight

You were definitely supposed to start from the beginning each time you played, and you'd get a little further each time you played. You'd know the earlier levels by the back of your hand.

Your final run might be just an hour or two, but it was the product of many more hours of practice.

I don't think games ever expected people to keep their consoles on overnight. Games of that length had saves or passwords.

Even for games that had unlimited continues, you were often expected to select "No" on the continue screen eventually. You'd restart with your new knowledge and get to the same point with more power ups, more lives, etc...and you'd use your newly-gained knowledge and skills to get more of those resources in the earlier level, making the later levels easier.

For certain games that were very long and hard to start from beginning, the only solution was to just let it on. And hope to god nobody comes and turns it off (thanks parents and brother, more than once).

BTW when I emulate games, I don't use save states or cheats to help me with those games. Either use real passwords or a save file, or I just start all over again... even on emulators. This is the authentic experience, is not just about the games and display being emulated correctly to me. :-)

Think of how you play arcade games - home console games were a lot more like that at first. You would start from the beginning each time, and the better you got the further you went, but it could take months. Most games you never "beat" but just "played" over and over. Maybe you'd set it down for a few months then start up again.

It was a more cyclical almost seasonal way of consuming media, from when we had a lot less to choose from. You'd have a handful of games between you and your friends, and just play 1 or 2 forever, until you felt like a change and swapped with a friend.

you would unplug the RF connector from the TV and leave the console on. that's it. My parents didn't care and it was my Dads idea anyway to do that.

Keeping the darn device powered up was the only way. And then you'd have to pray nobody (parents, siblings, pet) turned it off before you could get to it again.

Beat it in one go.

Go back to the 90s and spend your holiday with your friends trying to complete Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap and leave the console on between tries, and get mad when an adult switches off the console.

You already mentioned passwords and warps stood in for saves most of the time (also cheat codes I guess).

Beyond that, I think most games were not as long as they seemed? Feels like a lot because they're hard, but most of them, if you're good and well-practiced, could be beaten in a sitting (a couple hours on the high end).

Did you have some games in mind that don't fall under any of those patterns?

The console games I played were nearly all meant to be completed in one go.

Anything without a password or save option worked that way.

We'd also rent our games, so even if there was a save file you had to remember what to do because your save would be deleted. My brother had a copy of Final Fantasy I with a dead battery and we just left the console on for a few days straight. Same thing with his copy of Zelda, but that one was somewhat manageable in an afternoon.

RNG was less common, most games were memorization exercises: Mario, Shinobi, etc. So after dying and retrying enough you'd figure it out.

Games that didn't have saves or passwords weren't that long. They were short enough that they could reasonably expect you to do it all in one sitting once you git gud, but the process of gitting gud was the game's longevity.

If developers didn't expect you to do it in one sitting, then they would add some way of saving progress.

Keeping anything electric on over night in my house was not allowed. So there was no consoles on overnight.

We would just play it long enough to finish it in one go. Also in the time period I am thinking of (circa NES) we only had like 3 games, so replaying one game over and over was not unheard of.

Sometimes i would use a device like the gameshark to skip ahead, or an emulator with save states.

I was a sega master system kid.

I think the games were pretty adapted to it.

Land of illusion I'd get good enough to do in one go. Or leave the console on over night. It can be completed in an hour or so without speed strats.

Phantasy star has a proper save on the ROM.

Megaman 2 (NES) had s clever 5x5 code to type in to resume. It contained your lives, powerups and a checksum.

Welcome to the 90's geniuses.