 Hmm... that's drunk. People love talking about difficult video games. How do I know this? Well, the video with the most views on this channel is the 13 hardest Super Nintendo games video, topping over 700,000 views and 1,400 comments. And not only do people love to discuss how tough games were back then, folks seem to love determining what games were and were not actually hard, according to their own experience. Like, for example, there's always that person that's like, well, actually, Gane is not a hard game at all. It's just a simple matter of putting in 3,000 hours into it, so I managed to beat the game when I was like 5 years old or whatever. The thing is, though, we all have our own experiences like that, and we all have certain games we can say something similar about. Like me, for example, on that video I mentioned, there's a lot of comments there asking, where is Mega Man X? And even before that, when I made a video about the Mega Man X games on Super Nintendo, I called the first game somewhat easy, and holy crap did that ever provoke a response. A lot of people out there seem to think Mega Man X is a pretty tough game, and I'm sitting over here thinking, it is? So I thought it'd be a fun video to just go through some tough Super Nintendo games explaining some tips about what makes these difficult games a little more approachable if you're finding them too tough for yourself. And I'll start with Mega Man X because it's easily a top 5 Super Nintendo game, and if you think this game is too hard, then that's a damn shame because you're really missing out. The first thing I'll point out about this one is something you have to do before you even get started playing, head to the options menu, and remap the dash button to one of the shoulder buttons. The one annoying thing about this game is that it defaults the dash to the A button, which makes it super awkward to use when you're trying to hold a weapon charge. I always move it to the R button, and it makes a huge difference. Speaking of the dash, in case some of you out there don't know, you earn the dash right away in the chill penguin stage, so always start there. Conversely, if you want even more of a challenge for Mega Man X, do chill penguin stage last so you have to beat all the bosses without the dash? Now that is tough. I'll also say, to make the game a little easier, once you grab the dash power up and beat chill penguin, I would head to Storm Eagle stage next, there's an easy to find sub-tank that you can use as extra health. Plus, Storm Eagle is a breeze to beat since the dash renders his wing flapping attack useless. One other thing I want to point out about Mega Man X is something that's bothered me for years. For whatever reason, some people out there flat out refuse to use the boss weapons and the levels themselves. I remember putting up a Twitter poll a few years ago asking that same question and it got something like 120 votes, with over 60% saying they do not use the boss weapons during the levels. My question is, why not? That's what they're there for. They're super fun weapons to use, to the point where it's almost like a game within a game to figure out which weapon works best on which enemy. The main counter argument I get to this is that people are afraid of running out of the weapon that they need to beat a boss with. My counter to that is, you shouldn't be, because this game is super generous about dropping ammo replenishments left and right, and you always have the option to grind to get more if you need it. And not only that, it's not like running out of a boss weapon as a death sentence, the arm cannon is still perfectly fine to use if it comes to that, especially once you get the boosted charge. So yeah, Mega Man X is one of my favorite games ever and it's always bugged me when people say they stay away from it because of the difficulty. Try it again with the approach I laid out and see if it works better for you. There's another game that's been on a lot of people's minds lately, mostly thanks to the SNES Classic and the Re-Release, and that's Secret of Ana. It's a pretty polarizing title, it's gotten a good deal of dislike recently, and based on the feedback I've heard, it's mostly because of the combat. Yeah, it sucks being subject to a computer AI-controlled party member in an action game like this, just to name one problem with this game, but there's a few ways you can manage it without losing your mind. One is that you can alternate attacks by taking control of each character by pressing the select button. I swear it's really strange how so many people don't seem to realize that this function exists, but yeah, it speeds up the game big time. Another thing you can do is adjust how your party acts by heading to the action grid on the ring menu. It allows you to place how aggressive the rest of your party can be. One neat thing you can do here is adjust how much your character charges their weapon before attacking on the right there, and if you keep them at the stay away side of the grid while putting them closer to the attack side, they'll stay away and avoid damage while charging their weapon, and then unleash a huge attack that does pretty good damage. Okay, yeah, the attack might miss sometimes. But still, this makes your AI-controlled party more of an asset instead of a liability. One other thing I wanted to point out about Secret of Mana is another simple thing that I see some people miss sometimes, and heck, it's something I missed back when I first played this game. Before you enter the Pure Lands, and after you talk to Gemma here, if you walk all the way around to the other side of this palace, there's actually a Niko shop you can visit that has massively upgraded equipment. It's easy to miss an Niko here and end up getting utterly destroyed in the Pure Land, so if you ran into this same problem, make sure you upgrade your armor at this spot. I also gotta talk about Super Ghouls and Ghosts, because this one, okay, well, there's no way around it. This game is brutally difficult no matter what you do. But many people don't know about the hidden treasure chest that's at the beginning of every level. What triggers its appearance is a double jump in just the right spot. It's really important to do this because it moves up the item drop sequence, so if you unlock the first treasure here, that means the next one will contain your first armor upgrade, and that makes a huge difference because your weapon gets a major boost as well, especially the crossbow since it'll function as a homing attack, or even the knife which essentially turns into the laser from Contra 3. Yes, Super Ghouls and Ghosts is tough, there's no way around that, but if you trigger the hidden chest and get the upgraded armor, it's a little easier to get through. Hey, if I can beat this game, you can too. I also quickly wanted to mention Act Razor, because the last level and that final boss gauntlet is really tough, and especially discouraging because, I mean, come on, you've spent all that time reviving villagers and helping them out and stuff, then you just run into this brick wall. I really only have one tip here, and that's to just flat out ignore every other kind of magic and only use Stardust. Yeah, there's Fire, Light, and Aura, but they all suck. Do not waste your time with anything other than Stardust. It's a full screen attack that lasts a few seconds and it'll always hit its target, as long as it's on screen. So when you get to that final boss gauntlet, make sure you have every Stardust spell saved up to use on the harder bosses, like this stupid wheel thing. Yeah, you'll die a few times, but you always restart the same boss fight where you died. And don't waste Stardust on bosses you know you can beat without it. Save it for this wheel thing. Ah, I hate this boss. Contra 3 is another notoriously difficult game, but seriously, it's so much fun, and if you give up on this one too early, again, you're missing out on one of the very best playthroughs in the Super Nintendo library. And yes, I'm including the top-down levels, I don't think they're nearly as bad as some people say they are. The thing to remember about this game is weapon combinations. The combo that does the most damage, the most efficiently, at least in my experience, is the Crush Spread Gun combo. You can seriously just mash the Y and X buttons at the same time, allowing you to do way more damage than you otherwise could since alternating the spread allows the Crush Missile to fire just a split second faster. It really helps with this boss fight in particular. So yeah, I just wanted to make a video that was a little different this time around. It always bums me out when I hear someone dismiss games like Contra 3 or Super Ghouls and Ghosts, and when I ask about it, they don't know simple tricks that can help them to see more of the game. So I thought I'd channel my inner Nintendo-powered nerd and give out some tips that helped me over the years. So if you've made it this far, thanks for indulging me on that, and I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great best of your day!