Video games: Things that seemed hard before but easy now

You know what I’m talking about, you had this game you played all the time as a kid. Whatever it was, chances are the game got balls hard for you. Now, however so many years later, you go back to the game, and those parts you struggled on are beyond easy. The converse can occur too, where something was easy back then but extremely tedious now. Share both if applicable!
 
Mine: Star Fox 64. Particularly, the true ending level. I had such a hard time taking down the improved Star Wolf, I remember spending so many lives and restarts to beat those jerks, and once I got to real Andross, I swear it took hours for me to beat him and countless more retries.
 
But now? I beat both improved Star Wolf team(without getting hit) and Andross brain (without losing a wing, never died) on the 3DS version (Nintendo 64 mode!). I was like wow, it’s this easy?! Now I have to unlock expert mode, but getting those medals are still a pain in the ass.

@Sono  
Hmmmmmm Mario RPG and Paper Mario are easy to me right now. Maybe cause I have gotten smarter and much better at RPGs lately.

Mega Man games. I mean, they still have a fair amount of challenge but I remember them being nigh impossible as a kid. I went through and replayed many of them as an adult and was able to beat them within a few hours at most.

Oh, and game that seems tedious now that I loved when I was younger would be Xenogears. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Xenogears but I guess I just forgot how long it takes before the plot really starts to get moving in that one. Maybe I just didn’t care as a kid but playing back through it I sometimes felt like I was watching myself growing old and dying.

Point and click adventure games. I also realized why this genre died out.

I don’t remember specific stuff, But I could barely get past the spring yard zone in Sonic the hedgehog, Now only the Labyrinth zone boss really gives me trouble

@Itsthinking  
LucasArts perfected point and click adventure games. The genre died because people became too lazy to play those games. With some tweaking, they could work with today’s touchscreen devices fine, but people don’t care; they want flashy 3D action, or some primitive puzzle crap that’s addictive as hell and can be played in five-minute slices.

@JP  
The genre died because adventure game designers became so dense that combinations that would work in real life and should work in the game almost were never in there. It’s less about thinking cleverly sometimes and more “If I were an adventure game designer and wanted to piss people off trying to solve an obtuse puzzle in order to pad out our game, what would I do?”
 
Plus, surprisingly few games had replay value. There were a few, like those from Humongous, but you could beat them in almost no time if you knew where everything was.
 
Games like Gone Home illustrate why point and clicks died, despite not being one.

@Itsthinking  
Those are mostly game design problems, not genre problems. I sort of agree with the lack of replayability, but adventure games aren’t games you replay every few weeks, or months. You will forget the solution over time and then you can go back adventuring and figuring out the puzzles again. Plus, many adventure games were long. You could easily spend months figuring them out, even if the designer avoided the braindead combinations problem.

@JP  
Yes, but those game design problems were in a shitload of non-LucasArts games. Try playing a later Sierra game. If LucasArts were the only player, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten a negative reputation.
 
And unrelated to that, but fuck the bone puzzle in The Dig.

I was also very bad at Super Mario World. Now I’m good at it.

@Itsthinking  

 
I know your pain.

Contra.

@Itsthinking  

 
All of this! I can remember being absolutely stumped by the illogic of point-and-click/text parser adventure games…until I got old enough to actually think like an adventure game designer to work out the puzzles…which made the games laughably easy (for the most part).

Jesus, I was thinking about a thread like this JUST yesterday.  
Mine would be the Squawks section of Animal Antics in Donkey Kong Country 2.  
And Stampede Sprint from DKC 3.  
Maybe the Stone Tower Temple from Majora’s Mask, stuck on that for atleast 4-5 months, because even with slowed time, I end up taking too long due to confusion and before I know it, the last six hours until the moon crashes are counting down.

@Background Pony  
Funny. For me the Great Bay Temple became cake (even fairy collection) but Stone Tower became hard.

age of empires 2, i use to play that game alot but for some reason i sucked, of course i was 9 when i played it but still, but then i comeback to the game and i find myself acing it, sometimes overkilling enemies (i like to overkill in rts).
 
also twisted metal 4 (my first vidya ever played) except when you get to the final boss.

@twistedmetalero  
Ahh AOE2(I kept overkilling enemies when I was a kid. It was fun.)

@twistedmetalero
 
I used to think the twisted metal games were pretty hard as a kid but when I went back and played them I was dumbfounded at just how stupid and poor the AI in that game is. You can totally win almost ever game easy as pie just by exploiting the enemy’s really poor programming.

Golden Axe 1.
 
I adored the Golden Axe series while growing up, was my favorite arcade game and the home console versions were fun. Loved it so much I named my first WoW character (a dwarf naturally) Goldenaxe. But damn was the first one hard as shit. I don’t think I ever beat Death Adder when I was younger. Now I can clear through it in about 20min.

@Zincy  
You sir have a great taste in video games.

@SeraphimDawn
 
Considering my first forays into gaming were things like Duck Hunt and Super Mario 2, one could say I have a soft spot for older games.
 
I grew up during the Second Bit War, when Sega and Nintendo were clashing hard and Atari…had the 7200 and Jaguar. I’ve owned and played every intervening console save for the 3dO and Neo-Geo home port.
 
Speaking of old games that kicked my ass, how could I forget R-Type. The early ones used to kick my ass something fierce. Ahh R-type, fighting giant sperm ships in a womb level…because Japan. The last R-type on the Playstation (I think it was R-Type Final) was amazing, but lacked the difficulty of its predecessors. It did have a level where you were flying infront of a silhouette of a two people getting it on.

@Zincy  
Second Bit War. Hey, I also grew up gaming during that era. I didn’t really play anything much beyond the Nintendo mainstreams though. Selection was… not as great in my area, and it was before the internet. But believe it or not, I used to think Sonic 2 and SMW were impossible.

@SeraphimDawn  
I didn’t play Sonic games until recently (comparatively), back in around 2007 was when I first played Sonic 2. Yeah it was pretty hard the first time I played it. It’s fairly cake now with the exception of the sky fortress boss which I always struggle with.

@SeraphimDawn  
I agree with sonic 2 as well