Anybody who grew up playing side-scrolling shooters and platformers on Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and the like know that those games were blisteringly, unforgivably difficult, and you had to spend hours and hours and hours of trying, failing, and trying again to get to the end. After all, most of these 8-bit adventures only amounted to a couple of hours in one go, so they had to be hard to be worth the effort. For most people this year, Cuphead has been that return to NES-era difficulty using 1930s animation style. But YouTube channel 64 Bits also wants to make sure you don’t forget the eye-bleeding challenge of Dark Souls.
Dark Souls was the PS3’s answer to feeling good about yourself. It offered no easy modes, no tutorials, and no PAUSE OPTIONS. You started playing and just went until you died or won. Dark fantasy games were never as punishing as they were in this game, where you could choose between playing a sturdy guy who was super slow, or a swift guy who was super vulnerable. And the bosses were behemoths, with dozens of attacks, and you basically just had to strafe around them and slash them in the butt a hundred million times. God, I’m still so mad at Dark Souls.
The above video adapts Dark Souls‘ lead characters and monstrous, behemoth bosses into the rubber hose animation style of Cuphead, an incredibly apt pairing considering the odd similarities the games actually possess. Huge, nigh-unbeatable bosses? Check. Tiny, seemingly ineffectual playable characters? Check. Hour after frustrating, pants-peeing hour of playing? Check and double check.
Share your own Cuphead and Dark Souls nightmare stories in the comments below!
Image: StudioMDHR/From Software/64 Bits
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
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