Nintendo-Hard: or, meditations on souls-like game design of masocore.

I hacked my nes classic, and the most fun I have had with non-nostalgia games has been Lagrange Point and Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Grafitti. Both of which I was not overly familiar with while still having an awareness of. I will give my first impressions and lay the groundwork for this essay by giving my early thoughts on both games.
   Lagrange Point is Phantasy star as God intended. It was a late release for the Famicom and has some fantastic design decisions while also being a frustrating slog. It has a rich world/setting. Excellent art direction and one of the most fascinating ways of telling a story on eight-bit hardware. While still being a test of patience in that the gameplay is basically a grind fest. Early in the game, you meet a child who doesn't have traditional cutscene interactions (except much later!), but instead, a dialog box will pop up during combat of him talking about the fight. His father asks you to find the child who went missing in a casual NPC dialog box before you actually run into tam (the kid). Later on a cinematic showing the child get murdered, and you fight through a relatively easy fight to get to the town. His father is there and asks if you have seen his son, and if you speak to him again he will say "where is tam?" I did not understand what the game was trying to do with all this erratic characterization until I was reminded earthbound style that the symbols these characters are supposed to represent something much like the world we live in. For a moment a fucking an eight-bit graphical sprite had every ounce of my empathy. So I went off to kill the bastard that killed tam. 
When you kill the mutant, it transforms back into a human much like tams father changed from an NPC in my mind to a purgatory of pain that the manipulation (be it skillful or accidental I can't tell yet.) of my emotions created then dies. I had to take a break from the game at this point and think (and that is why I am writing this to formulate my thoughts coherently.) I hope, however, to play this game to its conclusion, even if on some level I think it is impossible for the same trick to work twice. Just remember before you laugh at me that I read tam's dialog boxes for two or three hours of grinding and his little shout outs after a fight along the line of "that monster was weak" were annoying until he was murdered.

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Grafitti is just cute and creepy mid-level of difficulty action game for the Nintendo. The main reason for the title of this essay will be covered here. What can I say about the game that you couldn't say about every side-scroller that wasn't Mario? Not much, it is pretty average wonky hit detection (enemies explode both above and below your ax.) wonky physics in its jumps. Arbitrary difficulty by spamming enemies in a way that requires the precision of a surgeon. But ultimately satisfying when you beat a boss (yes I used save states....I am not a masocore). The main reason I believe that dark souls games are compared to Nintendo-hard games is not just that they are difficult but that the game is purposefully designed around flawed mechanics to make the player reassess their idea of fun. The game designer says "so your first impression is the hit detection is bad?" then you are presented with a level that is beatable only if abuse and master the unusual nature of the controls. And he says "are you having fun?" and your all like "I still prefer jumping in Mario three." but you know he knows that optimal play is the foundation of the reflex puzzles that includes most games of the majority of genres. And that what is fun to the lizard part of our brains is abusing manipulating systems (I am not a monster just a flawed human being like the rest of you.) for our own gratification. That they were aware of the flaw and like all Nintendo game's the mechanics were designed around the limitations of the machines, not the players.
    In conclusion...I am not a coherent person? (lol) Also, in the end, dark souls is not as good a monster hunter. Because one games idea of optimal play is abusing broken mechanics and the others are making sure, diversity of experience is forced on the player (I know ironic right?) and is fun by having proper mechanics in the first place. Also, monster hunter is my favorite game of all time, and I am tired. Goodnight internet. And enjoy the rest of your day unless your a masocore...than go speedrun Castlevania 2 or something.