MAY YOU BURN IN HELL!

Ah. Rick Dangerous is just an incredibly unforgiving platformer that makes no attempt to parlay with the player.

I'd call it a "bullshit platformer" because that's pretty much the go-to thing to say through the game every time a trap you couldn't possibly know about kills you. I honestly have no idea what insane stubborness could lead anyone to finish it in normal mode with limited lives.

More baffling is the GBA ports it got. Nothing quite warms the heart like a clumsy platformer where you have to save Christmas from...

Hmm, oh dear, can we even say that anymore?

People forget that many platformers from the 90s were by far more difficult than the modern ones, controls had to be exact. My TV has a slight delay. While I have no problem playing modern PS4 games on it, many old ones on the Evercade are almost unplayable.
Also I always found it better to play these game with a digital joystick (Competition Pro Star still rules, also the modern USB remake by Speedlink, even if the spring is a bit too sturdy) than with any gamepad, with analog gamepads they become even more difficult. A good modern solution is a arcade stick (8Bit Do or PNX), playing with these gives you so much more control than with a gamepad. Most of these games I would also rather play with keyboard than with a modern gamepad.

There's people who can play PacMan after the screen bug where you don't see anything anymore (happens once the scrore gets too high), they just continue blindly. Two friends of mine finished Bubble Bobble every day a whole summer long. It was a very different time. We didn't have thousands of games, maybe something over a hundred max including the illegal copies.
If you managed to finish an old platformer like Rick Dangerous 1 or 2, it was very rewarding. Same for Another World. But that one was by far easier since you didn't have to restart the whole game when you died (access codes for levels).

Rick Dangerous was as hardcore as it gets. You had to remember everything, try, try and try again.
If you managed to finish it (it IS possible), you were a true hero :)

In what sense? That when you lost all lives, you had to start over from scratch? I personally don't consider that difficult, just tedious. A game that requires you to learn everything with trial and error first and then just executing it with the knowledge gained over the course of dozens of previous unsuccessful attempts is just a test in patience.

If anything, I'd say contemporary platformers are more fair, not necessarily easier. I could spend hours learning the positions of enemies, items, traps, triggers, off-screen jumps, optimal paths etc. in some random ancient platformer game, but the problem is that gets boring pretty fast, especially when you have to replay like 30 minutes every single time you fail at a problematic section at some later stage.

I just watched Civvie's new video on Wolfenstein 2009 and man, I wish we could get that game here. It looks less horror-is than Return to Castle Wolfenstein which means it would be much more up my alley. Sure it's not exactly "Indiana Jones-ish" but it's still Nazis, paranormal stuff and some ancient artefacts... it's good enough to scratch the itch I think.

Also, apparently we can't use the word oc*ult because we live in a clown world, and the forum won't even tell me what word that I used is banned, so I had to wast time trying to guess if it's "nazis" or if the link is broken or what is the problem that won't let me post.

Exactly. Having to repeat something I've already managed doesn't make whatever killed me later more difficult. It just means the game is deliberately wasting my time.

No, as I said: You had to be a lot more precise. The gameplay in todays games is usually a lot more forgiving.
In Another World (as I also said) you don't have to start from scratch, but it's not an easy game.
(really ... the answer to your question was in my post already).

There are some exceptions of course, mostly indies, games with puzzles where you have to switch quickly between worlds for example or must not touch the ground or whatever (games like Sunblaze for example). But the average platformer controls these days are made for analog thumbsticks, which don't allow that level of precision that digital joysticks had.

Tutorials where they explain the jump button to the player? Or what the fire button does? Forget it.
We didn't even know what a tutorial was.

Here's an easy one: Try to play Turrican 2 DOS version (not a hard game) with an analog gamepad and do jumps to a platform exactly above you where you first have to jump diagonally to one side and then to the other. With a digital stick that's not much of a problem, with an analog stick you are glad if you set a second (digital) jump button. With the thumb stick alone it's a pita.

And yes, learning the levels was part of the gameplay. That was part of the challenge.

It's mostly just the start and end of RtCW that is trying to go for a horror-ish atmosphere (the Crypt level and Castle Wolfenstein). The core of the game is still mostly just shooting nazis, but the occasional supernatural element works wonders for spicing up the game.

The 2009 game is a mixed bag. It plays well, but the auto-heal and checkpoints only ruin a lot of the gameplay. The powers are cool, but end up making you extremely overpowered, kind of like the slo-mo in Fear. It has some nice homages to the earlier games, but it's far from perfect. Still a decent 7/10. Would be nice if it got here. I have a retail box of it, but still would probably re-buy if it appeared.

Fair enough. Can't really compare thumbsticks/joysticks as I never played platformers with those.

I hope no one will mind this little bit of necromancy (the thread is not that old yet), as I really want to share this:

Indiana Jones and the Well of Life

It's a fan made audio drama, and I think every fan of Indy wishing for one more adventure will be glad to check it out. For an unofficial production it really is exceptionaly good. I'm not even usually into audio dramas, but really enjoyd this one.