Ghosts and Goblins. This title I've not been able to beat though (I never managed to get past the third stage). And if you have, you do are a god amongst men.
i agree so much, that took me too much effort to beat. but my hardest was
the NES Castlevania. It took me and 3 others, a NES Advantage, and pure determination to beat that game.
and none of us has played that game again since then.
"Secret of the Sphinx" on the original Atari game console used to drive me nuts...you would play for an hour or two only to get to the end and then realize you were missing something. I would always end up at the gate at the end without the key or whatever you needed to get through. Years later (here comes the spoiler) I found out you had to start out the game going backwards for a ways to get the key...I still kind of feel like an ass for not figuring that one out.
Ikaruga is ridiculously hard even on the easiest setting. What bugs me about it is that you get infinite continues after a certain amount of time playing it, which takes away the greatest feeling of accomplishment a beginning player can get.
Viewtiful Joe is difficult but fun, I find. I don't think I've beaten "Adults" difficulty.
Legendary Axe is nice-looking for a TurboGrafx 16 game, and the music is memorable. The furthest I've gotten is to the second-last boss, which is apparently called Panda. After dealing with the Punjabbis and Nomads in the later levels, then going through the Pits of Madness, I'm virtually dead anyway, and Panda finishes me off quickly. There is a good deal of very hard platforming and difficult-to-synchronise vine-swinging. There is no option to save the game and there are no passwords, so if you use a console, you'll have to dedicate some time to it. There is a cheat to get up to 99 continues. I'll try that some time.
I could only beat Star Fox on the easiest path. Maybe other people found it easier, but for me, it was insanely hard.
Pac-Land for TurboGrafx 16 contained some excruciatingly difficult levels that could only be played by memorising and timing actions perfectly.
As for Metroid Prime, I could beat the difficult bosses much easier if I shut the music off. The bosses aren't terribly difficult when you get the pattern down and execute properly. I find that I react too strongly to the stimulus and can't control the game nearly as well when music is on.
Spiderman/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge is a half-good, half-bad game for the SNES and maybe Genesis too. The gameplay is flawed, but not so much that it can't be fun. Memorisation is required.
here's a game i picked up on rental: wallace & gromit: Project Zoo. after i played it, and went through some levels a 100 times, i started reading reviews, and everyone seemed to have the same issue... if the level wasn't insanely difficult outright, it was MADE insanely difficult by the horrendous camera control... a virtual camera that would swing around at a predefined s-l-o-w pace, and get knocked around by object you'd pass by in the game. this is SUICIDE in a platformer.
there's this one bonus level where you are jumping from one enormous platform to the next, where the platforms will flip after a certain amount of time, while things fire at you from various directions. sounds easy, until you pick up a weapon, t-u-r-n t-h-e c-a-m-e-r-a and oop! flip, you're dead.
at that point, it's no longer about playing and gameplay cunning... it's just twitch, button mashing and pattern recognition. whoop-de-doo.
here's a game i picked up on rental: wallace & gromit: Project Zoo. after i played it, and went through some levels a 100 times, i started reading reviews, and everyone seemed to have the same issue... if the level wasn't insanely difficult outright, it was MADE insanely difficult by the horrendous camera control... a virtual camera that would swing around at a predefined s-l-o-w pace, and get knocked around by object you'd pass by in the game. this is SUICIDE in a platformer.
there's this one bonus level where you are jumping from one enormous platform to the next, where the platforms will flip after a certain amount of time, while things fire at you from various directions. sounds easy, until you pick up a weapon, t-u-r-n t-h-e c-a-m-e-r-a and oop! flip, you're dead.
at that point, it's no longer about playing and gameplay cunning... it's just twitch, button mashing and pattern recognition. whoop-de-doo.
wanna know whats worse, is camera angles moving randomly throughout the game when you dont want it too... im trying to think of the game i had that did that, cant remember exactly, some action fighting game, but whenerever i did move a certain way, it would change the angle and then i would get shot and die...
Games which are all about a certain kind of skill and not about "getting anywhere", can't really be ranked like that.. or how would you rank Virtua Fighter or Gran Turismo? I guess you could say VF is tough, since there aren't more than a couple guys in my country who are able to beat the top AI.. but you can enjoy the game at any skill level below that.
On the PS2 I have encountered at least two games that I think fairly difficult.
Gradius 3&4 (this is just a repackaging / port of the two old games to PS2) is *very* hard. There are parts not farther than Level 2 in Gradius 3 where I find it impossible not to die at least once. I haven't played this too long though.
Contra: Shattered Soldier. The real objective is not getting to the end (I have not accomplished that, either), but getting there with the so-called 'S rank'. You have to shoot every target that gives points, and not die once during the whole game... you can probably replay some of the levels as long as you got lives/continues, but in the end you have to pass them all perfect.
Anyway, to answer Dave's question, I think it's a good thing that some games are very hard. Some people are amazingly good gamers, and they need challenge too. Some aren't, but are comfortable with putting in 10x more work and still defeat the same challenge. I enjoy playing hard games, and then I also enjoy playing easier, more comfortable ones. Particularly when there's a good plot or story going on, too much forced replay of a hard spot destroys the mood, and I would rather prefer to skip it.
Everyone also has their standards for what is "good" sort of hard and what is "bad" sort of hard. Me, I hate random things in general. If the game kills you 99 times and lets you pass 1 time and it's random, that is the "bad" sort of hard. It's also always bad if your problem is with the interface of the game, like camera. Enemies spawning behind your back, but never to your field of view, belongs to this category since your FOV which should never affect what happens in the game world, does. GTA:SA, while not being a hard game, has both irritating spawnings and bad camera.
On the other hand, in a good game even if you die 99 times, you come out thinking "okay, could have done that differently.. could have been a little faster.. could have been a little more accurate". That's the sign of a hard but good game.
You just have to read reviews from reviewers you trust to determine whether the game is one you might enjoy. I am certainly enjoying Contra even if I find it very difficult. I do not think it got that way by accidental or bad design.
Anyway, to answer Dave's question, I think it's a good thing that some games are very hard. Some people are amazingly good gamers, and they need challenge too. Some aren't, but are comfortable with putting in 10x more work and still defeat the same challenge. I enjoy playing hard games, and then I also enjoy playing easier, more comfortable ones. Particularly when there's a good plot or story going on, too much forced replay of a hard spot destroys the mood, and I would rather prefer to skip it.
Everyone also has their standards for what is "good" sort of hard and what is "bad" sort of hard. Me, I hate random things in general. If the game kills you 99 times and lets you pass 1 time and it's random, that is the "bad" sort of hard. It's also always bad if your problem is with the interface of the game, like camera. Enemies spawning behind your back, but never to your field of view, belongs to this category since your FOV which should never affect what happens in the game world, does. GTA:SA, while not being a hard game, has both irritating spawnings and bad camera.
On the other hand, in a good game even if you die 99 times, you come out thinking "okay, could have done that differently.. could have been a little faster.. could have been a little more accurate". That's the sign of a hard but good game.
You just have to read reviews from reviewers you trust to determine whether the game is one you might enjoy. I am certainly enjoying Contra even if I find it very difficult. I do not think it got that way by accidental or bad design.
Easy fix. Have difficultly levels. Metroid Prime initially only has one difficultly. Only after you beat the game, do you get even a harder difficultly level as an option.
Bungie got it right with Halo (which many XBOX games copied). At each main level in the game, you have the option to select difficultly for that particular level. What a great idea.
it is much harder than halo, that is for sure. i am stuck on the sun creature right now - how do i get the multiple sun reflectors to stay down with out the creature knocking them back up. it is frustrating - after not beating the creature for several attempts, i switched to a game i know will go well (animal crossing).
The sun creature a walk in the park compared to the later bosses. Good luck.
Easy fix. Have difficultly levels. Metroid Prime initially only has one difficultly. Only after you beat the game, do you get even a harder difficultly level as an option.
Bungie got it right with Halo (which many XBOX games copied). At each main level in the game, you have the option to select difficultly for that particular level. What a great idea.
There was one game that got difficulty very right IMO. Aliens vs Predator on PC. They had a system where you can't save mid-level (it's just amazing how much more intense this makes the game - it wouldn't have been half the experience with saving). There were no irritatingly difficult parts, no random death, but particularly as human and alien you could put yourself in a guaranteed death position in about 0.5 seconds if you didn't have your act together. You could pick difficulty for every level (IIRC) but you could only play at a certain difficulty if you had beat the previous level at that difficulty. Therefore, if you are a "honest" gamer, you could have a nail-biting experience by picking a difficulty level and staying with it - OTOH you could go to a lower difficulty if a certain level proved too difficult, but you would be visibly "penalized" so that you could not complete the game with a higher difficulty, or choose it for the later levels, until you also passed that level and the levels after that at the difficulty you want.
Not surprisingly, they added a mid-level save feature in a patch. I wouldn't have done that. A modern-day game designer would probably crucify me for this design decision. \ In many games, you should be able to save.. but not this one.
Even in AvP there should have been a one-time save like in Nethack, though. That is just fair - your environment will sometimes interrupt, and a single player game should not penalize that under any circumstances.
Well I did it. I had to cheat. But I finally beat Meta Ridley. I also finished the game.
How did I do it. I cheated by buying an Action Repay device that gave me unlimited missiles and health.
The next boss after Meta Ridley is even more insane that Meta Ridley. My hats off to anyone who can beat that game without cheating. You are a gamer.
Dave
Beat it without cheating. I'm about 3/4 the way through Echos, but got bored with it. Beat Resident Evil and now I'm replaying Wind Waker- I only beat Wind Waker once when it first came out. The presentation of this game is the best of any game. It's soooo polished.
The hardest game bar none, is propably Predator 2 for the (iirc) Atari ST.
The game was released in such a buggy state (it had to be) so that it was impossible to make it past the two first scenes.
To understand how bad this is one "scene" is one screen wide...
So why was it impossible?
You could ony move in one direction, to the right and that was it. From time to time (say every 3-1 seconds on average) the "predator sights would show up moving in (90% of the time) from the rightmost spot to the left where you stood helpeless just waiting to be killed as the sights touched you. If the sights appeared from the left you where allso allmost certain to be screwed as the sights moved about 100-200% faster then the game character could run. There was no way of jumping/ducking to aviod the sights, or to shoot in the predators direction to throw hims off ... actually you had no weapon/means of offence at all. All you could do was to move slowly to the right ... and get massacered. The absolutely worst bit though, was that the second screed looked exactly like the first one, twenty minutes of trying for bloody nothing ... bleh.
Hehehe.
I spent hours playing Shadow of the Beast II for the Amiga 500, if anyone completed that I am impressed. I still remember the cheat (go up to the first guy who throws spears at you and type 'ten pints').
Beat it without cheating. I'm about 3/4 the way through Echos, but got bored with it. Beat Resident Evil and now I'm replaying Wind Waker- I only beat Wind Waker once when it first came out. The presentation of this game is the best of any game. It's soooo polished.
My favorite part of Wind Waker was the one dungeon where you kept dropping through the floor to a new room of enemies. And none of them dropped items when you defeated them (but if you are smart there is an easy way to get around this). Especially the second part of it to get the heart container (i think that was what was at the very bottom).
The only annoying thing of Wind Waker was the annoying repetitiveness that the sailing back and forth became... even with Song of Storms. It would have been better if there were more areas connected by land and you didn't need to sail to go EVERYWHERE. Like if sailing and crossing land was 50/50 or something. Because they did do some inventive stuff with the sailing, with respect to side quests, secrets items and such.
It would be really cool if they redid Ocarina of Time in the Wind Waker game engine with that smooth cell shading.
It would be really cool if they redid Ocarina of Time in the Wind Waker game engine with that smooth cell shading.
Wow! you've got to be the first person I've ever heard who LIKES the cell shading. hehehe I personally liked it to, but didn't dare let anyone know, zelda fans were out for blood when they saw it. heh
Wow! you've got to be the first person I've ever heard who LIKES the cell shading. hehehe I personally liked it to, but didn't dare let anyone know, zelda fans were out for blood when they saw it. heh
People had built up their hopes for something more like what The Legend of Zelda; Twilight Princess is. After the Link vs. Ganon battle during the SpaceWorld2000 (I think that was it) demo of what the GameCube could do, people were expecting the next Zelda game to be like that. That was the demo that showed all of those mario models running around, the Link-Ganon battle, Samus running down a corridor, etc. (That was where the first speculation of 'omg! a metroid game for gamecube!' came from) I also think that more people would have been onboard if the characters models were more 'anime-esque' in style, as lots of games from Japan tend to be. Some people also saw the cell-shading as Nintendo trying to make Wind Waker a 'more kiddie' game. In that case, it also could have partly been the models that contributed to the 'child oriented atmosphere' of the game. 'Anime-esque' models could have made it look a little more mature, but who knows.
I played the demo to death when I first found it ( some years ago now ). The demo had the whole game, but only gave you one life. I made it all the way to the last boss, but I could never bring myself to do it again. I played it recently on an emu , and couldnt get past the first screen
Comments
Ghosts and Goblins. This title I've not been able to beat though (I never managed to get past the third stage). And if you have, you do are a god amongst men.
i agree so much, that took me too much effort to beat. but my hardest was
the NES Castlevania. It took me and 3 others, a NES Advantage, and pure determination to beat that game.
and none of us has played that game again since then.
sean
Ikaruga is ridiculously hard even on the easiest setting. What bugs me about it is that you get infinite continues after a certain amount of time playing it, which takes away the greatest feeling of accomplishment a beginning player can get.
Viewtiful Joe is difficult but fun, I find. I don't think I've beaten "Adults" difficulty.
Legendary Axe is nice-looking for a TurboGrafx 16 game, and the music is memorable. The furthest I've gotten is to the second-last boss, which is apparently called Panda. After dealing with the Punjabbis and Nomads in the later levels, then going through the Pits of Madness, I'm virtually dead anyway, and Panda finishes me off quickly. There is a good deal of very hard platforming and difficult-to-synchronise vine-swinging. There is no option to save the game and there are no passwords, so if you use a console, you'll have to dedicate some time to it. There is a cheat to get up to 99 continues. I'll try that some time.
I could only beat Star Fox on the easiest path. Maybe other people found it easier, but for me, it was insanely hard.
Pac-Land for TurboGrafx 16 contained some excruciatingly difficult levels that could only be played by memorising and timing actions perfectly.
As for Metroid Prime, I could beat the difficult bosses much easier if I shut the music off. The bosses aren't terribly difficult when you get the pattern down and execute properly. I find that I react too strongly to the stimulus and can't control the game nearly as well when music is on.
Spiderman/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge is a half-good, half-bad game for the SNES and maybe Genesis too. The gameplay is flawed, but not so much that it can't be fun. Memorisation is required.
Originally posted by facelike
i agree so much, that took me too much effort to beat. but my hardest was
the NES Castlevania. It took me and 3 others, a NES Advantage, and pure determination to beat that game.
and none of us has played that game again since then.
sean
Wich version?
The NES one only requires some dedication due to the unlimited continues, the C=64 one (iirc) doesn't have that luxury though. *shudders*
there's this one bonus level where you are jumping from one enormous platform to the next, where the platforms will flip after a certain amount of time, while things fire at you from various directions. sounds easy, until you pick up a weapon, t-u-r-n t-h-e c-a-m-e-r-a and oop! flip, you're dead.
at that point, it's no longer about playing and gameplay cunning... it's just twitch, button mashing and pattern recognition. whoop-de-doo.
Originally posted by rok
here's a game i picked up on rental: wallace & gromit: Project Zoo. after i played it, and went through some levels a 100 times, i started reading reviews, and everyone seemed to have the same issue... if the level wasn't insanely difficult outright, it was MADE insanely difficult by the horrendous camera control... a virtual camera that would swing around at a predefined s-l-o-w pace, and get knocked around by object you'd pass by in the game. this is SUICIDE in a platformer.
there's this one bonus level where you are jumping from one enormous platform to the next, where the platforms will flip after a certain amount of time, while things fire at you from various directions. sounds easy, until you pick up a weapon, t-u-r-n t-h-e c-a-m-e-r-a and oop! flip, you're dead.
at that point, it's no longer about playing and gameplay cunning... it's just twitch, button mashing and pattern recognition. whoop-de-doo.
wanna know whats worse, is camera angles moving randomly throughout the game when you dont want it too... im trying to think of the game i had that did that, cant remember exactly, some action fighting game, but whenerever i did move a certain way, it would change the angle and then i would get shot and die...
On the PS2 I have encountered at least two games that I think fairly difficult.
Gradius 3&4 (this is just a repackaging / port of the two old games to PS2) is *very* hard. There are parts not farther than Level 2 in Gradius 3 where I find it impossible not to die at least once. I haven't played this too long though.
Contra: Shattered Soldier. The real objective is not getting to the end (I have not accomplished that, either), but getting there with the so-called 'S rank'. You have to shoot every target that gives points, and not die once during the whole game... you can probably replay some of the levels as long as you got lives/continues, but in the end you have to pass them all perfect.
Everyone also has their standards for what is "good" sort of hard and what is "bad" sort of hard. Me, I hate random things in general. If the game kills you 99 times and lets you pass 1 time and it's random, that is the "bad" sort of hard. It's also always bad if your problem is with the interface of the game, like camera. Enemies spawning behind your back, but never to your field of view, belongs to this category since your FOV which should never affect what happens in the game world, does. GTA:SA, while not being a hard game, has both irritating spawnings and bad camera.
On the other hand, in a good game even if you die 99 times, you come out thinking "okay, could have done that differently.. could have been a little faster.. could have been a little more accurate". That's the sign of a hard but good game.
You just have to read reviews from reviewers you trust to determine whether the game is one you might enjoy. I am certainly enjoying Contra even if I find it very difficult. I do not think it got that way by accidental or bad design.
How did I do it. I cheated by buying an Action Repay device that gave me unlimited missiles and health.
The next boss after Meta Ridley is even more insane that Meta Ridley. My hats off to anyone who can beat that game without cheating. You are a gamer.
Dave
Originally posted by Gon
Anyway, to answer Dave's question, I think it's a good thing that some games are very hard. Some people are amazingly good gamers, and they need challenge too. Some aren't, but are comfortable with putting in 10x more work and still defeat the same challenge. I enjoy playing hard games, and then I also enjoy playing easier, more comfortable ones. Particularly when there's a good plot or story going on, too much forced replay of a hard spot destroys the mood, and I would rather prefer to skip it.
Everyone also has their standards for what is "good" sort of hard and what is "bad" sort of hard. Me, I hate random things in general. If the game kills you 99 times and lets you pass 1 time and it's random, that is the "bad" sort of hard. It's also always bad if your problem is with the interface of the game, like camera. Enemies spawning behind your back, but never to your field of view, belongs to this category since your FOV which should never affect what happens in the game world, does. GTA:SA, while not being a hard game, has both irritating spawnings and bad camera.
On the other hand, in a good game even if you die 99 times, you come out thinking "okay, could have done that differently.. could have been a little faster.. could have been a little more accurate". That's the sign of a hard but good game.
You just have to read reviews from reviewers you trust to determine whether the game is one you might enjoy. I am certainly enjoying Contra even if I find it very difficult. I do not think it got that way by accidental or bad design.
Easy fix. Have difficultly levels. Metroid Prime initially only has one difficultly. Only after you beat the game, do you get even a harder difficultly level as an option.
Bungie got it right with Halo (which many XBOX games copied). At each main level in the game, you have the option to select difficultly for that particular level. What a great idea.
Originally posted by boochydog
dave-
it is much harder than halo, that is for sure. i am stuck on the sun creature right now - how do i get the multiple sun reflectors to stay down with out the creature knocking them back up. it is frustrating - after not beating the creature for several attempts, i switched to a game i know will go well (animal crossing).
The sun creature a walk in the park compared to the later bosses. Good luck.
Originally posted by Dave K.
Easy fix. Have difficultly levels. Metroid Prime initially only has one difficultly. Only after you beat the game, do you get even a harder difficultly level as an option.
Bungie got it right with Halo (which many XBOX games copied). At each main level in the game, you have the option to select difficultly for that particular level. What a great idea.
There was one game that got difficulty very right IMO. Aliens vs Predator on PC. They had a system where you can't save mid-level (it's just amazing how much more intense this makes the game - it wouldn't have been half the experience with saving). There were no irritatingly difficult parts, no random death, but particularly as human and alien you could put yourself in a guaranteed death position in about 0.5 seconds if you didn't have your act together. You could pick difficulty for every level (IIRC) but you could only play at a certain difficulty if you had beat the previous level at that difficulty. Therefore, if you are a "honest" gamer, you could have a nail-biting experience by picking a difficulty level and staying with it - OTOH you could go to a lower difficulty if a certain level proved too difficult, but you would be visibly "penalized" so that you could not complete the game with a higher difficulty, or choose it for the later levels, until you also passed that level and the levels after that at the difficulty you want.
Not surprisingly, they added a mid-level save feature in a patch. I wouldn't have done that. A modern-day game designer would probably crucify me for this design decision.
Even in AvP there should have been a one-time save like in Nethack, though. That is just fair - your environment will sometimes interrupt, and a single player game should not penalize that under any circumstances.
Originally posted by Dave K.
Well I did it. I had to cheat. But I finally beat Meta Ridley. I also finished the game.
How did I do it. I cheated by buying an Action Repay device that gave me unlimited missiles and health.
The next boss after Meta Ridley is even more insane that Meta Ridley. My hats off to anyone who can beat that game without cheating. You are a gamer.
Dave
Beat it without cheating. I'm about 3/4 the way through Echos, but got bored with it. Beat Resident Evil and now I'm replaying Wind Waker- I only beat Wind Waker once when it first came out. The presentation of this game is the best of any game. It's soooo polished.
Originally posted by Eric_Z
The hardest game bar none, is propably Predator 2 for the (iirc) Atari ST.
The game was released in such a buggy state (it had to be) so that it was impossible to make it past the two first scenes.
To understand how bad this is one "scene" is one screen wide...
So why was it impossible?
You could ony move in one direction, to the right and that was it. From time to time (say every 3-1 seconds on average) the "predator sights would show up moving in (90% of the time) from the rightmost spot to the left where you stood helpeless just waiting to be killed as the sights touched you. If the sights appeared from the left you where allso allmost certain to be screwed as the sights moved about 100-200% faster then the game character could run. There was no way of jumping/ducking to aviod the sights, or to shoot in the predators direction to throw hims off ... actually you had no weapon/means of offence at all. All you could do was to move slowly to the right ... and get massacered. The absolutely worst bit though, was that the second screed looked exactly like the first one, twenty minutes of trying for bloody nothing ... bleh.
Hehehe.
I spent hours playing Shadow of the Beast II for the Amiga 500, if anyone completed that I am impressed. I still remember the cheat (go up to the first guy who throws spears at you and type 'ten pints').
A truely amazing game for it's time, the music was absolutely brilliant and the graphics top notch.
Oh, and it was hard as #### too.
Originally posted by tacojohn
Beat it without cheating. I'm about 3/4 the way through Echos, but got bored with it. Beat Resident Evil and now I'm replaying Wind Waker- I only beat Wind Waker once when it first came out. The presentation of this game is the best of any game. It's soooo polished.
My favorite part of Wind Waker was the one dungeon where you kept dropping through the floor to a new room of enemies. And none of them dropped items when you defeated them (but if you are smart there is an easy way to get around this). Especially the second part of it to get the heart container (i think that was what was at the very bottom).
The only annoying thing of Wind Waker was the annoying repetitiveness that the sailing back and forth became... even with Song of Storms. It would have been better if there were more areas connected by land and you didn't need to sail to go EVERYWHERE. Like if sailing and crossing land was 50/50 or something. Because they did do some inventive stuff with the sailing, with respect to side quests, secrets items and such.
It would be really cool if they redid Ocarina of Time in the Wind Waker game engine with that smooth cell shading.
Originally posted by pyr3
It would be really cool if they redid Ocarina of Time in the Wind Waker game engine with that smooth cell shading.
Wow! you've got to be the first person I've ever heard who LIKES the cell shading. hehehe I personally liked it to, but didn't dare let anyone know, zelda fans were out for blood when they saw it. heh
Originally posted by Wrong Robot
Wow! you've got to be the first person I've ever heard who LIKES the cell shading. hehehe I personally liked it to, but didn't dare let anyone know, zelda fans were out for blood when they saw it. heh
People had built up their hopes for something more like what The Legend of Zelda; Twilight Princess is. After the Link vs. Ganon battle during the SpaceWorld2000 (I think that was it) demo of what the GameCube could do, people were expecting the next Zelda game to be like that. That was the demo that showed all of those mario models running around, the Link-Ganon battle, Samus running down a corridor, etc. (That was where the first speculation of 'omg! a metroid game for gamecube!' came from) I also think that more people would have been onboard if the characters models were more 'anime-esque' in style, as lots of games from Japan tend to be. Some people also saw the cell-shading as Nintendo trying to make Wind Waker a 'more kiddie' game. In that case, it also could have partly been the models that contributed to the 'child oriented atmosphere' of the game. 'Anime-esque' models could have made it look a little more mature, but who knows.
I played the demo to death when I first found it ( some years ago now ). The demo had the whole game, but only gave you one life. I made it all the way to the last boss, but I could never bring myself to do it again. I played it recently on an emu , and couldnt get past the first screen