A brawling Gaul, an intrepid reporter, little blue beings… For decades, the adventures of Asterix, Tintin and the Smurfs have fascinated entire generations. And inevitably, the video game has also fallen into the pot of magic potion! Perhaps even a little too much… The adaptations that have become cult have the reputation of being extremely difficult, a choice fully accepted by the developers. We explain why.
At the beginning of the 1990s, video games invaded homes and publishers turned to popular characters to impose their console. In order to reach a large audience, the different actors then engage in a merciless battle. While Nintendo dominates the market with Mario, SEGA secretly prepares the arrival of Sonic to counter the mustachioed man in overalls. At the same time, the Japanese company does not hesitate to ask its various European subsidiaries to provide it with the names of popular heroes in order to consider video game adaptations. The idea is simple: create targeted adventures for each country! From this initiative, Asterix games were born on Master System, Game Gear and Mega Drive. There will even be an exclusive Marsupilami game on the latter!
Seeing that its competitor is surrounding itself with big names (like Disney, with very good Mickey and Donald games), Nintendo turns to the French publisher Infogrames. After a successful experience with the video game adapted from the comic strip Les Tuniques Bleues, the Lyon studio obtains the rights to Asterix! While a small (but talented) Spanish studio is working on the Game Boy and NES versions of the game, the French parent company is going all out on the Super Nintendo cartridge. The recipe is formidable, it involves transposing the universe of the Gauls into a Mario-style platform game. In 1993, the observation was clear: Asterix on Nintendo consoles sold more than a million copies and everyone praised the quality of the game. However, very quickly, a little music is heard…
But why the hell is it so hard?
Already singled out for its visually successful, but ultra-difficult adaptation of Fantasia on Mega Drive, Infogrames’ protégés don’t know it yet, but they are on the verge of giving themselves a label that will stick to their skin for years : the publisher of difficult games!
Although the target favored by the Lyon-based company is that of 8-14 year olds, the video game industry does not have, as will be the case later, gaming sessions with players from different backgrounds. Stéphane Baudet, director of Asterix on Super Nintendo, interviewed in issue 10 of the Pix’n Love mook, declares: “ In fact, our games were quite short, compared to Nintendo’s Mario, for example. Making them difficult allowed us to artificially extend their lifespan. » He completes: “ The other reason was that at the time, we didn’t do enough playtests, that is to say tests with children in the age group for whom these games were primarily intended. »
Suffice it to say that we no longer count the number of children and adolescents who, at the time, broke their teeth trying to finish Asterix then, later, the Smurfs. Funny thing, Stéphane Baudet reveals in Pix’n Love that he sometimes hid the nature of his job from other parents, for fear of being caught! No doubt, at the time, telephone support services for players, such as SOS Nintendo, must have often received calls for these titles!
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Undeniably beautiful and superbly animated, these games are formidable and you have to master the controller to overcome them. The players thought they had seen it all with Asterix and the Smurfs. Poor people, they were not at the end of their troubles….
Tintin, the games from hell?
Having become one of the favorites of the famous Joueur du Grenier, Infogrames has also distinguished itself with two excellent Tintin games. Very beautiful graphically, these titles are also renowned for their extreme difficulty! But unlike Asterix and the Smurfs for whom the notion of difficulty was not a priority, the Belgian reporter suffered from another illness: Moulinsart, the Brussels company in charge of the commercial exploitation of Hergé’s work! The people who took care of the rights of the famous hero with the powder puff and his faithful sidekick Snowy were ultra picky! Thus, it was enough for a window to be missing from one of the Tintin in Tibet wagons or for a color to differ from the boxes in the album for the studio to be contacted. The developers spent a lot of time correcting details. Where this becomes more damaging is that it directly affected gameplay sequences and level difficulty.
When Infogrames obtained the right to adapt Tintin into video games, the Lyon studio chose Tintin in Tibet which had just been presented in an exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris. The album also has the advantage of offering a certain variety in the environments. Unfortunately, it is very contemplative and the developers did not expect such requirements… While they wanted to integrate rhythmic action phases (with shooting and slightly acrobatic platform phases), they were made to understand that Tintin does not advocate violence and that he only fights to defend himself. From then on, we had to take each sequence and location from the album to imagine phases of play linked to the scenario. A real headache!
If Tintin games are so difficult on Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, it is because of these repeated requests from Moulinsart. While focusing on micro-details (including an eccentric prohibition, for Tintin, to jump on a table to overcome an obstacle), the designers were forced to tinker with various sequences by limiting themselves to the albums and the possibilities offered by the reporter. This is what gives this feeling of patchwork with, from time to time, the impression of sequences which have neither tail nor head. Whether in the games Tintin in Tibet or Tintin and the Temple of the Sun, we spend a lot of time avoiding obstacles, jumping over crevasses, making sure not to get hit by people, etc. . As it was necessary to tinker very often, the developers did not have enough time to measure the gameplay phases and therefore based themselves on their own experiences.
Now you know why games adapted from comic books, starting with those from Infogrames, are so difficult. It was both voluntary, involuntary and resulting from the demands of certain rights holders. Tell yourself well that the difficulty of a game like Tintin in Tibet was reworked at the very last moment so that the adventure was… more accessible.
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Yes, there is sometimes a difference between game creators and players.