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J Lo: Pokemon (Gen 1) - Your rival will pick whichever pokemon has a type advantage over yours. The first two gym leaders are rock and water type respectively. God help you if you picked charmander. This isn't an issue with squirtle or bulbasaur. By the time you reach a gym that has their weakness, you can pick up a 'mon that can fight for them.
Similarly, in the Stadium I and & II games, the game uses loaded dice, not only to encourage you to build a team to compete, but moreover to prevent someone from pushing though it over a weekend.
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J Lo: Hello!

Edit: thanks for the replies! ♥

Can you think of some games where the AI/comp straight up cheats?

Street Fighter 2 - Some characters have charge moves, which require you to crouch for two seconds. The AI does not require inputs, and can do these moves on cue without charging - making them able to do these moves faster than a human player can. I remember I used to see comp Guile throw a flash kick super quickly, and wonder how it was able to do it so fast. I thought there was some trick to it I was missing. But back then I didn't know about the cheating AI. There are also things like reduced stun recovery and hits not registering where they normally should.

Mortal Kombat 2 - The AI will read your inputs and counter the exact thing you are trying to do. Trying to clear the game without use cheese strategies is prohibitively difficult.

Diablo 2 - Duriel is not affected by freeze effects. Not an issue for me, but feels a little too strong for an act 2 boss.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - there is a fey type enemy who has several immunities (including control effects and magic missile), is impossible to hit with weapons (except with nat 20s), and has super high saving throws. I can't remember her name, but she summoned water elementals.

Mass Effect 2 - Harbinger will regularly posses normal Collector goons, making them much stronger. If a Collector trooper is about to die, Harbinger will possess the soldier - restoring him to full health, giving him armour protection, and a biotic barrier to boot. Not only do you need to start from scratch, you also now have to grind through three layers of HP.

Arkham Asylum - There is a section of the game with a bomb/timer. If you take a shortcut, Joker will break the fourth wall and reduce the total amount of time you have.

Pokemon (Gen 1) - Your rival will pick whichever pokemon has a type advantage over yours. The first two gym leaders are rock and water type respectively. God help you if you picked charmander. This isn't an issue with squirtle or bulbasaur. By the time you reach a gym that has their weakness, you can pick up a 'mon that can fight for them.

Blizzard RTS games - The comp can control multiple units at a time, as opposed to the player doing them one by one. Trying to micro on later levels at max speed is pretty rough. The comp always knows exactly where you are. They also have full vision of the map with no fog of war. Meaning artillery weapons like siege tanks and catapults will always have max range. A human player would need a spotter unit to get the same amount of range - putting them at a disadvantage.
https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/SNK_Boss_Syndrome
I don't think this can be considered cheating, but it's a interesting mechanic.

In Jedi Knight, Enemies were weakened in order to be stronger. The closer the impact point of the shot was to Kyle's center, the higher was the chance to deflect it, so the accuracy was lowered
If you changed the accuracy to 100%, they would all hit exactly in the middle and Kyle would deflect everything, which was quite a sight when you went against 20 storm troopers equiped with Repeater guns.

Of course it also made enemies with rocket launchers quite deadly :D
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Darvond: Similarly, in the Stadium I and & II games, the game uses loaded dice, not only to encourage you to build a team to compete, but moreover to prevent someone from pushing though it over a weekend.
I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.

Very interesting article. I don't play SNK games and didn't know about this.
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Darvond: Similarly, in the Stadium I and & II games, the game uses loaded dice, not only to encourage you to build a team to compete, but moreover to prevent someone from pushing though it over a weekend.
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J Lo: I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.

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J Lo: Very interesting article. I don't play SNK games and didn't know about this.
All fighting games developed by SNK have that issue. The CPU reads your inputs, so the way to beat boss characters in those games is to get it to react incorrectly to your attacks. Once that happens, you can spam your own attacks until you win.

It's really obnoxious to deal with before finding out that you can use the CPU's own input reading against it.
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J Lo: I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.
It wasn't that they hated rental services; they were all but illegal in Japan. And you are correct in some cases; others are attributed to bugs introduced in localization such as 7th Saga. What was more vile was the Rental Killer in many western games, such as The Lion King.
You have to remember that SNK games were meant to be played in Arcades, that's why they were designed to be unbeatable; so that people would keep feeding coins to the machines.

I also agree with the Civilization "AI" cheating, it was so blatant lol... I still could easily win.
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J Lo: I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.
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Darvond: It wasn't that they hated rental services; they were all but illegal in Japan. And you are correct in some cases; others are attributed to bugs introduced in localization such as 7th Saga. What was more vile was the Rental Killer in many western games, such as The Lion King.
I remember that one. I rented it for the Genesis. Fortunately I happened to have a gaming mag filled with cheat codes :)


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maxleod: You have to remember that SNK games were meant to be played in Arcades, that's why they were designed to be unbeatable; so that people would keep feeding coins to the machines.

I also agree with the Civilization "AI" cheating, it was so blatant lol... I still could easily win.
Ah the coin gobbler...does it count as pay-to-win?
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J Lo: I remember that one. I rented it for the Genesis. Fortunately I happened to have a gaming mag filled with cheat codes :)


Ah the coin gobbler...does it count as pay-to-win?
in some SNK games gave you boosts if you continued
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Darvond: Similarly, in the Stadium I and & II games, the game uses loaded dice, not only to encourage you to build a team to compete, but moreover to prevent someone from pushing though it over a weekend.
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J Lo: I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.
It wasn't even just Japanese devs that did this, but a lot of games for the Japanese market. Battletoads, which was made by Rare in the UK, is significantly easier in the Japanese version than the US/EU one.
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J Lo: I read somewhere that Japanese devs usually made western releases more difficult - for the explicit purpose of not being able to rent the game and clear it in a few days. Japanese game devs really hated rental services (or so I'm told), and there was a lawsuit in Japan over video stores being able to rent out games.
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W1ldc44t: It wasn't even just Japanese devs that did this, but a lot of games for the Japanese market. Battletoads, which was made by Rare in the UK, is significantly easier in the Japanese version than the US/EU one.
I remember renting that one for the NES. It was brutal. IIRC there was also friendly fire which didn't help at all.
Atari 2600 Video Chess

It's a fact that the AI would cheat and sometimes rearrange the board if played at higher levels.
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Post edited June 26, 2023 by J Lo
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J Lo: Arkham Asylum - There is a section of the game with a bomb/timer. If you take a shortcut, Joker will break the fourth wall and reduce the total amount of time you have.
I don't think I'm familiar with this one, can anyone give me any more details?
AI cheating? Well I never! Maybe that's where the cheat codes come in handy to level the playing field, as it were. Heh-heh. ((;--))