I used to work nights doing production support (lots of downtime). To beat 88-4 [1], I exported the level, re-edited it to have 4 starting points (each a quarter of the way through [0/4, 1/4, 2/4, 3/4]). Then I practiced each of those in turn until I could beat them. After I could be each with about an 80% success rate, I tried the whole level again.
There are probably only 5 hard "gates" in 88-4. That is, 5 places where you are likely to fail (say a 15% success rate before extensive practice). The success rate after 5 gates is unexpectedly, phenomenally low: 0.008% (0.15^5). If you practice and get your individual success rate up to 80%, then the overall challenge is a doable 32.7% overall. I think my success rate was more like 40% on three gates, though, because even after practicing I think I tried about 30 times.
I still think about gates like this. I think Yatzee explained this in a Zero Punctuation episode, but I don't remember which one.
I have, some (I mainly bought it as a reward for the time I spent on the original; same for Spelunky and Cave Story+) Nowhere near as much as the original. I think the time I spent on the original was a function of boredom.
I used to work nights doing production support (lots of downtime). To beat 88-4 [1], I exported the level, re-edited it to have 4 starting points (each a quarter of the way through [0/4, 1/4, 2/4, 3/4]). Then I practiced each of those in turn until I could beat them. After I could be each with about an 80% success rate, I tried the whole level again.
There are probably only 5 hard "gates" in 88-4. That is, 5 places where you are likely to fail (say a 15% success rate before extensive practice). The success rate after 5 gates is unexpectedly, phenomenally low: 0.008% (0.15^5). If you practice and get your individual success rate up to 80%, then the overall challenge is a doable 32.7% overall. I think my success rate was more like 40% on three gates, though, because even after practicing I think I tried about 30 times.
I still think about gates like this. I think Yatzee explained this in a Zero Punctuation episode, but I don't remember which one.
0. http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/ 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hxHi234AM