It was also incredibly difficult. As a kid I couldn’t go beyond the first level. It was also difficult to attack the enemy at the right time.
But still it was an amazing experience whenever I played it. I felt the pressure and the need to start again like no other game nowadays.
But maybe that’s just because I was a kid.
I don't think it was just because you were a kid, if I recall correctly the controls were incredibly unresponsive. Probably a technical reason, that they couldn't or didn't want to interrupt an animation easily, but still.
Years later though, and games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have a similar sluggishness / unresponsiveness to them. But it doesn't feel as unfair in those games.
I feel like unresponsive controls must have been a platform or hardware issue. On my (...Dell with Windows 3.1?) the controls were perfectly responsive, and they absolutely had to be. So many things relied on being able to, say, run and switch directions on a dime so that only your toe touched the platform that would then fall and break.
I don't think it was only because you were a kid. The game really did punish hesitation in a way that feels pretty unusual now
>It was also incredibly difficult.
And we dumb kids used to play it without the manual. It was a minor victory day for us when we finally figured out how to pick up the sword!
I remember having hundreds of pirated C64 and Amiga games. When starting a new game, we'd press every single key on the keyboard and try to figure out what, if anything, that key did.
Yeah, it was. It wasn't even my first game - I was like 11 when I first got to it, and by then was a solid gamer having already owned a master system and mega drive game consoles. And still PoP was hard, really hard.
(But I also didn't like it very much...)
I played it relentlessly as a kid (3-6 years old), and never got past the 4th level…
pop.exe -megahit is what I remember to cheat. Then ctrl combinations for powers.