How Cuphead Succeeded When It Absolutely Should Have Failed 

I'm sad that it's over but I'm glad they went "quality over quantity" and we can say goodbye to this masterpiece instead of it becoming a crappy franchise like some games do.

I think Cuphead's difficulty was it's saving grace. I remember people like Angry Joe clowning reviewers who couldn't get past the tutorial and first couple of levels. They defended the game from the criticism that it was "too hard", and the debate on that criticism created a lot of attention and led a lot of people to try it to see for themselves how hard it truly was. The game had an Excalibur/Mjölnir element to it, with people wanting see if they "were worthy". I know without this debate, I myself would have never even tried it.

One of my animation teachers designed more than half of bosses and animated throughout the whole game, she is AMAZING at her craft and I aspire to be an inch of a monster of what she already is. 🥺 much love to Tina, I learned so much from her in such little time!

What many people fail to see is that animation is NOT meant for kids. It isn’t a genre, it is a medium of art. Sure, most animated projects are usually meant for kids, but people like Brad Bird, Hayao Miyazaki, Jared and Chad, hell even Vivziepop (pun not intended) break past and exceed those boundaries and show people what animation can truly be. Animation is not meant for kids only, it can be for any age or demographic and we need more people like this to prove so to the public eye. The difficulty may be a bit niche in this time and day, but that’s what makes it so unique and vastly better from most AAA games. The difficulty also allows for a much more satisfying experience as you progress through the game.

in my opinion i think the reason cuphead succeeded and still is today because of how unique it is to other indie games, its a love letter to 1930's animations and its incredibly difficult because in every setting you are placed in literally everything is trying to hurt you

It's these indie games like Hollow Knight, Undertale, Celeste, Hades, Stardew Valley, Subnautica, Untitled Goose Game and of course Cuphead that really take the spot. Just goes to show you only need motivation to make something amazing!

I find it fitting that a game about an insane gamble against the devil himself, was itself, an insane gamble to make.

Games like cuphead, Hades, and Hollowknight are true works of art and gaming.

Cuphead is one of my favorite games. I was sold after the first reveal and was NOT disappointed by the gameplay or difficulty. The game is an Awesome challenge. I love it

I remember seeing the game visually and was going to buy it regardless of how good the game was. If something is THAT different, I'll support it on principle alone. Encourage innovation in the game industry!

As a long time Mario fan, Cuphead is my favorite non-Mario game. I really appreciate their work and dedication to this game, I love their character design, their ideas and level design are on par with Mario 3 and Mario World (two of the greatest platformers ever made), and the difficulty may be unfair but its perfect. I especially like how this game wants us to be more advanced at gaming with how hard each boss is. I'm glad the brothers succeed and I'm glad that cuphead is getting the praise it deserves.

Damn, and I already had a lot of respect for the people behind this game. I never knew how near suicidal this was for their careers.

How is harkening back to before the 90s something exclusively "for young kids"? How is 2d animation "outdated"? You trying to match the early 90s takes on animation and games or something?

Cuphead can never be overrated. Like you said you can feel the love and passion in every frame and in every music note. It's one of my all times favourite styles. When something is that well done, no matter how successful, It'll never be enough for me. They always deserve more ❤️🌈🦄

The funny thing about the idea that the game is too difficult for kids is funny. I mean the games it is based of were difficult as well and us older gamers played them as kids. Whish games would do this more often make the game hallenging you need to get better to progress and stop hand holding people let them fail and get better

it's honestly awesome how far this game has come over the years from the show to it's dlc and everything else in between it's truly something you can never forget

'Should have failed' just sounds wrong. Cuphead is just a perfect example for how and why 'Indie' games are loved, to have a unique experience. In a world where games are dissected and are defined by small details and mechanics, games shouldn't be a downfall for that, especially if it's trying new stuff. The difficulty, art and game itself is very unique and ambitious, something a lot of players/gamers would like to see!

I’m interested in moreso how it was doomed to fail, to me it always seemed like it got a lot of attention

Almost like those old animation studios. Destined to fail but somehow with a stroke of luck and talent, became something bigger.

All the reasons you gave for it being bad were all reasons why it was so successful, artful and punishing in a fair way from a small indie team. Not a AAA studio loot box fest. It's no surprise why this game is so well lauded. Bad title is bad.

2:28 "You know what I do when I'm not sure of my decision? *I DOUBLE DOWN!* "

thing is though, people LOVE shooters, and bullet hell games, and hard as nails indy games, there is literally ZERO REASONS why cuphead should have failed.

I think cuphead was successful because it did not go beyond its means and had clean and great designs/mechanics which is also rooted in its simplicity and not trying to do to much, all you can do is move and shoot , you can aim that shot and also do a parry of a pink items which I believe is still rhe jump button outside of that there's the ability to switch gun type and that's about it, you can buy up to i think 6 different shots and also some passive items as well and that's it, games not to give there character a ton of different moves and abilities, indie game in particular can suffer from this because of over ambitious game designers who haven't made many games yet. Because of that simplicity they were able to but complexity in a place that wouldn't Over complicate the game or make unforseen complications with other mechanics or systems and not to hard to prograrm , boss difficulty.. top it all off with great design and old school style animation and never overextended it self to much. While there may not be much content wise, there really isn't much if anything bad about the game.

As a kid i beat cuphead 200% including the achievments, it became one of my favorite games due to its difficulty, i like hard games which is why i live this game, its also why i like hollowknight, im impressed by cuphead even more

Well done! I still haven't played Cuphead beyond a few levels a friends place... tbh I'm afraid of rage quitting and destroying my controller 😜

“How Nerdstalgic Gaming succeeded when he ABSOLUTELY should’ve failed”-my post

I find it strange the way he says it was “made to fail” when it was just really an overly ambiguous indie title

You know cartoons used to be for everyone and not just kids at one point in time

Dlc now stands for Delicious last course

Cuphead is ingrain in my life now. Not only because one of my best friends that I’ve made in college is obsessed over it, but a former student at my college has worked on the storyboards for the Cuphead Show as well. I never expected Cuphead to invade my life until last year 💀

I honestly could care less about the "problematic" history of Fleischer animation. Imagine playing Cuphead while fuming about drawings from almost a hundred years ago.

Looks beautiful I’m gonna buy this piece of art.

Weren't the run n gun stages product of feedback during the game reveal?

This game blew me away when it came out. I assumed it was a huge studio undertaking because of the quality. Wow I quit because it was so damn hard. But I'm inspired to try it again now 🤠

Or... maybe cuz the game simply turned out fun and people actually liked the cartoon style. I mean, it makes sense that a game that has a lot of effort put into it at gets people interested in playing it would "work"

5:47 my bro that beat cuphead at 5 years old: 🫠

I have a problem with people who say the 1930s art style is racist. Just because there’s a few bad apples, shouldn’t make the whole apple tree problematic. Are we going to cancel classics such as Popeye and Mickey (ignoring the war propaganda Disney did.) just because there was a few racist animations that aren’t even related? Imagine in the future we canceled 2010s-2020s games because those games are filled with micro transactions and where just to make money. The past is always morally worst then the present, and the present is always morally better then the past. Every time period probably thought that.

Yeah, casinos and different animated alcoholic drinks would be in a children's cartoon -> not.

The fact that this came out around Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania is crazy

If it had a more modern art style and less polished animation it would flopped so hard

You should appreciate that the creators HAND DREW THE ENTIRE THING.

The style the game exudes is a major benefit, and they did well knowing "this style was used in bad ways, we can avoid those while honoring the overall aesthetic". They even got the DLC out five years later.

I’m a wimp. The difficulty would have sent me packing, but my 11 year old is clawing through, taking on optional challenges, occasionally dragging me into it. If it weren’t for my little masochist, I’d have passed on the gene. O, gone are the days I’d grind my smb3 speed run on the nes. Not that speed runs were a THING then.

Really inspiring! Everyone should be aspire to create for fun. Keep these videos up!😄

I'm not offended or anything but saying kids don't play cuphead isn't really true, I'm not even a teen yet and I've beaten the game and play it every day, anyway, love the video, keep up the good work

It succeed even more when Cuohead's game sequel (The Delicious Last Course) got even better than the classic, it's like Shrek 2 all over again. I think the boss fight with Saltbaker really impressed the whole audience. Not to mention, Cuphead show season 2 turned out better than season 1.

The game should have failed from the perspective of big companies, but gaming industry is so much more than AAA companies these days. And this was already true back in '17. What a boring take.

4:41 that prompt from the interviewer .. game journos really enjoy congratulating themselves on not putting blackface in things like it's some ultra-forward progressive thing.

Funny how to turned from a kids idea into a indie franchise with a on running show

This is honestly really rude.

I think there's a very important difference between designing a game just to be hard versus designing a game that forces players to engage with complexity and dexterity. Anyone can make a game hard. The point of a game like Cuphead is to create an environment where high level play is relevant. Many games have deep complexity that is never utilized because the game barely ever creates scenarios where that complexity is necessary. Cuphead gives you a suite of tools and beautifully designed challenges and invites you to maximize their potential. That is more artistic than simply throwing in a bunch of mindless trial and error for the sake of it.

Where's the double like button! Thank you for all the work making this video

When I saw the thumbnail I thought it was a hater video, but it was a false alarm, thanks for the history lesson about that video game though :-)

I hope MDHR keeps trying new things and they don’t milk Cuphead. I’m not against a sequel but I don’t want the studio to only be known as “that Cuphead studio.”

How did I just find out there was Nerdstalgic gaming?

"Impossible to play with kids." Me, being 12, who also beat cuphead and the dlc: Totally :D

I recently read The Art Of Cuphead book and it made me in love with the game again. Just reading them describing how much they researched everything in the 30's and how many details there are in the game is incredible. I recommend this book for everyone, please give it a read, at least on your favorite bosses' pages

5:52 Now, That's the thing. I remember playing "Heart of Darkness" on PS1 as a kid around 10 years old. That game by standard is hard as f..k, I can barely made it out of canyon to the swamp level and only to die over and over again. Yet I kept on playing (with my sister at that time too). We don't thought about quit, But we want to see more on what's the game has to offer and even a new dead scene animation. Point is, Dear Executive producer up on the ivory tower and investors. If the game is good, No matter how difficulty they are. It is still a good game and anyone still playing them. Just like Cuphead here.

I was stuck on the first level of Cuphead for a week. I like difficult games, but even the first level kicked my ass so hard. Although, I do like how each death felt like it was my fault similar to the way Mega Man's classic games do.

Cup head is one of my favourite games i loved the challenge and beat the game and got the plat trophy

Can we get a video about stardew valley, like this one with deep dive into development and pixel-art experience gained by concernedape as time went. Amazing video btw

Consumers can recognize passion. Especially after all the shitty micro transaction saturated boring games.

"seemed like it would be a flop"? Is this a Mandala effect? Did i arrive from a different timeline? I quite vividly remember the Microsoft E3 showcase that featured a few scant seconds of early Cuphead where the universal response was "STOP! forget every other game in that showcase: What was THAT?" I even could probably find the RU-vid video if given a short research time and immediately go to the positive comments from everyone wanting to know more about the game from under ten seconds of footage. Edit: Oh. Ray Schism. That old chestnut. The only people who care about him are college girls who live in gated communities. Literally the least important thing in video game development and you decide to make it the focus of the back half of your video. It is literally the most easy thing in the goddamn universe to apply, easier than lead paint and three times as toxic. Wake me up when you find something that Ray hasn't twaddled the todger of. I'll not bother waiting. Nobody ever has, and you won't either.

Considering how they succeeded, the name of the developer “Chad” is well deserved, he is a true chad.

These brothers are inspiration I would like to create my own thing story one day

Animation is for everyone. Don't underestimate it, the aesthetics of Cuphead are amazing and the people who worked on the game are so amazing and talented. At least in my opinion.

The creators had a contract with devil.

Despite ots difficulty I dont rage when playing cup head its to charming a game I love how difficult it is it allows me to set a goal of becoming better at it with practice I play it all the time and I'm slowly getting better

For me it has to be the fact that you practically get a game of just boss fights that makes it so good.

Cuphead, along with Breath of the Wild and Hollow Knight, are my three favorite games of the past decade. That is some lofty praise and good company.

8:24 Are you kidding me? What other game looks like a 1930/40s cartoon? No game has done this in history to my knowledge. Disney should be making Disney games in this style. This is hands down the best art style from movie/show to game. The anime games that look like their respected show are great too. Near flawless transition.

0:35 don't you dare call cuphead a "side-scrolling run n' gun"

Cuphead worked, because it was made with 100% love. Unlike other indie games, For lack of a Better example, Yandere Simulator. Yandere Simulator has a Great idea to it, The Yandere Trope in Anime is such a Funky Topic, and could be done in so many ways that make it fun! And Like Cuphead, It's taken years to get a mostly working game for it. However the reason Yandere Simulator has such a weird response is because it doesn't feel like it's being loved. It feels like someone being held at gunpoint to force the creation of a Game. A game like Cuphead in terms of Creation is Deltarune, the Creation of Deltarune took so long because Toby Fox was experimenting, he was learning how to make a specific styled game. And Considering Undertale had already become such a Huge Franchise Deltarune could have ended up going down the drain. But Toby loves game making, and he loves His characters. That is what I believe caused such love for Deltarune. I played Deltarune chapter 1 as soon as it was announced on Toby's Twitter. And while I can admit that I've never played Undertale (I watched others play it because I was Like, 11 when Undertale came out and we didn't have money for a PC) When I played Deltarune on my shitty ass Laptop that couldn't open anything without a USB, I was in love with every character that was newly introduced. So much so that seeing Sans at the end of the game didn't feel like Just a reference to Undertale. Sans in Deltarune feels like an entirely new Guy. Deltarune was built with Love, and so Was Cuphead. Something Else I'd like to mention is The time Cuphead finally released, sure, Mario Odyssey and other big name games were coming out. But so did Bendy and the Ink Machine. Bendy and Cuphead are Two entirely separate concepts, one being A horror game and the other being an adventure boss game, but both dealing with Rubber Hose style. Bendy was such a success that I can admit I didn't know what Cuphead was until people were drawing Bendy and Cuphead being homies and I was interested because I liked Bendy's vibe and so I wanted to see how Cuphead pulled it off. I feel horrible saying this, but Honestly, if Bendy Chapter 1 wasn't released at the time it was. I probably wouldn't know what Cuphead was to this Day. And I wouldn't be surprised if Other people are in the same boat. Apologies for the rambling. ^^'

Animation was never made for kids, expecially in those years!! It's a MEDIA, not a genre! And the first shorts that looked like cuphead were made with only ADULTS in mind!

The best part of this game had to be the score, it’s just amazing how much effort they put into their music, it professionally slaps

How I would describe Cuphead: What should've been a recipe for disaster turned out to be the gaming world's biggedt success story.

5:10 Forgot to mention the GOAT Megaman in there.

Ladies and gentlemen, we found the IRL Phineas and Ferb.

Anyone know what the music at the very beginning of the video was?

The cup head Netflix series is actually pretty decent

Bro what happened to this channel haha, the videos are still fantastic. What happened to the views

*sees the title of the video* (GASP) how DARE YOU say Cuphead should’ve failed! (Smacc)

Cuphead is underrated, you may think oh well all these people are playing it. but underrated means it does not get why it deserved, Not that it's super small but it's very good,

Um… what? It definitely would’ve succeeded I mean who can’t see the time and effort this took not to give it a play

Chad Moldenhauer is evolving *music plays* Chad Moldenhauer has evolved in Giga Chad Moldenhauer

we need an hollow knight doc

I thought cuphead was a genius idea when it came out, literally the levels are bosses, its so fun because bosses are the best parts of games, levels usually feel like filler, but even the run and guns were fun because they gave you coins to buy stuff so you had a reason to play them

8:25 You son of a dish.

This game is a influence to me!

4:34 Anyone know the song that plays from this point omwards in the video?

5:50-5:56. Say that to the young kids I beat the game with.

1 sec im 9 and i beat the game and im gonna speedrun it soooo

Damn I didn’t even know this game EXISTED. I have GOT to play this.

Great video btw.

Looks at thumbnail: Well, that’s not cuphead

My little brothers (7 and 11) always came to me to beat certain levels bc they couldn't do it. After a few times of playing, i would defeat the boss. They hated and loved me for beating them lol

Cuphead...... CUPHEAD IT IS MY ONE OF MY FAVORIT GAMES EVER IT IS IN MY TOP 3

"Playing it with young kids is virtually impossible" I think I played the game when I was 7 with my 5 year old cousin- my cousin sucked, but I got all the way to Dr.Kahl >:D

Never played the game. I love the show!!!

I love the look of Cuphead so I definitely bought the game for graphics and art alone. Not really into run and gun sort of gameplay nor extreme difficulty, but I persevered for the art, animation and beautiful soundtrack.