So I was watching a few youtubes and remembered how the vast majority (of like the ten) nes games me and my sister had were hard as all hell. I loved to play Little Nemo and Street Fighter 2010 but I am pretty sure I never made it past the third level of either. Let alone infamously hard games like The Lion King.
Which got me thinking. Basically every game for the past 20 years has been designed around instant gratification and being accessible. We outright had to make a new concept “hard but fair” to account for games like Dark Souls that are designed to be difficult but beatable as opposed to putting you in a death spiral if you hesitate too long on a hard jump (hello Ninja Gaiden).
So do the younger folk even have a concept of a “favorite game” where you likely never experienced more than fifteen minutes worth of content?
God damn, I think Super Ghouls and Ghosts gave me PTSD. I literally spent an entire summer where that was the only game I played. The absolute freefall of my happiness when I went from thinking I was going to finally get a chance to beat the final boss to the princess telling me I had to play the game all over again but with a shitty bracelet as a weapon was damned near heartbreaking.