New gamers are pussies who do a lot of "casual" wasting of their time, indeed, so even the most serious games need to arrange their difficulty to gamers' extreme pussiness.

So said, I don't think old games are THAT difficult, for the most part. And mind you, I'm a guy who thinks Ghosts'n Goblins isn't difficult at all, when you have 17+ years of practice on it :-P

That's might be it. I played on the PC but I probably reconfigured my controls.

Just played some Mega Man 1 today. I swear I am getting old since I still have stiff fingers from all the button pressing and holding the PSP for hours on end. I hate the Electro Man stage with those goddamn disappearing blocks but I got past it and killed his overcharged ass. I also went back for the platform beam weapon because screw doing the Guts Man stage without it :P

Its not that the old games are more difficult. The gameplay limitations and various bugs make them seem like they are more difficult.

No, I think games were harder to make sure that it lasted a while. They weren't meant to be finished within a week, and they were designed to be taught and memorized. That's also why cheap deaths and things like that weren't considered bad design back then, had it had that stuff today, it would never be accepted. Today, games are designed to be able to finish in one go if you're good enough, back then you were meant to play through the same levels again and again until you knew it by heart. Thus slowly progress to be able to finally finish the game.

Today, publishers don't want their (single player) games to last for too long. They want the gamers to go on to the next as soon as possible, to keep the cash flowing. They're designed to last a specific amount of time before jumping to the next game. "But what about multiplayer games" I hear you say, well, that's why microtransaction became so popular. It's probably also a reason why great single player games are getter rarer, because multiplayer and microtransactions is a much easier route to take for the publishers.

Yes, it's often as simple as that. The first Prince of Persia stated quite openly that the game was meant to be beaten in one hour (which was actually a fairly generous limit, all things considered), but getting to that level of knowledge and skill took many, many more hours of exploration, trial and error and good old-fashioned practice. The games were simply built to last for a really long time, because the amount of content you could cram on a tape/cartridge/diskette was extremely limited.

Is it just me or were the older games much more fun?

I just spent a few hours playing Mega Man 1, Kid Icarus, Double Dragon, Faxanadu, and Battletoads.
Damn right. If that's how someone is going to pad the hours iinto their game they can forget my gaming dollar!

I'm back and forth, actually. Sometimes I'm just sick and tired of modern gaming, and goes back to playing games from a time where there weren't too many rules to follow. You know, simpler times with simpler games. Today, everything has to be rationalized and explained down to detail. Back then it was "you're plumber, the princess' been kidnapped, go save her!". If Mario were made today, there would have been an hour of cutscenes and backstory before you could even start the game. Of course, the first hour of gameplay would consist of learning how to jump across gaps and on badguys. Then it would explain why the mushroom makes you big, the flower makes you shoot and so forth. When we meet a boss, they would tell us that we need to jump on the lever right behind Koopa Jr. to open the bridge so he can fall into the lava.

I was playing Little Nemo: The Dream Master on my PSP today and my GF asked "WHy are you jumping on these mushrooms and why are you now a frog?" I told her that I don't know why but that the game explained enough in the intro that I don't need the manual for it.

Sorry, I misread your post. It was late at night, and I was tired. Very tired.

US version of Contra: Hard Corps. That game re-defines "Nintendo Hard".

Edit: Actually, I'm going to make this for each console, for each game I've personally played that I felt was unfair, and not by poor design but by brutal difficulty.

NES: Ninja Gaiden. Level 6-2. I rest my case.
Sega Genesis: Contra: Hard Corps
SNES: Pocky and Rocky 2 - Never could get past the second stage
Sega CD: Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side. Insane difficulty in single player mode.
PSX: Einhänder. Insanely fun but has many frustrating parts
Xbox: Ninja Gaiden. Seriously, fuck the entire last 3 boss fights.

Good ol' repetition. I use to play my games over and over again back then but for some reason, that game I was always confused. To me, it seemed West and East were never West and East, if you catch my drift. If I saw Jason, I died or ran away and I only ran away when a friend told me I could.

i think games have gotten waaaaay to easy back in the day when you told someone you got an item in legend of zelda or you beat bionic commando or found something epic in might and magic it was an accomplishment high five/awe worthy it was an achievement to beat these games...now we get "achievements" for beating the first lvl and pressing he start button...its sad to see that for me because games i love and genres that i love are getting dumbed down...

perfect example is morrowind to oblivion morrowind had an amazing stat system that rewarded you for playing how you wanted to you wanted to be better at daggers then equip a dagger and get to stabbin you wanted to be better at magic start setting things on fire it was work but when you cut it off you felt like you did something fast forward to oblivion it was hack and slash sure there where stats and such but they where toned down alot

what im trying to say though is games are ment to push you...to make you want to do better cause if ya get yer ass kicked enough your gonna eventually get tired of dying and man up and figure it out and while you may cuss for that hour inside a dungeon or whatever when you get to the end and grab that triforce, bazooka, green energy pills, or the princess is in another F'en castle message you felt like ya did something and ya felt like a badass...now...it just feels like you participated...theres no challenge theres no sense of accomplishment there is no glory

i will take my old school ass kicking over a new school waterd down 7 hour experience thats difficulty on the hardest setting dosent compete with games 20 years ago on there easy setting...

First off, my pick for hardest game I've played is Gothic II Gold - that game is brutal but still damn fun.

I think one way to fix this "problem" of difficulty is with propper difficulty settings. Serious Sam did that perfectly with Tourist (easiest) that everybody could beat and then Mental (hardest) where all enemies was just insanely hard and then a good amount of settings in between those 2. Another game that did this perfectly is Thief where higher difficulty didn't really mean harder enemies but more objectives and player restrictions. On the other hand Far Cry was absolutely horrible in that all 5 difficulty settings were insanely hard because enemies cheated like crazy and there were no real difference between the 5 settings.

In most games I like to play a 1st playthrough on Easy/Normal to experience the story, setting and characters and if I die 3000 times then that makes these factors seem rather disjointed to me. But then on a 2nd playthrough I like to play for the challenge so I will ramp up the difficulty. But in general I play for fun and relaxitation and if I die too often then that simply stresses me out too much and I stop playing that game.

So game devs needs to think of everybody when they design their game so that all that play can finish a game - from the lowest noob to the most hardcore of the hardcore. If we have all payed the same amount of money for a game then everybody should be able to beat it.