Video games have come a long way since the days of Super Mario Bros. The way the gaming industry has evolved is nothing short of remarkable. However, if you grew up playing old games, you know how challenging and unforgiving they could be. Unlike playing at a safe online casino nz with straightforward rules, retro games had no mercy for players who struggled.
But why modern video games are much easier? Let’s take a closer look at the key reasons for the high level of difficulty of old video games.
Lack of Experience
First of all, game developers had a significant lack of experience. Since video gaming was a relatively new and emerging form of entertainment, game developers didn’t yet have a vision of what the game should look like. Therefore, they didn’t know what practices are better and made poor game design decisions. Additionally, developers often prioritized challenge and replayability over accessibility.
Due to an insignificant number of games and lower competition compared to a modern market, doing research and analysis to get a clear idea of what players like more were more difficult. Basically, the gaming industry just started to develop. Nowadays, we have millions of games and access to statistical data. So it’s easier to understand what game elements are better perceived by players and what generally accepted best practices should be taken into account. However, lack of experience is not the primary reason why video games were more difficult in the past. Let’s move on!
Hardware Limitations
It goes without saying that hardware limitations and technological issues had a strong impact on the way games looked like. Game developers didn’t have enough memory space, processing power, and storage capacity to create entire worlds instead of simply offering do-or-die challenges. Compared to the latest technologies, which allow game developers to create games with complex graphics, physics engines, and AI, limitations of that time forced game creators to make a lot of compromises in game design.
Basically, game developers had no choice, but to make the game challenging to keep players engaged. As a result, game developers often focused on replayability and increased difficulty.
Unforgiving Nature
Because the only way to keep players interested was to create a challenging game, retro games were unforgiving. Games of that time had no save feature, so players often lost their life as soon as their character got hit once, leaving little room for error. This was widely considered normal, adding to the already challenging nature of many games. So losing hours of progress due to a single mistake was a common thing. In some video games, players would die if they touched something, for example, the wall in Silver Surfer.
