Are you actually good at video games?

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

d21lewis said:

Games4Fun said:

d21lewis said:
I used to play the toughest games like Battletoads, the Adventures of Bayou Billy, Vagrant Story. and Ninja Gaiden (nes) and actually beat them. There was no game that I couldn't beat. People used to bring games to my house for me to beat. I even rode the wrong school bus once just to put some kid in his place in two player Tetris for the Gameboy.

Like you, some place along the way, I lost my edge. I think it's a combination of having too many games, losing my virginity (the downfall of Mike Tyson), and simply getting older. I suck, now. And people on Xbox Live and the PSN are more than happy to show/tell me exactly how much I suck!!

Yup! sounds like the old me. Beating games left and right that some others I knew could not. I actually tried playing Ninja Gaiden NES a little while back and I was getting my butt handed to me. In some aspects I am glad they are harder for me because the games last longer, but on the other hand when I am stuck in places on games I get upset. The most recent games I have had problems with are WiiWare games such as Gradius Rebirth and Contra Rebirth.

Some of the games I see on the Virtual Console actually stress me out because I think of how hard they were and the thought of playing them again is scary!  I had to delete Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Nes) because I knew it was going to be nothing but frustration.  I don't even attempt some games like Contra Rebirth, anymore.  I actually prefer easy games, now.  How the mighty have fallen.

I somewhat sympathize with you.  I use to be a glutton for punishment the same as you, back in the NES and SNES days when games truly were hard due to their graphical limitations and there was a more limited number of them.  But come the GameCube/PS2 days, things started to change.  I just got tired of being frustrated and, along with having to go to college and work, had less time to devout to purely trying to 'beat' games.  As of recent, I've been growing quite fond of games that some may call 'easier'.  Its not such a bad thing to have balanced gameplay and balanced goals in a game, as that can just give people a sense of accomplishment and well...fun.  And so you can avoid such annoyances as having to die 20 times before you can proceed or make bosses 'stronger' by cheap tricks or memorization.  These aren't fun, just frustrating ways to drag out the games length and make it seem 'hard' without good game design.

Not to say I don't still like some hard games.  If they're truly good that is.  It just has to be a very good game and keep my attention, even while being hard.  Something on the level of Ninja Gaiden or Dragon Quest fits this bill well, as they can be quite challenging at times, but I still feel addicted to them.