Nintendo face unprecedented competition and have left the hardcore market since the release of the Nintendo Wii.

Get used to this because this is Nintendo's future. Nintendo will cater to us, but will target the casual market.

Why should there be a problem with them easing the new generation in? It's like saying our ancestors didn't have electricity so lets all live in caves, just because it was different for us older lot doesn't mean it has to be the same forever. This brings in more gamers which is good so let it continue.

Ruined Super Mario Bros. 3.  

Ruined Super Mario World.

These were items that let you bypass all of the challenges, right Motherfucker Mike (that's his name!).

You don't need to use it in 3D Land to lose the shiny profile stars.

If you die enough times in a row on a level for the box to appear, no shiny stars for you, whether you use it or not.

Yeah I forgot to mention that. By the time I realized that in the game I already got most of my profile stars so I never got them .

Let's take a top five most popular current PC game. Dota 2.

Apart from a brief tutorial introducing the controls, the game is ridiculously hard and unforgiving at all times. There's thousands of ways to screw up. Even if you've played months on similar games and years on games in general, you will die over and over to start with.

People stick with it because it's incredibly rewarding to get things right and you can still have fun while getting 99% of everything wrong.

I'm not buying the argument that difficulty alone hurts sales. Being unfair or obtuse does.

Just looking at the thread title I thought this would be about Mario Kart! But yeah, as long as it's optional then it's a non-issue. Let people play the games they paid for how they want to.

So much elitism.
Nobody is forcing you to use it, so it harms nobody.
People who aren't as skilled at games should not be deprived of getting to the next part of the game.

For once in his life, Matei is right. The hand-holding is getting ridiculous in modern games, i find it condescending. The problem here is that children don't, as they have no concept of the word and then get used to shit like this which then moulds future videogames due to no one speaking out against it.

It is actually a bit different: Yes, your are invincible with the white Tanooki souit HOWEVER: You can still die when fall into a pit.

Honestly: I´m not bothered by this at all. I won´t use it, I´m not forced to use it. If someone wants to, he she can. There is nothing wrong with options.

And I prefer this approach to making the whole game super easy (the special worlds are supposed to be pretty hard).

What would have offended me yould have been a "skip this level for 1$" function.