I never said that I was a better gamer.  All that I said is that the majority of older games are more difficult then the new ones.  Those retro games that are hard to play for newer gamers were difficult for older gamers when they first played them as well, but many took the time to learn how to play them. Nowadays many games 1st half is a tutorial of sorts that has arrows lit up showing you exactly where to go.  Memorizing patterns and having lightning quick reflexes was the norm in the days of the NES.  Currently we have games that if you push the button at the right time you win. 

^This. The old school castlevanias and Metroids are masterpieces even today, and the OG Legend Of Zelda is a must play. Super Mario 3, ect, ect, and that's just the NES.

Not every game has an easy mode.  Its' only this gen that the majority of games not only had easy modes but had checkpoints every few steps, so the difficulty is built around catering to the casual crowd.   

You do have to be more skilled to complete the hard difficulties like Path of the Ninja Master, Crushing, etc, but the checkpoints after every mob you kill doesn't really give you as much satisfaction as if you had less checkpoints between each s6ections and you had more reasonable difficulty along with it.  So hard games in todays age are less fun as they're only cheap to appear more difficult.

I tend to stick with the normal difficulties unless I really like the game.  The reason is because the difficulty is still reasonable, but if I happen to die, it's disappointing because I know I'll start two feet away from where I just got killed.  So older gamers do kind have a right to be mad at casual gamers lack of skill for ruining what would be atleast reasonably difficult experiences. 

Look at how some of the casual based gamers are becoming disappointed how the cell phone market is booming with the super casuals and it's taking away from their gaming experience.  It's basically the same as how the older gamers feel.

Calm down. You are not that young either. How about we come together to diss even younger gamers? I'm sure you would feel better...

The issue of labeling gamers has become too intrenched in this discussion for its own good. Please discuss the issue you're presenting without generalizing others. Thanks.

I think what he really means is young as people who just started gaming, not exactly "young gamers."

I didn't used to feel like modern gamers sucked as much as they do until I watched these videos of 15-19 year olds dying at the first Goomba in Super Mario Bros or losing to Glass Joe in Punch Out. Those kids didn't even know what an NES looked like yet one of them had an iPhone case designed to look like an NES controller. Apparently, the average person these days knows nothing about games. I would say retro games, but the fact that one didn't know the difference between Sonic and Legend of Zelda is just stupid.

I love how these kids are trying to say the games controlled poorly as an excuse. Super Mario Bros did not control poorly, in fact it was programmed to act the way it does. The character was built to carry momentum and it takes him time to come to a full stop. They also have varying heights of their jump and can go further by generating some momentum. The fact that kids don't understand these basic concepts and then instead blame it on bad controls because they don't understand that is just sad. Momentum is not built into a game, you have to program that shit in. The game acts the way it was meant to act, you just suck at it.

Games in the past were just harder, it wasn't just a control thing (though sometimes that was part of it). Health regen and costless/unlimited extra lives are both things that people are used to now but were added to make games easy enough for the average kid. There are skills to learn from these things that are different than the skills necessary from older games. However, I still think it's a little sad that kids these days never see the words "game over" anymore. It was the struggle of dealing with this shit that forced people to get better at games. No wonder so many people these days suck so hard at shit like CoD.

Now I'm a cross generational gamer. I started gaming when I was a kid, but I didn't just stay a retro gamer. I have moved forward with gaming over the years. I've competed in Halo 3 and Reach (even scrimmed against a pro team and only went -2 while constantly challenging the best slayer in Halo at the time), CoD from Black Ops to Ghost (after Reach made me quit Halo XD), DoA4, all the SFIV variants, MvC3, etc. I play games competitively, that's just what I do. Hell, my brother was 72nd in the world at Warzone on Gears of War 1. He played against pro teams all the time. When I stopped playing Ghost I was getting the Ghost equivalent to a Chopper Gunner every other game...in SnR (I'd say SnR is worse than SnD, but when you never die in the first place...it's kind of the same thing). My K/D in Titanfall was about a 3.0 in pilot vs pilot. My average team deathmatch when I started playing CoD was a 30-10 at first but eventually became closer to 30-6. My first day playing MW2 (which I only got about 2 months before MW3 came out to be fair) I went 25-0 before I even unlocked the effing Nuke killstreak. Gamers today suck or I wouldn't beast on them as hard as I do. I have just as much chance to kick your ass in a modern game as I do in a retro game. The fact of the matter is this. People blame old games for poor controls when they just ignore the subtleties of the old control schemes. Hell, I'd take a pro Quake III player over a pro CoD player as far as gaming skill is concerned. Competition in modern shooters isn't so much about individual skill as it is about good teamwork and communication.

Anyway, I ranted for a while, but the point being is this. You can say older gamers are just better at old games, but that isn't the case there are plenty of old gamers that would put you in your place in just about anything. ...Just don't challenge me to a SHMUP or a racing game...I openly admit to sucking at those. It's made Mario Kart 8 a challenge because I hate placing anything less than first and I'm only a little above average (typically placing 2nd or 3rd in most games).

No but im tired of them acting like their games were genuinely harder rather than accepting they were harder because the AI and controls were generally s**t.

I've been playing video-games since the Atari 2600.  I had the NES and SNES, as well.

Older games are not necessarily harder, it's just that they require a different skill-set.

Most NES and SNES games were about timing and memory.  They used mostly static challenges that required experience to beat.  You often had to play--and die--multiple times before you realized the solution and got your timing down.  After that, though, it was pure cake.  Punch-out is a really good example.  It took me forever to beat the last couple of bosses.  Once I got down their moves, though, I would beat the game at least twice a day while barely paying attention.  

Games now are more dynamic.  The same encounter in a game might play out differently from one play-through to the next.  It requires more processing power, as you can have enemies come in from multiple directions with a variety of attack options.  It requires better decision making skills but less analytical problem solving skills.

Honestly, if you a teenager from the 80s into a game of CoD, they would absolutely suck at it.  They'd struggle with The Last of Us or Left 4 Dead.  They would have to develop the skills to succeed at games that were outside their experience.  

In my opinion, the idea that gamers back then were "better" is meaningless and silly.  They were better at the games they played, just as gamers now would be better at the games they themselves play.

BraLoD said: Get someone to play Tomb Raider, someone that say old games are better, and let's see what he can do, let's watch his agony trying to play that... Lol. Jokes apart, games are games, those old games were once top quality stuff that impressed people in so many ways that is only normal to them to have deep feelingx about them, but the quality is only rising. As a personal taste, to me the PS1 is still the best console ever made because how it shapped gaming to what it is today and the numerous franchises it saw born with it. But if you check my top ten list, only one game from that era made it (to the top 1), and that is only because it's my favorite game period, all the rest is PS2 or PS3 era games (4 and 5 respectively), this gen is probably make some rooms in my list as it goes too. (Disgaea 5 to be the first contestant to try to claim a position there xD). Quality is always raising, but experiences are what counts more to people. There is nothing wrong with people holding old mario, sonic, zelda, pokemon, megaman and stuff in really high standards, as they were able to move them in ways even better games today can't, but downplay new stuff because of this is just ridiculous, really as old people tend to do about movies, music, and everything, it's just nostalgia taking them over the sanity

I disagree it's just Nostalgia. I love a lot of movies that were even made before I was born. Not because of Nostalgia, as I did many of them see after I saw most of the new top-movies. But look at masterpieces as Seven Samurais, Dr. Strangelove, Casablanca or Vertigo, and tell me the quality today has really improved.