Some games still use or have some limited form such as when you beat a game, then open up a harder mode of play. What I'm talking about though is at the start of the game, right out of the box. I've always loved games but not always the best at playing and beating them. It's nice to still be able to play through a game and see what it has to offer later. You could play the game and get through it but maybe you don't earn all the extras or cut scenes, etc and only get to see everything on the harder modes.

A couple great examples were the Street Fighter games on SNES and maybe they were like this on other systems too. The easy levels would allow you to get through it and fight all the characters and bosses but not see the ending but you at least got to play the whole game. As I played, I got better and beat it one the mid or preset difficulty and saw all saw all the endings and eventually beat the game with a few of the characters on the hardest level and even without losing a battle and see everything for the game ending scenes.

The other would be Star Fox for SNES and N64 with the different paths and level of difficulty. It mad the game fun for everyone regardless of skill. I loved those games and by getting to play more without getting stuck, I got better at them.

I wish more games would offer that ability for those who suck a little at gaming (like me) but still love to play.

Lots of games still have difficulty selection and many games don't even require 100% completion to finish the game.

I know a lot of games still do but it seemed to me that more games in the SNES era had some sort of difficulty select. I could be wrong since I don't have any statisical data to back me up. It might just be the games I have and the others I hear about.

You might be right.

Keep in mind that a lot of older games focused on playing the whole game in one sitting (Star Fox and Street Fighter are good examples). One of the ways to increase replay value in that setting was to offer more difficulty modes. Shooters and action games were notorious for this.

Difficulty modes are still present (very much so in PC games) in the current gen, but with the focus on a much longer gaming experience (more hours of play) you may not see them quite as much as you remember.

Im all for difficulty choices....i prefer to choose how to play the game

It's always sad when I play a console game that would have been a lot of fun if it offered a harder difficulty setting.

Newer Legend of Zelda games tend to have that problem.

what they need to do with zelda is do exactly what they did with zelda 1, have a second playthrough that is much harder.