On the subject of dificulty in games, I think it just changed.

In the old days, games (like Battletaods) had one dificulty setting: hard. If you were enough of a badass, you'd see it through and brag about it.

You see, bragging about beating a game on the hardest dificulty setting is just not the same as bragging about being able to finish a game.

Yeah back then there were no difficulty settings. Most people didn't even see the ending of a game. And if you did beat one of the impossible games, the ending would just be a screen that said "THANKS" or "A WINNER IS YOU" or pull some crazy stuff like Ghosts 'n' Goblins where it just makes you start over. Even the first Mario and the first Zelda just made you start over IN A HARDER MODE. And we liked it! And we had to walk to school 40 miles in the snow, uphill both ways!

But yeah, unlocking Invincibility in GoldenEye was IMPOSSIBLE. I was the only guy at my high school who could do it, and everybody else paid me to do it for them on their cartridges. They'd pay me in money, lunch, and sometimes fireworks for some reason. I think one guy even paid me in porno mags.

There are still some hard games. GoldenEye wasn't hard though. Just the bonus stuff was hard. Today's games have really easy campaign/story modes, and then add a bunch of really hard challenges just to appease us crazy folk. The older games were only for crazy folk. Sometimes when I look back at all those impossible games... I have no idea why I grew up liking games.

Exactly.

Specially that last part.

And by the way, I got a copy of Blaster Master and borrowed my friends NES, and it is fucking impossible! I get lost all the fucking time. It's so ridiculously easy to get killed. I played for about 1 hour and got killed. Is it possible to save at all?

What an idiotic statement.

Naw there's no saving. Each area is one big maze with a couple doors in it. Some of the doors will be wastes of your time, but you can get a lot of power-ups if you kill everybody and explore in them. One of the doors will have a boss that will give you an upgrade to your vehicle, which allows access to the next area. So it's kind of like a Metroid or Zelda game, but with a badass tank instead of a sissy horse. And no passwords! But it CAN be completed in one sitting. Once you know where everything is you can zip right through. Maybe there are maps online. I only know where everything is 'cuz I played the game my whole life, and that's an unfair advantage. Nobody should have to play this game their whole life.

Like I said in my original post, he is free to not like the game if he finds it not fun.  I will not fault him for that.

What annoys me is that he makes it sound like a design choice and not a necessity from the change to 3D.  It seems clear to me he does not know it was necessary and I am calling him ignorant for it.

Super Mario 64 was the best game I ever played, this guy is a fool

What about the levels in Super Mario Sunshine where you couldn't use the water pack? I can't remember how hard I found them, but I've heard a few people on this site complaining that they were too hard. I thought they were really fun!

.... again i ask , who the f$@$ is this guy and why Wii owners care about him ?

I disagree completely... Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, hell even New Super Mario Bros. were just as good if not better than Mario 3 in terms of traditional 2-D game play, and once you bring in Mario 64 and Galaxy into the mix, this just makes that comment even more asinine!

Mario 3 was definitely the pinnacle of NES gaming, but there have been so many more innovations since then in just the Mario series itself, let-alone gaming in general, that you simply cannot dismiss all the main Mario games post 3.