Are young people these days so used to tutorials that they can't play old games?

[Flare65]

Now if they ported Contra to the iPhone and dumbed down the controls and cut the enemies down to about four or five total, add a health bar, the kids might have a chance....

I saw that video on the gamebreaker site this morning and had the same reaction you did, Dan.  Something wrong with that generation of kids...

[crazydean]

Back in the day, video game developers didn't have the memory available to make a game take 40 hours to complete. So, they were made more difficult to compensate for the length. Also, these kids aren't necessarily gamers. I bet if you took a group random 40yr-olds, the gameplay wouldn't be much better.

I remember seeing a react video on Mega Man for the NES, and one guy did pretty well against Bombman. He would have beaten the level on the next try. Even though he had never played a Mega Man game before, he was a gamer, and I think that's the big difference here.

[esteban]

I remember seeing a react video on Mega Man for the NES, and one guy did pretty well against Bombman. He would have beaten the level on the next try. Even though he had never played a Mega Man game before, he was a gamer, and I think that's the big difference here.

That's true.

[wildfruit]

Where's the passion? Are they all on diazepam or something? No one launched a controller across the room.
Lightweights.

[TR0N]

I also had a hearty laugh when the voiceover called Contra one of the hardest games ever.  I mean, I'm not that great at it personally but I don't consider it one of the hardest games I've ever played.

That i didn't agree with,in the video as well i find contra to be a walk in the park.I guess playing it so many times since it's release has gotten me use to the game.I find the likes of battletoads,mr.gimmick and ghost'n'goblins to be the most difficult nes titles.

[Black Tiger]

I don't find GnG NES too hard, but that doesn't keep me from judging it as hard for the average person. Contra, even more than GnG, requires memorization to play through without continuing/dying, after you get your skills up first. Regular people can't just pick up and play the games without having trouble.