remembering when games were fake-hard to force you to buy them

readers reminisce ONE CRACKED FACT | [View in Browser]( [04042022-header](www.cracked.com/article_32770_nasa-sent-a-lightsaber-into-space.html?newsletter-cat=science?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=08042022) [Remembering When Games Were Fake-Hard To Force You To Buy Them]( By: [RM Avatar] [Ryan Menezes]( • April 8, 2022 [04082022]( We asked readers to name something about old video games that they're glad new games don't have. Their answers varied a lot, because "old video games" is a very broad term and can mean a lot of different things depending on when you grew up. To Daniel G., Resident Evil 4 is an old game, and he's happy that companions have better AI now. To Leigh H., on the other hand, an old game was the sort you had to load using a tape drive. "I'd rather tell you what I dislike about what new games have that old games didn't have," said Ryan W. "Microtransactions." You might notice that this is the exact opposite of what we asked for. But Austin C. swept in and pointed out that arcades were the original dealers in microtransactions, and as Bryan W. noted, "Can't forget that they purposefully made games harder and added extra sections just because of the rental market." It's true. Renting games used to be much more of a thing in those days, and if you could finish the whole game in the weekend you rented it, you probably wouldn't buy a copy of your own. In fact, you didn't even have to finish the game to reduce your chance of buying it. In the mid-'90s, Disney Software believed that most kids who rented a game didn't expect to finish it. But if they even made sufficient progress in the game, the kid would consider that they'd got a satisfying experience and would skip on buying it and playing the rest. For that reason, the company demanded that programmers keep players from getting very far at all in their first several play sessions. We get that info from Louis Castle, creative director for 1994's The Lion King SNES game. The Lion King was an especially punishing platformer, hard for anyone to play, let alone the young kids to whom Disney marketed it. It’s possible that, even today, some games are artificially hard just to pad the length. That's why, today, all such games should include Easy Mode, a statement that we trust should cause no controversy whatever. For more tough games, check out: - [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Babel Fish Vending Machine]( - [Beating Super Mario Bros. With The Lowest Score Possible]( - [The Witness Rewards You With An Hour-Long Lecture About Why You Shouldn't Have Bothered]( [Daily Digest]( [The 'Halo' Tv Series Finally Reveals MasterChief's Butt]( [By Tiago Svn / April 08th, 2022]( [15 Facts About Cow BFFs, Space, And Why Military Grade Actually Sucks]( [By Andrea Meno / April 08th, 2022]( [15 Impressively Evil Things Goodwill Has Done]( [By Amanda Mannen / April 08th, 2022]( [Michael Bay's 'Ambulance' Continues His Questionable History With Stunts]( [By Zanandi Botes / April 08th, 2022]( [15 Facts That Changed The Way We See The World]( [By JhallComics / April 08th, 2022]( [READ MORE]( [fb]( [tw]( [yt]( [Logomark_DIGITAL_Red_50X50-px] [insta png]( [tiktok png]( [ARTICLES]( | [PICTOFACTS]( | [Videos]( Literally media Ltd. 190 West St, Suite 17B, Brooklyn NY 11222 COPYRIGHT © 2005-2021 Cracked is published by Literally media Ltd. [Unsubscribe](