GnG was seen as bullshit-hard even when it came out.

I honestly think that gng is one of the most punishing games ever created. The fact that you complete it (took me till adulthood with cheats) that it turns around and tell you to do it again to actually win, is one of the most evil things that the game could have done.

"My child, git gud."

Play Minetest instead. Open Source Minecraft.

I need to be thankful that those bar games were hard from the beginning and had me killed within seconds whenever I tried them, so I never got addicted to them. If those games had used modern user-retention tactics back then I would've spent a ton of coins in my life.

Totally not me who just started NES The Legend of Zelda recently, haha, haha…

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I fucking LOVE this game (arcade version) and it's two sequels. It's stupidly hard but the gameplay is gold

Ghouls n' Ghosts on the sega genesis was my favorite game as a kid

In fairness that game is designed to hate you

Dude, ghosts and goblins and super ghosts and ghouls are just torture devices

I think the greediest ones would've been the same as the current gen if done now. Times has changed and so would they:

• Traditional revenue from restarts VS revenue from keeping the session going indefinetely (and expose to mtx). The latter is more akin to a casino, and it's not exactly the same.

• Arcades market in public spaces VS home consoles market and a sofa. Gonna keep the tempo of rotation like in fast food joints, you won't sit there for an hour. Also, the invention of a score chart making it a sequential public competition.

• They were sold to businesses, business owners are rare to be gamers (for they are too busy), and arcade games were built around returning investments as they buy an expensive game cabinet as a point-of-interest. Like a karaoke in a bar, it drags people into the mall or other place and exposes them to other services while not wanting them to just game.

• Also, yes, they were too fucking expensive in a hardware and a furniture alone. Cooperative games' cabinets didn't care much, because they have a stable audience and a need of people to move around freely in agitation, 'blockbuster' releases of racing sims for example had driving chairs, even an emulation of a cabin sometimes, all specififcally designed and produced for it. To sell one, you R&D new controllers, new designs, new hardware. As the game's quality itself was irrelevant up until it caught your eye, and you really sell a whole PC for a game, it could've been less of a priority than it's now. Look at Sega: most you know now they are a software company first, and buying their games from Gabe is like ordering a pizza, there's literally no hardships of physical marketing they had before, it all became digital.

I may be wrong in some points (like I did ignore panchiko for I haven't played them), but it's the specifics of an arcade market what made them like that, and a growing market of home PCs did so too.

P.S. Also kinda fun to find some old cabinets with unique cabinet versions of known games. Like Need for Speed for example. Can't recall what part it was, but it had it's UI and gameplay loop completely rearranged specifically to pursue these ideas. I feel like they are lost to history now for no one cared having a better version on another platform.