Difficulty in old games

The real reason older games are difficult is not because the industry cared more about their more devoted fans, or that companies were not afraid to make their games hard. A high difficulty was the way to extend the play time when games did not have the advanced and expansive enough hardware to make their games long while still having a good amount of content. Eight levels was the standard. Obviously, the practice required to be able to consistently beat the tougher stages was an addition to the play time. A big portion of arcade games were often hard, cheap, and unforgiving because it would make people get game overs more often so they would have to insert more quarters. Also, the big wall in the road in many of these hard games were either the third or fourth levels. The reason the huge difficulty spikes showed up that early is because players would feel their experience was much incomplete, and would spend a lot more time trying to beat these levels and get even farther. Developers cannot do that anymore. The replayability of games is a lot more based on the things that matter, such as the different routes or events you can choose, and how charming it is, not how hard it is. A game that is difficult for good reasons is really special now. When you have a console where 98% of the games are hard, not so much. For the newer audience of gaming, cop-out tricks that pulled the wool over veterans' eyes is a repellent. And it is good for the industry to expand its audience, or else it could not survive. Another thing: I do not have much of a problem with virtual handholding, but I do feel it is a little unnecessary because there is already internet video.

"Hardcore" has no real definition

The definition of the word "Hardcore" is entirely based upon opinion. There is no actual criteria. Some think they are hardcore because they play old games. More accurately, others think notoriously difficult games are hardcore. Others think that whatever games they think are the best are hardcore. Some criteria make more sense than others, but I find it unnecessary to compliment a game I like with a word that has no real definition.

Pre-Ordering is dumb

Pre-ordering is a dumb idea, especially when you hardly know anything about the game you are pre-ordering. You have to pay extra money as well as full price and return to the same store. Even if there are already millions of pre-orders, you can still get a copy of the game the day it arrives in stores. Renting is a bad idea too. I suggest thorough research, followed by a purchase of a used copy, which you can either keep or return in a week.