Topic: Why were kids in the 80s so good at playing games while kids today are so poor?

So the new Mario Creator game isn't including the original NES Super Mario Bros. physics because kids today would find it too hard.

But I was in the eighties playing games. And so did many other 80s kids. I didn't find them too hard. Sure I died a lot but that wasn't the game's fault.

So why is a kid in the eighties so much better at games than kids today?

Kids in the eighties were as bad as kids today.

Games were made hard to capitalize on that. It was easier to make a game hard to extend the life of the game.

Kids are as bad but now there is more competition from the entertainment space, back then we persevered until becoming good enough in the games, now if the game is too hard kids would just give up and do something else

He didn't say it would be "too hard". He said they wouldn't be used to the physics, which is true.

"My greatest challenge right now is that the physics of the original Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. are very different. So, people who are used to today's Mario games might have a hard time with the original if they're not accustomed to it."

Part of the reason is technological advances. Today, we don't have to deal with slow controllers like back in the 80s. Another is the fact that developers are making really easy games, partly because they don't need a game to be hard for someone to take a long time to beat it. Truth be told, it's a lot easier to get a video game today than in the 80s. Also, now we can put in a lot more content than before, so instead of prolonging the game through difficulty, they're prolonged through content.

Also, the developers who are making easier game are preventing people from getting super good at video games, and a cycle emerged as a result.

I think kids are probably the same. The best gamers in the world in skill games won't be the same ageing people forever. Easy games mean that they need to be replaced faster and kids of today aren't stuck in the 80s where 2 games a year made you the spoilt kid at your school. Games don't need to be difficult to last because they now have DLC and side-quests.

A lot of the difficulty of early games came from the way arcade games were designed. Capcom used to put stupidly tricky surprise moments in most of their arcade games to rob you of your money and these factors were ported into the ports.

There has always been a graphics whore crowd, even in the ZX Spectrum days.

We also used to use things called 'pokes' to cheat on our C64 and Spectrum games because they were impossibly hard and often broken to the point where 99 lives was essential. I don't think I got good at any games until I was quite a lot older but I do amaze myself at how well I can play Megaman 1 compared to a modern tricky platformer.

@AddADashOfSalt I'm not going to pop out of a pizza box and shoot you like that Killer Klown just did, but I haven't heard of controllers back then being unresponsive.

I have heard of them being pointy, though!

Add 90s because ''90s kids'' like me fit in the same category. Kids like us were raised on games that actually increased your skill because they were challening and made you want to play them over and over again until you've beaten or mastered the game. Many kids these days flock to games that either hold your hand or give you the option to throw money or use a Super Guide. I felt like crying when I heard all of these noobish kids complaining about NSMBU of all games being too hard, and even one kid saying that he'll return NSMBU because of how hard it is. This crap made me turn off Miiverse on NSMBU after a certain point.

Kids these days also don't have the value of patience because their parents haven't probably taught them that. They don't understand how satisfying it is to beat or complete a challening game. They either want to beat the game or they'll whine and/or cheat to ''beat'' it.

As a person who experienced every single second of the 80's, here's my take on this situation.

Gamers from the early 80's went to arcades and pumped quarters into games and played them. To make money, these arcade cabinets needed to have games that were challenging so that the quarters would continue to be chucked into them. I can't imagine an owner of an arcade game making much profit if the game could be completed with just one quarter.

Around the mid-80's, Nintendo released the NES. The people Nintendo were looking for with the NES were those exact same gamers who were throwing quarters away on arcade games. It's no surprise that a lot of early NES games were loose ports of arcade titles (ie: Ghosts 'n Goblins, Burgertime, Donkey Kong, DK Jr., Dig-Dug, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Gauntlet, Elevator Action, Rampage, Popeye, Joust, Rygar, Tecmo Bowl....the list goes on and on).

It also was apparent, whether intentional or because of hardware limitations (probably a little bit of both), that the "challenge" from arcades had also been implemented on home consoles (especially the NES).

There wasn't any such thing as a fairly easy game from the 80's. I believe it all started with arcades.

I blame parents. Stop babying your kids. When I was ten my dad dropped me off in a wolf infested forest with nothing but a knife and told me to survive for a month. Those wolves didn't stand a chance.

I thought they change the physics because of how they feel in control and not difficulty and a large amount of gamers are more used to that. I'm just thinking of it as the people (mostly adults) who is so used to playing Smash Bros. Melee with the GC controller, they can't adjust to play Smash Bros. Brawl, much less play with a non GC controller.

As for the kids of the 80s, I think today's kids are the same way now. We just have our old man spectacles on. Just like the kids of the 50s did with us (80s) on simular things.

I'm not from the 80's or 90's, and I don't suck at videogames. Games like Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, and Battlefield take no skill to play compared to Nintendo games. The only shooters that I've played that take skill are Metroid Prime 3 and World of Tanks. I guess that's why I like Nintendo so much.

It's not the kids at all. It's what is marketed to them today and the sheer amount of it.

With that being said, F-Zero is unbelievably hard to me.

Because they had nothing but balls to the wall hard games to play! What was easy back then? Megaman 1 & 2 and Kirby.

I was about to say almost the same exact thing, but with a different take. I think part of it was because game developers were so used to developing games designed to suck quarters away from customers that when consoles like the NES came out, they still developed with that mind set. it wasn't until the SNES era where they got more accustomed to developing games solely for the purpose of home entertainment.

The only thing that stays the same is the mentality, so you are kinda right. Nowadays kids get away with a lot more and not only that, but parents are spoiling them a lot. So the conclusion is, kids changed, because parenting changed.

Back then, if you got a game, no matter how crappy or hard it was, you had either this or no games at all, so of course you played it. Nowadays you have free games, much bigger choice and not "2 games per year" (unless you've got to flea market with parents, where you could get games cheaper sometimes [if the cartridge wasn't swapped inside]... and if they took you there), now if kid gets annoyed, parents just replace it with something else.

Also, nowadays there is no such thing as lack of patiente - only ADD

Yes!! You said what I was trying to say!

I don't think it's a matter of us older folks being better at video games when we were kids than kids of today. I don't think there's much difference there. I think it's more along the lines of today's kids being more used to NSMB physics than SMB physics. So, the dilemma is who gets the more natural feeling physics and who gets something they're not used to? Us older folks would probably be more comfortable with SMB physics since that's what we grew up with and are more used to. Younger kids probably prefer NSMB physics since that's what they might have the most experience with. It's not a matter of SMB being harder than NSMB; it's a matter of it being different and what you're used to.

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NES Super Mario Bros. has sold how many times over the last ten years?

Can't all be from adults who remembered playing the original. Super Mario Bros. DX was even given away free here on 3DS.