So I was watching a few youtubes and remembered how the vast majority (of like the ten) nes games me and my sister had were hard as all hell. I loved to play Little Nemo and Street Fighter 2010 but I am pretty sure I never made it past the third level of either. Let alone infamously hard games like The Lion King.
Which got me thinking. Basically every game for the past 20 years has been designed around instant gratification and being accessible. We outright had to make a new concept “hard but fair” to account for games like Dark Souls that are designed to be difficult but beatable as opposed to putting you in a death spiral if you hesitate too long on a hard jump (hello Ninja Gaiden).
So do the younger folk even have a concept of a “favorite game” where you likely never experienced more than fifteen minutes worth of content?
IIRC the original design intent was that the starter choice was intended as a form of difficulty selection for the player. It’s not super well-signalled, but Oak kinda says when you’re choosing that Bulbasaur is easy, Squirtle is medium, and Charmander is hard. Their respective difficulties reflect their match ups to the first two gyms and also to most of the fights in the early game.