Definitely true. There were some console games made in the 90’s and early 2000’s that were purposefully made extremely difficult so it was near impossible for a new player to beat the game in a single game rental timeframe. They figured it would prompt some people who would normally only rent a game for the weekend to buy it if they couldn’t beat it or get the rental stores to buy more copies if it was constantly being rented multiple times.
I always felt that once I got near the last guys in Mortal Kombat that the game was cheating somehow. Turns out that was completely true. There’s code in the game to sometimes reads your inputs so the CPU player can defend or attack faster than a human player ever could.
It was really difficult for everybody. They're crazy when they say "This is why dying in Dragon's Lair never felt that bad." It felt the worst, because it happened so fast plus Dragon's Lair cost more than other arcade games.
People didn't play Dragon's Lair because it was fun, they played their first round because it looked cool, and then their second round because they were frustrated at how quickly they lost in the first round, and then their third round because they were frustrated at how quickly they lost in the second round, repeat until they finally threw up their hands and said "Fuck This!"
And then the other folks who had gathered to watch thought "that looks so cool! I want to play!" and the cycle repeated.
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u/ThedamnedOtaku Sep 11 '26
Played this at an arcade recently, it was really difficult for me