so, I've been playing my switch at work a bunch this week, and I have been playing all the OG mario games in the all stars pack on the SNES emulator. and holy shit these games are hard. like they start so fucking easy, but then the games are like oh? you think you're hot shit? and just throw the most bullshit gotchas to kill you out of nowhere that you have no clue of unless you died there before or have played this game before.
so, boomers, how the fuck did you beat these games when you were like 9 in 1987 or w/e. there's no way kids were expected to beat this shit right? have I just been raised on participation trophy ass zoomer games from the late 90s and early 2000s???
The answer not mentioned is something that doesn't exist anymore: the rental market. You could rent games just like video tapes. Not being able to beat it easily within the week you had the rental meant you would probably rent it again, leading to a longer shelf live and a happier video rental owner. Ecco the Dolphin's final level was literally made with this in mind.