the net raiders

I decided to take a trip back down memory lane and popped in my copy of Pocahontas for the SEGA Genesis. After about five minutes I remembered how hard this game was. Most of the difficulty comes from poor controls. You practically have to break your control to get the characters to jump. The game is really picky and will only respond to your commands if you’re in the exact spot it wants you to be, which is a big no-no with kids games. As a child I never even made it to the first check point. I can only remember climbing back up to the cliff and jumping off over and over again because I couldn’t get passed it. I managed to make it to the third stage before I finally gave up, and this was after about an hour or so of screaming  obscenities at my television. You should never get angry over playing a video game, let alone games designed for children.

This brings me to my main point which is; Why are kids games so hard? When I think of all the Disney games I used to play as a kid, I can’t believe I even kept trying. The Lion King, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story etc… They were all impossible! Why do they make games for kids so hard? Do game developers think that it needs to take 2 decades for a kid to beat a game for the parents to get their money worth out of it? Playing difficult games like this is discouraging for children, and it’s not fair to give them a challenge that they can’t beat just because someone decided the game controls should suck. “Oh they’re just kids, they won’t notice.” No, they won’t, until they grow up and realize that the people who made these games were jerks who decided that a games worth was based on its difficulty.

On the flip side I’ve played games for “kids” that were way too easy. I did a video review of the game “Crystal’s Pony Tale” for the Genesis a year ago. I mostly complained about how ridiculously easy but stupid the game play was. But that’s my point, why do the games have to be dumbed down? Why do they have to be short and easy, or long and hard? I believe that the reason why games like Mario or Zelda go on to be popular for decades is in fact because they are games that are challenging, but not impossible, with decent controls. This is what I’m dreaming for the future of gaming (as well as the decline of “shooter” games. There are way too many). As they say at Disney; “Dreams do come true.”