Why Some Challenges Feel Great — and Others Just Feel Bad

Retro games have a reputation for being tough.

Sometimes that toughness feels satisfying.
Sometimes it feels… wrong.

Most players instinctively know the difference, even if they don’t always have the words for it. The line between hard and unfair is thin — but it’s one of the most important lines in game design.

Hard Is About Skill

A hard game challenges you, not your patience.

When a game is hard in a good way:

• You understand what went wrong
• You can see how to improve
• Failure feels like information, not punishment
• Progress comes from learning, not luck

Classic examples of good difficulty rely on:

• Timing
• Pattern recognition
• Positioning
• Decision-making

You might fail a lot — but each attempt makes you better.

That’s earned difficulty.

Unfair Is About Withholding Information

A game starts to feel unfair when it:

• Kills you without warning
• Punishes you for things you couldn’t reasonably predict
• Hides crucial rules or hazards
• Demands knowledge you couldn’t have learned yet

In these cases, failure doesn’t teach you much.
It just resets you.

Instead of thinking “I messed up,” you think:
“How was I supposed to know that?”

That’s the emotional difference players feel instantly.

Cheap Tricks vs Real Challenge

Some classic retro frustrations come from design shortcuts, not intentional challenge:

• Enemies spawning directly on top of you
• Instant-death traps with no visual cue
• Unavoidable hits
• Sudden difficulty spikes with no ramp-up

These don’t test mastery.
They test tolerance.

A hard game respects the player’s ability to learn.
An unfair game relies on surprise and repetition.

Why Older Games Sometimes Cross the Line

Retro games were often built around:

• Limited memory
• Short play sessions
• Arcade-style difficulty curves
• Padding game length with challenge

Sometimes this led to:

• Trial-and-error design
• Memorisation replacing skill
• Repetition standing in for depth

Not all of it was bad — but not all of it was great, either.

The Best Retro Games Teach You Without Talking

The fairest hard games do something clever:
They teach you through play.

They:

• Introduce threats safely
• Show you patterns before testing them
• Escalate difficulty gradually
• Reward careful observation

When you die, you usually know why.
And when you succeed, you know what you did differently.

That’s the sweet spot.

Why Fair Difficulty Feels So Good

When a game is hard but fair:

• Beating it feels personal
• Progress feels earned
• You trust the game’s rules
• You want to try again immediately

That’s why some brutally difficult retro games are still loved — while others are remembered mainly for being frustrating.

The difference isn’t how often you fail.
It’s whether failure feels useful.

Modern Eyes, Old Design

Today, players are more sensitive to this distinction.

Not because we’re weaker — but because we’ve seen:

• Better tutorials
• Better signposting
• Better difficulty curves

Going back to retro games makes the contrast clearer. Some still feel brilliantly tough. Others feel rough in ways time hasn’t smoothed out.

Final Thoughts

Difficulty isn’t the enemy.

Unfairness is.

A hard game challenges your skills.
An unfair game challenges your patience.

The retro games we still love decades later are usually the ones that understood that difference — even with all the limits of their time.