Andrew Fisher (697) on 9/15/2022 12:17 AM · Permalink · Report

So arcade games had, from the early '80s at least, DIP switches in the hardware with which you could set the game's difficulty, be it an easy/normal/hard switch or setting the number of lives or life bar given. Possibly the game speed could be adjusted too somewhere in the hardware. Paperboy is the only arcade game I know of that lets you chose the difficulty level at the start i.e. Easy Street, Middle Road or Hard Way. Otherwise it's up to the designers and develops to code an adjustable difficulty level into the game and then for the game machine owner/provider to decide how many lives and life bar you get for the standard coin price and if you're playing easy, medium or hard mode. So some of those merciless games we spent a lot of time and money on in the '80s could've been a bit friendlier, not to mention fun, if the the arcade owner had lowered the difficulty a bit! The trouble is, some of those games looked and sounded great and could entice people pour in all their money and make no real progress in the game. So maybe the arcades made more money by starting gamers at the deep end, but it was exploitative. The decent thing would be to, when you set the game up at your venue, set it to easy until players learn the controls then maybe step it up when players are ready for more of a challenge.