The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Remember that every third level of a game is almost always amazingly harder than any other, exaple: Renegade, many an after school expedition led to Big Burtha the well endowed chesty third level boss. To this day I cannot beat her. Same can be said for Rainbow Islands, third level boss very hard, if memory serves it was either a vampire or a helicopter, beat him though. Point is that this no longer seems to be the case with modern systems, I've got an Xbox and I know, as experiment me and some of my mates got together to see if we had just got better at games or if games are actually easier, we had not got any better, IN MY DAY! BLAH! BLAH! Blah!

Interesting point about those third-level bosses -- I remember many a shoot 'em up being that way: nice easy intro, moderate second stage, bastard third level.

As for games getting easier, I think on the whole they are. Anyone who's played Ikaruga on the Gamecube / Dreamcast would disagree (it's a swine of a game); but the latest Zelda incarnation is definitely the easiest I've ever played: I didn't die once. It didn't make it any less enjoyable, because the story was so good, but in some ways it's sad when games are more of an interactive walkthrough than a tough challenge.

g.