*snip* But I bet I couldn't play Donkey Kong for more than a half hour or so without losing interest. And this is coming from a diehard retrogamer!
I don't think Donkey Kong is necessarily a good example. First off, for most of us mere mortals, we'll never be good enough to see all the levels more than once through, let alone the dozens of times through that is required to get a respectable high score. In short, most of us are lucky to last longer than 10 minutes, tops, at the game.
As is well known, my two favorite arcade games are Pooyan and Satan's Hollow, and though I'm pretty good at them, I start to reach my physical limits for proceeding much farther into the game. Everyone's tolerance for repetitive gameplay - even multi-board/level stuff like Pooyan and Satan's Hollow - varies, but I argue that for most of us we'll never reach that point because we'll die in the game long before that has a chance of happening (these games are after all designed to make you keep feeding them quarters). I *did* roll over Satan's Hollow on the C-64 on its easiest level in my youth and once I did that, it was no longer important for me to try to reach that mark again. Getting a high score (or today, all the achievements) in a game is plenty of incentive, but I think most times difficulty levels preclude us from testing how long we'd really want to play if we could play "indefinitely" like a Weibe or Mitchell.
Matt Barton wrote:
The idea that someone actually sits there and carefully watches all those tapes of them playing for 16 hours...That gives me nightmares. I'd be chewing off my own foot in an hour or less.
I don't like watching other people play games, let alone watching marathon sessions like that. It's very cool in short doses - e.g., hey, that was a cool near hit there - but you have to be really "dedicated" to score keeping to sit there and pore through tape to make sure there is no cheating going on.
*************************** Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
*************************** Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
*snip* But I bet I couldn't play Donkey Kong for more than a half hour or so without losing interest. And this is coming from a diehard retrogamer!
I don't think Donkey Kong is necessarily a good example. First off, for most of us mere mortals, we'll never be good enough to see all the levels more than once through, let alone the dozens of times through that is required to get a respectable high score. In short, most of us are lucky to last longer than 10 minutes, tops, at the game.
As is well known, my two favorite arcade games are Pooyan and Satan's Hollow, and though I'm pretty good at them, I start to reach my physical limits for proceeding much farther into the game. Everyone's tolerance for repetitive gameplay - even multi-board/level stuff like Pooyan and Satan's Hollow - varies, but I argue that for most of us we'll never reach that point because we'll die in the game long before that has a chance of happening (these games are after all designed to make you keep feeding them quarters). I *did* roll over Satan's Hollow on the C-64 on its easiest level in my youth and once I did that, it was no longer important for me to try to reach that mark again. Getting a high score (or today, all the achievements) in a game is plenty of incentive, but I think most times difficulty levels preclude us from testing how long we'd really want to play if we could play "indefinitely" like a Weibe or Mitchell.
The idea that someone actually sits there and carefully watches all those tapes of them playing for 16 hours...That gives me nightmares. I'd be chewing off my own foot in an hour or less.
I don't like watching other people play games, let alone watching marathon sessions like that. It's very cool in short doses - e.g., hey, that was a cool near hit there - but you have to be really "dedicated" to score keeping to sit there and pore through tape to make sure there is no cheating going on.
***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.