[Coda]

I don't think older games are -- as a rule -- harder than newer games.

Older games had to deal with a lack of in-game instructions because there wasn't room for tutorials. They also had to deal with limitations in the available control schemes and the raw capabilities of the hardware itself. Programmers were also less familiar with the tools available because it was all new and there wasn't a well-established set of best practices. And finally there was the fact that many games were designed for arcade play, so they were designed to get more quarters pushed into the slot.

But when it comes down to it, none of that makes games more difficult. Bad instructions and awkward control schemes do make the games harder to play, but that's a different kind of "hard". Arcade-style gameplay means frequent game overs and shorter sessions, but that's just frustrating; it doesn't make the actual challenges any more difficult, it just means it takes longer to overcome a mistake.

And less experienced developers? Well, those still happen today. Bad game design is still bad game design, whether then or now.

So if you hold all of the above constant, then there's a pretty wide span of difficulty ranges in both older games and modern games. Any sense that it's easier is mostly a matter of quality-of-life improvements, not about an overall trend in reducing the difficulty of the game's challenges.