>>11820083It's both. They are (moderately) difficult, so that the 10 year olds who play them don't blow through them on their first time playing. They sit down, try a level, Game Over, try again, GO, try another level, GO, keep trying levels until they find one where they can make it to the end, get totally destroyed by the boss, try a different level, repeat until they finally pick a level they can clear with a boss they can buster only, write down the password, continue on another day. They're difficult enough that even an adult will likely struggle their first time playing (and maybe even their second or third won't exactly be cakewalks), but the general idea was the arcade game development mindset, where the whole game is relatively short, with a lot of intricate sections and high difficulty which require the player to make repeated attempts until they truly learn what to do.
>>11821015Kinda this, but it's also a matter of just how impressive kid-brains can be when they set themselves to a goal. Just look how many young kids nowadays pick up Tetris and manage to go from absolute newbies to competitive, world-class players in the span of literally a year or two. Adults might tend to do much better at RPGs and riddle-heavy games (like Silent Hill series or point-and-click adventures), but games requiring fast reflexes, quick pattern recognition, ability to adjust techniques on the fly, and rote memorization are definitely ones in which a kid can go from total suckage to total mastery in relatively short order.
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