Games were most definitely far more difficult on the brain back in the day. There were dead ends and traps built into games that could get you trapped in a spot where you simply could not win.
An example I recall: In one of the Zork games, you find an explosive. Later, you are confronted by a door with a gargoyle built into it that bites you everytime you try to open the door. Seeing as how random destruction is always an option, I fed the explosives to the door. The explosive blew up, and the door "hisses nastily at you". Now I'm out my explosives, which I will need for a later puzzle. If you don't save carefully, you will find yourself totally screwed with no option but to start over.
Your comment about waking up thinking you had dreamed the answer makes me think that you have played some of these games, because they really did do that to me too
I think most of those old text adventure games required at least one restart from scratch to beat. And beating them was a real accomplishment.
Anybody know the phrase, "I got the babel fish!" ?
Devs had to start dumbing games down when people like Xpendable started playing them and wouldn't tolerate difficult puzzles.
