These old games are beating the stuffing out of me! Looks like my gaming ability has been slowly atrophying over the last 10 years. Don't know whether to laugh or cry!

Makes me remember the days before the internet, where getting through an adventure game took a lot of trial and error.
Some games were always difficult though, although I suppose if they rely on reflexes those may go with the years...
I certainly prefer slower paced games these days.

Which games are we talking about? And go into details. We love details. Also use statistics and charts, if you have any...
Oh, yes, the topic. Games were harder, now they're easier. Go figure.

True. Games were harder. You had to really invest time, sweat and more time to get somewhere. No easy and quick kicks like games nowadays.
It's strange but those old games hold my attention way more than new games. Maybe it was the challenge?

Among other things. When you beat a hard game (but not instant kill hard, that's cheap), you feel like you earned your victory. Nowadays it's not all that impressive to beat a game, because the're all more or less failure proof. It goes with the all important instant gratification in new and casual players, who bog the market now.

No stats I'm afraid - haven't been playing long enough. Went a bit mental on discovering the site and bought several titles, then subsequently discovered (stupidly) that each one is actually gonna take practice. Got overwhelmed by Jagged Alliance 2, what with all the tramping about and training militia whilst having to fight and simultaneously worry about where the money's going to come from and how I'm gonna keep the merc's alive. Subsequently tried Jagged Alliance, only to discover that it's probably actually harder. Then I dabbled with Master of Magic, which promptly destroyed me. Had a wee look at HOMM 3, then decided my brain was melting! To be honest, I should have taken a few baby steps, especially based on the size of the manuals (currently cursing my lack of a printer). Finally settled on Stronghold, which I'm making some progress in. Lovely immobile castles. Looking forward to getting my teeth into Outcast and I War 2 at some point mind. Kid in a sweetshop :)
The reflexes haven't gone (or so I tell myself) - have been playing Just Cause 2, Mass Effect 2, Guitar Hero on the Xbox and various things on the Wii recently, which are a totally different skill set. Have become so used to point and shoot/manual dexterity that something like Master of Magic, which has pretty monstrous strategic depth, just blew me off the page. I guess the upshot is I'm going to have to settle down and play, rather than picking away at something that's spectacular but fairly easy.

I think Titanium is right. If a new game don't give players kicks fast and in a steady stream so that the player feel like he/she is getting somewhere they simply put it down and try another game. Also they just want to install it and start to getting somewhere right away without any preparation.
Games back in the day often came with a sizeable manual and with a good reason. There was often no tutorial so you had to know at least the basics by reading the manual before you could get somewhere.
The big game market is probably one reason why it's like this. There's so many new games coming out all the time that players want to try that they simply don't have enough time to invest in a game.
Well I have the feeling FPS games at least have generally gotten easier. Except the "realistic" ones.
Remember Quake? That game was HARD before you got the hang of it. :)

Well, JA (2) and MOM would be my first guess :). Don't worry, no honor lost, these games aren't easy on the brain. A lot of micro management and little margin for error. It's a good thing you haven't gone for constructor. It blows your mind, trust me.
If you want, you can discuss each game in their individual forums, we'll be happy to help out. If a game seems difficult, but interesting to you, don't let up. Over time, you'll get the hang of it, and then it's just the matter of time.

Yeah going to the individual forums is a good place to learn how to get started.
If you want something that's easy to play and not that unforgiving try Master of Orion. That should get you started on the strategy side of games. :)

I'm not particularly bothered that games aren't Nintendo Hard anymore. When I was a kid, my head was hard enough to beat against a wall for hours, especially since I only had a few games to play, but nowadays, I'd rather just go play something that won't waste my time.
I like challenging games. Games aren't much fun if they're too easy, but practicing the same stretch of ground thirty times because the developers thought they were making a coin-op is monotonous and frustrating. There's a point when the drive to succeed gives way to the desire to just get it over with. There's no satisfaction in that.
I don't have much patience for reading heavy manuals anymore, either. If it's a complex game, then sure, give me a book with all the details I need - but teach me the basics in-game. Give me tooltips and tutorials, and let me learn how to play by actually playing - I'll learn better that way, besides. If the game is interesting enough that I want to learn more, I'll pick up the manual on my own. A game can be accessible and complex at the same time.

Hehe nothing like a severe arse kicking to let you know you're playing an older game, modern games really are a hell of a lot easier, even on the hardest difficulties. In a way I can understand it, it must suck for the developers to have people give up halfway through their cool game because it gets too hard for their sad little noob-fingers. I'm contemplating buying Demons Souls in part because of the much talked about brutal difficulty but given that it's likely bein compared to modern games, I expect I might die a couple of times before finishing it
Also: Best thread title ever!

Cheers for the thoughts peeps! Dove into MOM shortly after posting and got a nice little enclave going, filled with hellhounds and fire giants. Remains to be seen whether it survives or not, but it's a couple of hours further than I got last time, so I reckon I'll be fine. Surprised I missed MOM first time around - it's excellent! Never heard of it before. Mentalepsy's right about the emergence of in game tutorials though - felt kind of lost without it. Just a different mindset, one I'd completely forgotten about. And in retrospect, I do remember chucking my Speccy 48k around the room back in the day. And clouting my Amiga. Can't do that with modern boxes, unless you've got alot of spare cash lying around - maybe they just can't make games this hard anymore if they want consoles to survive more than 5 seconds? There's some kind of proportion there -
the harder the game, the tougher the box, the less likely it is to break if you chuck it at a wall :)

I see accessibility as a very good thing, as long as it doesn't sacrifice depth or difficulty in the long run. Tricky thing to pull off I guess, but some developers get it and do it well.
About difficulty, yes, there is what I'd call "Capcom difficulty" and then "satisfyingly challenging." I hate Capcom.

Back in the C64 and Amiga days, The Arcade was my favourite joystick. It was excellent for playing games, and as an added bonus it was damn near indestructible.

The true king was the TAC-2, that bastard was unbelievably resilient and brilliant