The arcade cabinet was never about the game. It was about the queue behind you
Eighties mechanics were designed for someone standing and waiting. We inherited the decisions and forgot the reason.
A cabinet earned by the minute. Not per copy, not per subscription — per minute a player spent at the screen. That single fact explains almost every design decision of the era.
One-hit deaths? A way to free up the machine. The difficulty spike on stage three? The point where your first coin runs out. A high score table with three letters? A mechanism to bring you back, and an advertisement aimed at whoever is standing behind you.
Difficulty in the arcade was not a test of skill. It was a form of pricing.
Then something interesting happened. Games moved into the home, where nobody stands behind you and time costs nothing. The decisions moved with them — and turned from economics into aesthetics. We still argue about difficulty as if it had always been about mastery.
None of this makes difficulty bad. It means difficulty had a reason, and the reason is gone. It is worth knowing what exactly we inherited.