This is a dark, dark age in which we live. Kids, even those who considered themselves hardcore gamers, roam the streets unable to complete the basic mini-games in Mario Party. They find themselves looking in a strategy guide to figure puzzles that take them more than 10 minutes to solve. I see young ones that don’t know where to go next when playing RPG’s…so they look on the internet. Children don’t buy games because they are "too hard". I’m shocked and disgusted. The industry has been forced to create games about as difficult as hitting the broad side of a barn with a baseball bat. I find myself breezing through level after level of uncontrollably easy games. Why, back in my day, when we couldn’t figure out how to defeat the last boss in Star Tropics, we stayed up all night…for weeks, thinking of ideas. Back then, puzzles were hard. Think back, in OOT, did any enemies really give you a hard time? I’m not talking bosses, just normal enemies. I didn’t have any trouble. Most enemies could even be simply avoided! (Not that I did that.) Games take a good two to three weeks to complete…the "hard" ones. I beat Army Men Advance in…two hours. No joke. Two hours. There’s not even a multi-player mode to keep me interested. I paid $40 for two hours? Gach! So, how are we, as a community, going to fix it? I’ve got no idea. Any of you got one? Send it in. I’ll try anything!

~Daniel Rendleman