History Analysis / NintendoHard

As the UsefulNotes/{{N|intendoEntertainmentSystem}}ES reached the peak of its popularity during 1988 to 1990, Nintendo of America began pushing hard to outlaw video game rentals in the United States. Seriously! Nintendo felt that rentals were robbing them of so many potential cartridge sales, they had to put a stop to it. (Since video game rentals had been successfully outlawed in Japan in 1984, Nintendo of America felt that accomplishing something similar in the US was a reasonable proposition.) Lobbyists were actually hired to advance the issue in Washington, but no politician seemed to be that interested in taking on video game rentals, with none of them believing that they were an outright menace.\\\

Eventually, NOA and its licensees had to stop this nonsense during the twilight years of the NES circa 1992, as the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis appeared and started taking away massive amounts of their market share. (Another, less obvious, reason is that Nintendo had fought tooth and nail to prevent the US release of the VideoGame/GameGenie, but only managed to delay its arrival, albeit for a full year. When the Game Genie ''finally'' hit the US market in 1991, Nintendo must have known that the battle against game rentals was decisively lost.) Nevertheless, the legacy of Nintendo's failed crusade is still felt by anyone who revisits the NES library today, and it is the principal reason why no console since the NES has had such a reputation for ridiculously hard games.

As the NES reached the peak of its popularity during 1988 to 1990, Nintendo of America began pushing hard to outlaw video game rentals in the United States. Seriously! Nintendo felt that rentals were robbing them of so many potential cartridge sales, they had to put a stop to it. (Since video game rentals had been successfully outlawed in Japan in 1984, Nintendo of America felt that accomplishing something similar in the US was a reasonable proposition.) Lobbyists were actually hired to advance the issue in Washington, but, shockingly, no politician seemed to be that interested in taking on the ''menace'' of video game rentals.\\\

Eventually, NOA and its licensees had to stop this nonsense during the twilight years of the NES circa 1992, as the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis appeared and started taking away massive amounts of their market share. (Another, less obvious, reason is that Nintendo had fought tooth and nail to prevent the US release of the Game Genie, but only managed to delay its arrival, albeit for a full year. When the Game Genie ''finally'' hit the US market in 1991, Nintendo must have known that the battle against game rentals was decisively lost.) Nevertheless, the legacy of Nintendo's failed crusade is still felt by anyone who revisits the NES library today, and it is the principal reason why no console since the NES has had such a reputation for ridiculously hard games.

It's important to point out that the original Japanese versions of NES games are, by and large, already quite difficult in and of themselves. NOA simply increased the difficulty of many already-challenging games UpToEleven, thereby codifying this trope.\\\