Hit the win button!

I have a few nice things to say about Nintendo's patented "demo mode", which has been alluded to appear in the forthcoming New Super Mario Bros Wii game. If you are too lazy to read the link, what this new feature does is optionally help you with getting past tricky/monotonous/annoying parts of games. What is being proposed here is an option that will either play an instructional demo for you on how to play through a certain part, or just flat out skips it for you.

This is making the self entitled little brat, I mean, "hardcore gamer" faction very angry in internet land. Apparently some people think you have to work or sludge through every step of the linear path in a game you played hard earned money to have fun with. Maybe you can blame this on my brain's broken perception of the world, but whenever I come across a frustrating part of a game that I know is due to limited controls or something I find to be unfair, its an entirely joyless experience. I curse and swear for a half hour, memorize every note of the "you died" theme music. Then when I finally pass it, I thank my lucky stars, not congratulate myself, then say "Glad I never have to do that again."

This is coming from a proud retro fan. Mega Man 9 was my favorite game of 2008, and I would not have used the feature once. I'm not talking about just giving up on difficult challenges. I'm talking about skipping what you find is flat out stupid and/or a product of poor game design. Regretfully, a typical Mario platformer hardly ever has such glaring mistakes, but the recent Bionic Commando: Rearmed sure as hell did.

This has been a long time coming. I would have killed for something like this in 1990, when 90% of games were frustratingly hard rather than easy. When I rented Spy Hunter or GI Joe, all I wanted was to see what the game was like and experience it all. I wasn't fishing for confidence, just fun. All I ended up seeing were the first 10 minutes of the game, at most, and a whole lot of that game over screen.

Good for Nintendo, because honestly, how different is this than just looking at gameFAQs or passing the controller to a friend or sibling? Curb your ego, and have a bit of fun for christ's sake.