Sure, people have the willpower to start over when they run out of lives, but I don't know why somebody would think to do that, unless they'd heard that they should from somebody like you, or unless they were naturally strict enough, and also inventive enough, to come up with it on their own. The (not very many) games of this type that I've seen don't encourage that kind of play, as I recall--instead, they encourage you to continue, presumably because a pushier arcade game gets more quarters, while a friendlier home game gets more sales. But is that universal? Or has anybody had the guts to put out a major game like this that requires you to seriously invest yourself in order to even reach the end?
I'm asking about the one-continue thing because I understand it easily--the flying-close-to-bullets thing I don't understand so well. You suggest a person should embrace the dangers and get into them and dance around them, rather than trying to avoid them all the time, but a person has to be awfully good at dancing for that to work, don't they? I don't want to play amidst bullets, where one mistake will probably end my play! If I am to learn through improvisational play, then I want my mistakes to be tolerated, to an extent. I have the feeling that these games are too brittle in that regard--that they punish you too badly for messing up just a little bit. I guess if you lose all your lives and start over, then you're right back into your play again; it's not like you have to watch a five-minute cutscene between lives or between games. But even then, even in the first stage, you're stuck choosing between playing in a tedious, conservative way, or playing so dangerously that a little mistake could totally wreck you. This puts me off. I sure don't want to charge up to some lone bullet that wasn't even aimed at me, just for points or style or training--what if I move just a little too far? And what's the fun of watching one sprite go close to another, briefly? I think that in these games, lives are more valuable than points, style, or training. So when I play them, I play conservatively; I save my improvisational urges for other games that welcome them better. I suspect this is because shooting games just aren't for somebody like me. Is that so?
I think I would like it if there were a greater reward for flying into danger than just points. Do any games increase their difficulty, when you play as if you want more challenge? If nothing else, I'd like to see my ship gradually become cooler-looking or something like that. As with the problem of continuing, the shooting games I've played only give you the faintest hint that playing for points can benefit you. You can go for points, they seem to say, and maybe (but probably not) win a useless spot in a high-score table, and maybe (but probably not) gain more extra lives than you'll lose by playing more dangerously... or you can play conservatively, and maybe see one more cool stage than you'd see otherwise. If it's so great to play dangerously, why don't the games encourage you to do that? Or do they?
How many videogame cutscenes have you watched where the badass protagonist pushes away a briefcase full of money and says he'll do the job just for the challenge? What could be more appealing than laughing in the face of death? We may be cowardly social outcasts in the real world, but why can't we be Chuck Yeager in the imaginary videogame one?
What's that you say? The hardest boss of all time?
Note how TWICE he stops short of finishing off a section of the boss' health bar to make sure there are a large amount of bullets onscreen to convert into point items.
