Gauntlet is another example of "Old games were directly named and hated you." It wasn't a game, it was an endurance experiment to see how much gamers would put up with, and the answer was "everything." The game set four players against infinity enemies in infinitely looping levels of a universe that hated you so much, your health constantly drained, even when nothing was happening. The only way to continue was to insert more money. It was the arcade equivalent of a highway robber. It couldn't have more clearly announced its intention to kill you and take your money if it pulled a gun, and we loved it. I still love it.

Atari

And it's still the closest I've come to a foursome.

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Getting to higher levels was like Moses trying to part the Red Sea in a world where the one true god was Ra in a beard. You could only stave off death by eating food, and you had to shoot everything, but shooting the food destroyed it. Shooting the food was like pulling an all-nighter with co-workers to finish a project, waiting until they went to the bathroom, and then pissing in the hard drive. It might have been an honest mistake -- the new Mac Pro looks like a wastepaper basket -- but you've still screwed everyone. Shooting the food broke the spell of video games. We suddenly realized that the last hour of relentless paint-grind had been work instead of fun, and now that dick had wasted it.