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A game being hard is subjective. But a game being intentionally difficult as part of the Intended Audience Reaction is another thing entirely. While you are correct in that there will always be a non-zero number of people that get through a game without problems, Nintendo Hard games are designed whereas the majority of players will struggle. The most common reason why (as was the case for the old school Nintendo games the trope is named for) is to create Fake Longevity so that players cannot beat it in one rental, will pop more quarters in an arcade machine or buy more microtransactions. Other reasons are to "weed out" more casual players, to force players to learn certain mechanics, etc.
Already on Tropes Needing TRS
Hashing out this subject would be better suited to Trope Talk than Ask The Tropers, and actually making it YMMV would require taking it to the Trope Repair Shop.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Correct; this subject has been addressed as much as it can on ATT.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Is there any reason why Nintendo Hard isn't a YMMV trope? Difficulty in games is entirely subjective, as no matter how hard a game is, there's always going to be a non-zero amount of people who get super good at it to the point where getting through it is no issue. I briefly skimmed through some of the subpages a few days ago, and the trope also definitely seems like a major complaining/Natter magnet, to put it lightly.
Edited by CasualChris