10 Times Developers Abused Players To Make Better Video Games

5. Any Contra Game

What They Did: Coming straight out the arcades and onto home consoles without any change in mentalities, Contra's genuinely stupid difficulty was designed to get as much money out of each player as possible.

In the hands on home console owners though, it meant you'd barely get through the first level or set of levels, without memorising entire layouts of enemy attacks and projectile placement.

Even the smallest bullets could lay you out flat - despite them sneaking across the bottom of the screen, in amongst the smushed up collections of pixels that make up the level itself.

Why You Had To Endure It: Well, unlike the rest of the entries here, this wasn't about expanding on a set of abilities or polishing them to a mirror sheen.

Either you learned to memorise enough of Contra to proceed without tearing your hair out, or you didn't play. Simple as.