Well put, Hisa. I doubt that anyone else could have said it better.(posted 9245 days ago)You see, bradh, MARP is a page that determines how much skill you have with as little help as you can get. That's why in Joust, you only get 5 lives instead of infinite; that's why it's the same # of lives for Bombjack, and possibly soon, Q*Bert. Although none of them have the option to put in coins to continue the game, they all can keep going and going without needing as much skill as if you only had limited # of lives.
Let me see if I can put this better. If you read Electronic Gaming Monthly, they recently reviewed Strider 2 for Playstation, where you are given infinite continues. Yes, this appeals more to the average gamer of this generation, where they just want to blaze through a game as fast as they can without exploring; however, many people felt that infinite continues isn't in the true spirit of the game, where you have to learn every little detail, every little AI, and every gigantic boss.
So, let's take a game from MARP now that let's you continue; I've been doing some research on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Arcade Game (for NES) recently, so let's look at that one. Let's theoretically say that MARP will let you go on for as long as you want, and no one cares about how many coins you put in. There are 2 places in this game that let you "leech" points off of an infinite amount of easy bad guys, so you could just keep killing the bad guys, and if you somehow die, you put in another coin, and you just keep pushing the score. Eventually, someone would put in enough time to get 9,999. All this proves, though, is this person's ability to tolerate those 2 points of the game, and to marathon it; it does not prove how well he/she actually plays the game.
I hope that has been descriptive enough. Anyone else have anything they want to add?
Sincerely,
J.D. Lowe