I think there are a couple of different things going on here. First of all, we’re much older. Perhaps today’s kids still find video games hard. But, also I think there’s a different focus on games. If you remember (you were quite young then) when we had the Nintendo, nearly every game (including Mario) had a High Score. Even then I had trouble understanding why a game like Mario would have a score. After all, wasn’t the point to rescue the Princess? And if you remember, all the way until Super Mario World there was a timer on the levels. So you couldn’t take a long as you wanted. Sheez, I mean, nowadays Mario doesn’t even die unless you chuck him off a cliff or let him take too much damage without touching some water.

I think that basically when we first started playing games, back in the original Nintendo day, they were still in an arcade mindset. With an arcade game you want the game to be tough enough that people will have to add tons of quarters. Mario Galaxy would be a HORRIBLE arcade game. So you need timers to make sure they don’t take their sweet time going through the level without getting hurt. You need score so that there’s a point to doing difficult or potentially dangerous tasks. That’s all game designers had been doing up until that point (and ports of arcade games) so I think they were used to making nearly impossible games.

So I think they’ve moved more towards a rich, more of a sandbox type of world where they want to to explore all their beautiful content. Thus they’ve made it a lot easier. But I do agree that a game that isn’t challenging is quite boring. However, games at the impossible level of the original Nintendo games are also boring because knowing that you can never win (especially back in the days before continue spots) also made the game boring.

PS - I still haven’t gotten past Final Fantasy 8, but I do seem to remember you having a pretty easy going on 10.