I agree. But the 80's arcade games were just loop cycles that increased difficulty with each iteration or level. If I remember correctly, it wasn't until the late 80's/early 90's that the concept of an 'ending' to a game came into popularity for games other than boardgame based videogames. Reviewing Tomb Raider a while back, the hardest part of the game was the controls -- not the puzzles. Whether it's because the focus is on eye candy, or the developers can't make the puzzles/challenges too hard because the end player will just google the answer, or whether the developer just isn't clever enough to come up w/new puzzle concepts -- doesn't matter. What does matter is that games have shifted the concept of challenge from thinking and solving to twitch reflexes and save games. A few notable exceptions exist, but they are few and far between.