There's nothing wrong with making a challenging game. But as game designers—people who curate experiences for others to enjoy—shouldn't we design for as broad an audience as possible?

Star Fox may look like a low-poly shooter on rails—and it is. But it's also a masterwork of careful design considerations that succeeded at ushering a new generation gracefully into a new paradigm for playing games.

Mega Man X endures as the gold standard of the series because of two brilliant concepts that it executes in tandem and with impeccable grace: remix replayability and parallel contextual frameworks.