So, despite being the traveled and discerning vintage gamer that I am, I only discovered there ever WAS a DuckTales 2 on the NES in the past 5 years, and only now am I playing it, on my hacked NES Classic. I'm really feeling that burn of being a first time player of an NES game again, these oldies do, not, fuck around. I've really taken for granted how easy I feel like Ninja Gaiden I is, casually under appreciating the 1000 hours I put into it to get to that effortless feeling. Three grueling hours into DuckTales 2 for the first time, and I can only get to the 2nd boss, and I feel emasculated admitting that just for running out of lives, I'm losing the one upgrade I earned on top of having to start completely from scratch because there are no continues, and it is REALLY demoralizing. Modern games have really made me soft. As a kid, I'd have been like "Oh. Poop. Well, let's try again!" blissfully naive about this sort of loss. As a dad in my 40s, I'm like "Dude, I put an hour into that one level and upgrade. Take all my money, clear my inventory, just let me keep the capital goods and start at level 2 with no money, because I DO NOT have the hours in my life to get back to this point, I gotta wake up on time to make breakfast for everybody before church tomorrow, c'mon."

Now off to cakewalk a 45m Mega Man 2 run and feel better about myself...