I was playing some ROMs on the MAME arcade emulator today. One game I played was Ninja Gaiden by Tecmo. I used to play this coin-op at the gas station near my house over 10 years ago. Now that I've got infinite credits using MAME, I've discovered that there was no way in hell I could've beat this game honestly while at the same time paying money. Even with unlimited credits, this game is insanely hard! While playing it today on MAME, I lost many lives. On a financial basis (@ 25 cents per play), I would've squandered over $1.50 per stage.
Anybody else here been shocked by the enormous difficulty that MAME revealed in some coin-op games?