During Giant Bomb’s Game of the Year deliberations, one of the panelists was talking about how the difference between Pacman and Pacman Championship Edition DX reflects the difference in video game design over the past thirty years.  The original Pacman is a stress-enducing game while Pacman CE DX is an empowering experience.  Pacman punishes you for the smallest mistake, only gives you four power pellets per maze, and gets more punishing the further you go.  By contrast, Pacman CE DX uses a bullet-time effect to give you a chance to turn past ghosts you might otherwise have crashed into, the power pellet regenerate, and the game becomes generally more fun the faster and more frenetic it gets.  The ghosts, save one or two, follow you around and aren’t much of a menace unless you come back around to your tail as in the game snake or need to exit through a hole where a sleeping ghost waits.  And this wasn’t limited to Pacman, tvtropes has a whole trope dedicated to this called Nintendo hard.  Why has this change come about?