Tatsujin Ou should loop indefinitely, I think. It is an old Toaplan title, after all.
Re: original post.
...can we get a good facepalm smilie, please?
On a more serious note:
DrTrouserPlank wrote:The purpose of a game (I am informed) is to act as an entertainment product and presumably provide enjoyment through it's consumption. However, can a game be fun when it is oppressively hard?
This two sentences exhude weaseling at its finest (not "it's", "its"). But let's proceed with some modicum of order.
Videogames
per se don't have purposes, they're things. Human beings, as entities with brains, tend to have purposes, and a lot of other mental states. These purposes usually differ from group of human beings to group. Programmers, for instance, have a purpose: to sell their games.
They usually do so by programming games that can make happy two very different groups: game vendors and players. In the case of arcade games, the two different groups have virtually opposite goals: game vendors (i.e. arcade operators) need players to play little time per credit and pump many credits; and arcade players need to play a lot of time and pump few credits.
There is a further asymmetry between arcade operators and players: while operators can be in the position not to give a fuck whether a game is fun or not, players will be first attracted by how much enjoyment they can have from playing the game.
Now, "enjoyment" depends a lot on the individual: for some, the learning process that may bring them, the players, to play more time and pay less credit is seen as a sort of intellectual torture. For others, it is indeed a form of enjoyment, but to various degrees. The learning curve factor of course plays a factor: some players can enjoy a game as long as they can make any progress when playing it.
So, some games are usually not fun for these players, as the learning curve is too steep. So, whether a game is "oppressively hard" and thus "not fun" is up to the player and its attitude ("its", not "it's"). Given the variety of skills and attitudes among a decent size of players, fixing a "value" by which *everybody* is supposed to have fun, purposefully ignoring that "fun" comes from at least being able to face a given challenge, is simply the wrong way to approach the issue.
Are CAVE's games at odds with this definition when they are (primarily, in the case of arcade games) designed to remove coins from the pockets of players first and foremost?
No. See above.
Is creating a game that is virtually impossible to complete without continuing like selling a jigsaw puzzle with 6 bits missing?
No. There are borderline cases of CAVE games that involve nearly undodgeable patterns (say, DOJ: first Hibachi's pattern), but there are other ways to overcome these problems, given a bit of wits and planning beforehand. In short: there are hundreds of people who can perform this impossible task, so you get your facts wrong.
Bringing the question full circle; can a game that is virtually impossible to complete be fun, and under what conditions?
This question is meaningless. Please see above.
If your aim is to score as much as you can in 1 credit, is high difficulty a good thing or does it reduce your final total to nothing more that a "swerve and hope" tactic once the difficulty becomes unreasonable?
This question is meaningless. Please see above.
If your goal is to clear the game in 1 credit, does the coin stealing mentality of the game make the goal nothing more than a pipe-dream?
This question is meaningless. Please see above.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
And Futari's pretty easy to clear as well, but much more fair.
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