Games in the 1970s and early 1980s usually had no fixed ending; if you survived, you kept going. Then came the 8-bit generation. Games started to have a definite length. If a player was highly skilled with the game, then most could be beaten in anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The general lack of saving and soul-crushing difficulty of these games meant that one had to play them for much [...] [tvtropes.org]