you couldn't buy your way on the scoreboard the same way you can buy your way nowadays in "freemium" / "pay to win" games, and your ship in gyruss looked the sa

you couldn't buy your way on the scoreboard the same way you can buy your way nowadays in "freemium" / "pay to win" games, and your ship in gyruss looked the same whether this was your first time playing or whether you had already spent weeks playing it it's just not the same, the incentive in the old days was to get money out of players by making the game as hard as possible (which could be beaten by just getting better at it, which was where the fun was also), now it's always psychological pressure like FOMO or skinner boxes and so on, and there is no limit to how many "best value xxxx gems for $99.99" boxes / chests / ... you can buy