Most of the games of that era employed memorization as part of the game play because it was an easy way to prolong the life of the game given the hardware limit

Most of the games of that era employed memorization as part of the game play because it was an easy way to prolong the life of the game given the hardware limitations of the day. Take your example: > Whereas in a mario game you can generally improv your way through a level on skill alone. The NES Mario's are notorious for being evil to those who haven't learned the levels. There's literal dead ends that will kill you if you chose the wrong path. Even the later SNES titles will have hidden stages that cannot be reached via improv alone.