Old games were notorious for that sort of thing. Even though I am quite fond of the ideas behind many older games, I don't play them because many of them are ar

Old games were notorious for that sort of thing. Even though I am quite fond of the ideas behind many older games, I don't play them because many of them are arbitrarily punishing. To give you an idea of what I mean: I loved the old text adventure games, but won't play them to avoid loosing my nostalgic joy. On the other hand, I will play modern text adventures since they play off of those nostalgic feelings in a good way. (Many modern authors subscribe to game design rules to avoid the scenario you desribed.)