I'm thinking about Donkey Kong. I was playing Donkey Kong Classic Edition on NES. The one they made for the 3DS that put the pie factory level back in to the NES game.

I'm still not Good at it either, although I'm improving I think.

I played different versions and I like the Vic-20 Donkey Kong a lot too. Obviously the arcade version was excellent to begin with, but it's probably one of the more difficult ones.

I'm trying to think of strategies, like avoid standing under Kong in the slanted platform areas since he throws a crazy barrel sometime, or in the stages with the fire try to avoid the fire and walk around where they are, and use the hammer to remove them for points if you can. Try to be where the fire is not. And the fire tends to go up the ladders more often then down so don't leave the top alone too long. And to walk to the left of the spring and then go back to the right to climb the last level. In the pie level try to get through it and jump if it starts going the other way. Basically don't be where the bad things are is a big part of it. Donkey Kong seems to have more random element in it than Pac-Man or some of the others. A lot of it is endurance and recognizing what areas are dangerous, and being able to jump over stuff and not die.

I wonder what those guys who just played the arcade machine in their garages until they could get to the kill screen level, what the internal model of the game is in their head so they know how not to die and can keep going that long. I'm certainly not there and might never be. And that's okay, the game still works.

The short game with only 4 levels that loop over and over still make a better game than a lot of huge ass open world games.