When You Die, You Go Back to the Beginning.

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

oh, yeah! i'm not advocating getting one shot and one shot only to clear the game--that's going overboard in most non-roguelike cases. for me, streets of rage and most konami beat-'em-ups are the ideal, utilizing a limited number of lives and continues but not letting you keep going if you run out of them. double dragon 3's difficulty was a huge step in the wrong direction and could have only come from the idea that american gamers liked extreme difficulty (an idea that was probably born out of the arcades), because the japanese version's difficulty was scaled down a bit.