I tend to prefer Chrome, however I also like Firefox.  I will use Opera and IE to check website compatibility, but I haven't really done any web work in quite awhile.

Just browsing the net.  Supposed to be at work, but this week has been pretty crappy pain-wise, so I'm not there.  Played a few 360 games earlier after my son got done watching his cartoons on Netflix and was put to bed.

My parents had an Atari 2600 and I had played games on that, but never really got hooked.  It wasn't until I went over to my best friends house when I was around 4 or 5.  I remember it clearly, turning into their living room and seeing this game on the screen, Super Mario Bros.  They had just finished world 1-1 and I was mesmerized by the graphics and just how cool it looked.  They let me play on world 1-2 and it was over.  My life as I knew it was changed forever.  I begged and begged my parents for an NES and finally got one for Christmas.

I very rarely purchase any DLC.  I don't do any season passes because I never know for sure if the content is going to be worthwhile or not.  Just because a game may be good, it doesn't mean any of the DLC is going to be good and I would rather not invest my money in something I may regret.  If I really want it, I'll just buy it for regular price.

You're not a gamer if you never played a game.Dudersaper

Yes, this.

But to play along, I'll say if you haven't played one of the core Mario games you're not a gamer.

Got a PS2 just for GTA III.  Was absolutely 100% worth it.  Granted, there ended up being plenty of games for that system that I enjoyed.  But I never would have played them if GTA hadn't brought me in.

Games have gotten easier over the years, but it's due to a variety of factors, many of which have already been touched on.

Games today have a lot of tutorial systems built right in or markers indicating where to go.  Combine that with the ability to either save anywhere or save/checkpoint frequently and it makes it difficult to fail.  Games of past, if you didn't have a manual, you probably had no clue what to do.  Even if you did have the manual, oftentimes you would still find yourself having difficulty with things because they weren't spelled out for you.  Add in limited lives and continues and you only had but so many chances.  When was the last time you saw a game with X amount of lives and X amount of continues before it's all over? If you were lucky, the game featured passwords.

Some of the issues are purely technical.  Quite frankly, often controls were just horrible in games back then.  Most games today have very slick, responsive controls that make things easier.  A lot of controls in the days of the NES weren't too responsive.  There'd often be a delay, even though extremely short, but enough to cause you to *just* miss that moving platform.  Controls were also "blocky."  There is no slightly nudging over in one direction or other.  You're either going or you're not.  Having pulled out some of my older systems and playing a few games in recent years, this is one of the absolute hardest things I had to deal with.

Older games most often didn't have a difficulty level.  A lot of games today have, on average, three difficulty levels.  Some have many more and some even have "slider" difficulties.  I've played some that have difficulty levels so low that they pretty much tell you that you won't die and you're just playing to enjoy the story.  In the 80's you very rarely had a difficulty level to choose from.  You just had the game as it was, which, as mentioned by others, was often based off the arcade style.  The difficulty came from not being able to just pick up where you died.  You had to restart the whole level (or even game, in some cases).  Memorization was an integral part.  Two enemies from the left, one dropping out of the sky, and a platform that is going to fall if you stay on it for longer than a second, got it!

I don't think games have gotten easier just because we've gotten better.  They may have gotten easier because we understand them more and we comprehend things a lot better than when we were young. But the whole overall style and dynamics of games has changed entirely.  There are plenty of games out there today that offer a challenge, but they often rely more on actual skill rather than clunky features or outside aspects.  The only place you'll really find games similar to that style of the 80's is primarily in the indie market, and even many of those are designed with a modern style and features.

I can't say I've regretted any console I've bought.  I've always gotten some joy out of them or at least admired them in my collection.  Even things like the Jaguar... but I got that free, so it doesn't count.

Did they mention the backwards compatibility at all in their description?  It is entirely possible they didn't know Gamecube games had issues playing, or were even aware that it was capable of doing so.  

Well aside from turning it off, I check out any new demos that I may be interested in, check out achievements and what I can still get, check friends acheivements, and if all else fails, turn on Netflix.