I used to book full afternoons to do complete runs of Super Mario Bros 3. No warp, no skip.

If I didn't have that time, the warp zone was there.

In general, games without passwords or a save system back then were not meant to be very long to complete.

Take Star Fox, a full run is like maybe an hour or so? Same for 64. The trick is that you might need several runs to be good at it, and you're supposed to find secrets, take harder routes and get better scores. And of course when those are remade or played today you've got many people complaining about how short these are.

In one sitting. You'd have to get good at them by playing them over and over and over again. And they were really hard so that it would take a long time to get that good.

This was intentional. Games from the 80s had a lot more technical limitations compared to today and this was a way to increase their replay value. Otherwise you'd spend $30 on a game ($93 today) and beat a game in a couple tries, and it wouldn't be worth it.

Think of how you play arcade games - home console games were a lot more like that at first. You would start from the beginning each time, and the better you got the further you went, but it could take months. Most games you never "beat" but just "played" over and over. Maybe you'd set it down for a few months then start up again.

It was a more cyclical almost seasonal way of consuming media, from when we had a lot less to choose from. You'd have a handful of games between you and your friends, and just play 1 or 2 forever, until you felt like a change and swapped with a friend.

You were definitely supposed to start from the beginning each time you played, and you'd get a little further each time you played. You'd know the earlier levels by the back of your hand.

Your final run might be just an hour or two, but it was the product of many more hours of practice.

I don't think games ever expected people to keep their consoles on overnight. Games of that length had saves or passwords.

Even for games that had unlimited continues, you were often expected to select "No" on the continue screen eventually. You'd restart with your new knowledge and get to the same point with more power ups, more lives, etc...and you'd use your newly-gained knowledge and skills to get more of those resources in the earlier level, making the later levels easier.

Games that didn't have saves or passwords weren't that long. They were short enough that they could reasonably expect you to do it all in one sitting once you git gud, but the process of gitting gud was the game's longevity.

If developers didn't expect you to do it in one sitting, then they would add some way of saving progress.

Welcome to the 90's geniuses.

Beat it in one go.

I just kept the console on overnight

Go back to the 90s and spend your holiday with your friends trying to complete Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap and leave the console on between tries, and get mad when an adult switches off the console.

Keeping the darn device powered up was the only way. And then you'd have to pray nobody (parents, siblings, pet) turned it off before you could get to it again.

You already mentioned passwords and warps stood in for saves most of the time (also cheat codes I guess).

Beyond that, I think most games were not as long as they seemed? Feels like a lot because they're hard, but most of them, if you're good and well-practiced, could be beaten in a sitting (a couple hours on the high end).

Did you have some games in mind that don't fall under any of those patterns?

Keeping anything electric on over night in my house was not allowed. So there was no consoles on overnight.

We would just play it long enough to finish it in one go. Also in the time period I am thinking of (circa NES) we only had like 3 games, so replaying one game over and over was not unheard of.