What was the first game to have difficulty selection?

[Royta]

Writing a paper on what defines a good and bad 'hardest' difficulty setting. And I got curious...where did the hardest setting come from? To be honest I am stumped. I got back as far as the second quest from Zelda1 and Super Mario Brothers 2 technically being a Hard Mode released as a new game.

But it has to go back further right? Any takers?

 

[CaitSeith]

Well, really old arcade games were about playing the same level (or handful of levels) over and over with increasing difficulty. But games with difficulty selection already existed in the Atari 2600 (it even had a "difficulty switch" incorporated in the console itself).

EDIT: For example Adventure had 3 difficulty levels. The lowest one had less mazes, while the highest randomized the items location and sped up enemy attacks.

EDIT...

Spoiler: Easy difficulty map

Spoiler: Medium difficulty map

Hard map is the same as medium but with the item locations randomized.