Are video game lives a dead concept?

Lives are great and more games should utilize them.

Games where you can retry a single part of the game over and over ad infinitum until you fluke into getting it right once, and then never have to revisit it again, don't really have the same kind of challenge as games that force you to prove that you can complete a challenge *consistently.* That's really the whole point of making you do things over and over again.

I understand that that type of gameplay isn't for everyone, and not all games needs to have this kind of system. A lot of games don't need them - Super Mario 64, for instance, is a game where lives are a completely vestigial concept that only exist because they didn't realize they could get rid of them, and it's still challenging enough since you have to complete enough challenges on the way to getting a star that the "proof" that you can do something is still substantial enough.

Some games are more about exploration or puzzle solving or story or whatever and don't really need lives either. But a lot of action games could really stand to ask more of their players sometimes - I love games with lives and even old-school continue systems where you have to start the entire game over. It'd be nice to have more of them.