I’m terrible at basically every game except very casual phone games (ex: It’s Literally Just Lawn Mowing, an entirely real iOS game).

I get frustrated and impatient with my lack of progress and give up, which is of course entirely a personal problem. My wife loves video games though and I’m sure will bring our children up right.

I just realized why I am bad at them. I play defensively, like clearing all the enemies then move on. This is much harder than move fast hit everything and you will be fine.(at least Zelda and Mario Galaxy are like that)

Especially with a game where you die with one hit, this seems too mentally exhausting to actually play enough times to improve.

You'll play 100 times and only get 10% of the way in, so you still need to practice the later parts just as much. A bit like agile software development, really!