Thursday 17 June, 2004

I've been playing a lot less lately. Namely, I've been lucky and have been getting rides home most of the time. (thus, I don't get to play on the train back...).

My saved game is at 9:40 with 59% completion. I'm currently on the last world and have cleared 3 of its levels.

The last few levels have been interesting in the sense that they are hard, but not unfair. This has been a trend for a while now so I've been thinking that perhaps my initial appreciation of the game may have been a bit unfair.

I've finally got the hang of the controls and the difficulties I had at the beginning where due to the way the controls are worked out. Basically, you should never jump if you don't have the "run" key pressed. By default, "run" should be pressed all the time. This has saved me so many headaches... I guess I just can't comprehend why the designers would even bother with the "run" key since you basically need to have it pressed all the time. Oh well.

The run key is an artefact of SNES era game design - Super Metroid has it too, and again you basically keep it pressed almost all the time, though there is at least one trick that involves letting it go. It's telling to me that after the SNES era, 2d platformers abandoned the run button mechanic. (Though SMB3 used it effectively, in my opinion).

Good point. Your comment reminds me of something that I think is really important, we should not forget the design artifacts of old games! The "run key" is only one of them and I'm sure there are a ton of others...heck, even "lives" seems like a dated concept nowadays.