This might be a little on the side of the main topic but there was always something cool about Crash Bandicoot 100 Apples > 1 Life, and you could grind more to make some levels more forgiving, like semi-adjustable difficulty level based on your previous approach… And later on — warp zones, you get to choose from a few options so the progression has variation.
Another thing that comes to mind, not sure if a first game to do it, THPS for unlocking movies and later cheat codes, modes and characters for finishing the career. Plus the whole gap marathon for Private Carrera.
Oh, and chanting from Oddword where it had various uses, for saving friends or for changing into enemies, or using special abilities. This definitely was something, because I still remember thinking as a kid, “how cool is that this one ability has so many different uses”.
100 Apples > 1 Life, and you could grind more to make some levels more forgiving, like semi-adjustable difficulty level based on your previous approach… And later on — warp zones, you get to choose from a few options so the progression has variation.
100 coins = 1UP and warp zones? And… you think they’re from Crash Bandicoot?
Well, when I was writing that, after midnight I will add, I had this feeling that Mario was doing this thing earlier but for me Mario stands as an icon for the first level design overall as a golden standard for introduction to mechanics and really efficient use of memory for data, and one of the first uses of dynamic music… So you are totally right, Mario brought a lot of things, I’ve just played Crash much more.
Well then… To stay true to the history, we probably would have to go back to Galaxian from ‘79, which introduced 1-UPs / additional lives, bonus stages and player upgrades, plus simple summary / statistics for hits and misses.
The main core series, Super Mario, began with the platformer game Super Mario Bros. (1985) on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The main games consist of Mario trying to rescue Princess Peach from the villain Bowser and saving the Mushroom Kingdom.
As of June 2024, the Mario video game franchise has sold more than 900 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling video game franchise of all time. The main Super Mario series alone has sold more than 495 million copies worldwide.
Super Mario Bros. 1985 NES, estimated revenue $1,652,300,000
You’ve likely listened to the same or similar lectures I have on level design and I seriously apply those lessons to every single game and UI I have influence over!
Im pretty sure the actual, physical Trading card games like MtG and Pokemon gave us all these games with card mechanics in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Culdcept (1997), Baiten Kaitos (2003), Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories (2004). Then the card games weren’t as popular for a bit, then the digital ones died out.
And then Blizzard released Hearthstone in 2014. I haven’t played the other ones to know for sure, but I believe Yu-Gi-Oh Master duels crafting system can directly trace it’s roots to it. Trade cards for dust of a specific rarity, dust from 3 can form a new card, Shiny cards give enough dust on their own for any card, etc. .
I remember playing WoW and working on getting all of the battle pets available by playing other blizzard games. But I thought this was in 2012. There was at least one obtained by playing hearthstone.
I wonder what the source of the RTS conventions was. Ctrl num for making groups. Double press to centre on group. X for scattering units. A to stop them. Pretty sure these predate C&C but the only one before that I can think of is dune.
Maybe because that one didn’t come from videogames. Selection sets or groups have been a thing on UI for a long time, ever since vertex editor on CAD software.
Guardians of the Galaxy on my Steam deck. I would imagine the fps and graphics would be better on a more capable device but its been fun. Great dialogue, music, and settings.
I’ve been playing Batman Arkham origins. Never played it when it came out but loved the other ones. It’s pretty good so far!
I really enjoyed Origins. It embraced the “detective” aspect a lot better, IMO. Also enjoyed the, well, origins of what essentially became Batman and Joker’s inevitable “love story”. Troy Baker played him really well.
Also, it’s pretty funny hearing Sonic voice Batman. I mean, I know he does a ton of other voices, but the contrast is always hilarious to me.
Anyway, onto me…
After taking a weeklong break from video games, I started playing something on my wishlist that finally went on sale again: Unheard - Voices of Crime. Detective game where you solve the cases by listening to conversations and identifying people by their voices/dialogue. The visuals are basically just floor plans and moving from room to room from a top down perspective in order to hear whoever’s speaking in that room.
All the recordings are binaural as well, so wherever you move your “character”, the volume and location of the voices change. It’s pretty interesting and not too long.
Today, I began Dungeons of Hinterberg. At first, super fun. Then got a bit bored because stuff felt samey. Then got interested again. I expect this pattern is going to continue. Despite being a dungeon crawler, it’s a pretty chill game.
Basically, think Breath of the Wild-type shrines mixed with Persona-style social sim gameplay. You do dungeons (or not, you don’t have to if you don’t want to) in the day, explore and spend time with people in the city at night.
Ah see for me all I can hear is Chris Redfield when Batman talks haha. He does an ok job but he’s no Kevin Conroy unfortunately. Totally agree on the detective stuff! I love the random case files that come up that aren’t some crazy supervillain plot. Just random crimes done by random people. Good fun
Please just check the system requirements next time, unless you’re facing special circumstances or have reason to believe the official specs are inaccurate. You can find them on the publisher’s web site or the Steam Store page.
If you mean 100% achievements on Steam for example, I really enjoyed doing that with the following games:
Slipstream (2018): arcade racing game, 7.5h to 100%
SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated (2020): platformer with some collectathon elements, 13h to 100%
Polyball (2017): think Super Monkey Ball, but a bit faster and stronger momentum iirc, gets quite difficult later on, and although the amount of content isn’t ridiculous, it’s very very hard to manage the requirements for 100%. My playtime is 59h, but I kept playing after 100% to get into the top 10 leaderboards on a bunch of levels, so I think it was more like 30-40h for 100%.
The Stanley Parable (2013): narrative game with some unconventional puzzle elements, 40h to 100%, but not really: one of the achievements is “play the game for the entirety of a Tuesday”, so that adds over 24h. Another achievement is to not play the game at all for 5 years. Some people love this silly stuff, some hate it, up to you :)
Firewatch (2016): narrative game with exploration and some puzzles, 6h to 100%.
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