missingno

Now put Coyote vs. ACME on there.

It’s super cool that SMZ3 is a thing that even exists, but beyond the novelty of it I felt it was dragged down by the fact that ALttP is so much bigger than SM, to the point where it kinda drowns SM out.

I could be wrong, but I think that only happens if you repeatedly enter and exit the EMMI Zone, allowing it to wander around too much. Which is something you might get scared into doing on a first playthrough!

FWIW, that room is completely optional, only reward is a Power Bomb Tank. If you fall down there you do gotta get out, but if you can at least make your way up to the first platform you can bomb it to reveal a tunnel that lets you bail.

Been a while and I don’t remember the routing details at all, but I was surprised to find that they weren’t much of an obstacle at all for the speedrun. They’re designed to scare you on a first playthrough, but on subsequent replays you just go fast and they won’t catch you.

Dread. I wasn’t sure if it could live up to the high expectations set for it, but they hit it out of the park. Hits all the highs of Super and Zero Mission, then goes on to outdo those games in terms of combat and boss fights. Had a blast going back to speedrun it again and again.

I would argue that 2D platformer should be part of the definition.

I suppose I should’ve been clearer there, I really just meant the Koji Igarashi-era games, not Classicvania. As the other comment mentions, the term Metroidvania was actually originally coined to separate the two eras of Castlevania, before the genre exploded in popularity and it became repurposed.

while Castlevanias powerups focus almost entirely on combat.

Castlevania has always (edit: I mean since SotN) had a pretty heavy emphasis on movement abilities to access new areas. Looking at SotN, we have double jump, high jump, swimming, mist form, bat form, wolf form, as well as good ol’ keys to literally unlock the environment.

This is why I consider Metroid Fusion, Other M, and Dread to be among the weaker Metroid titles. All three have an obvious, forced always on hand-holding mechanic that you don’t find in other Metroid games.

I’ll give you Fusion and Other M, but I’m going to have to disagree on Dread here. The game does sort of guide you along an intended first playthrough route, but so does Super! It’s a delicate balance to give the player room for exploration while still ensuring they don’t get stuck not knowing where to go. That balancing act should not be seen as disqualifying, or else we’re throwing out the genre’s foundational text too. If anything, the biggest difference between Dread and Super here is that Dread actually has more developer-intended sequence breaks. If you play Super as intended without utilizing any speedrunning tech, you almost always follow the same route in the end.

Because someone ignoring reality is often a negative.

Because there’s a lot of shit to complain about, and it feels like things are getting steadily worse. Especially today when I’m watching the rise of fascism in real time, when I’m watching friends and family be persecuted by a push to make bigotry into law, and when it all feels like there’s nothing I can do about any of this because I’m just some guy.

Yes, I know that children are starving in Africa. No, pointing that out does not make me feel better.

What do you mean by “screwed”? I think the question needs to be more clearly defined before I can give an answer.

A lot of damage is going to be done. Things are going to get much worse before they get better. Some people are going to get killed.

But I don’t think this is the literal apocalypse. Life will continue. It’s going to be hard to rebuild and will take a long time, but we will rebuild as much as we can.

This is how propaganda works. Take something you want people to hate, and insist that it is equivalent to something people already hate.

A few answers here are mixing up season passes with battle passes.

A season pass is just a bundle of multiple pieces of DLC, often sold in advance with a schedule for when each item will release. Sometimes the contents can also be purchased individually, but buying them bundled in the pass will get you a discount. Generally this is a fair enough business model, even if the idea of preordering DLC doesn’t sit right with you, you can always wait and just buy the pass once everything is released.

A battle pass is a model found in a number of live service games. After purchasing the pass, you can grind for in-game rewards. Oftentimes there’s a deadline to finish grinding by, and once a pass is over you can no longer obtain the rewards and will have to buy the next pass for the next set of rewards. These are engagement bait to keep players grinding so that playercount remains high, and they rely heavily on FOMO, which makes them controversial. But they make a lot of money, so you’ll keep seeing them.

Alternatively, many games will offer rewards for leveling up, but they’ll have two tiers of rewards, unpaid and paid. If you buy the season pass, you’ll get both tiers of rewards.

That’s a battle pass.

Reminder that a trans woman threw the first brick. This is an attempt to rewrite history.

I think that’s just BitTorrent.

I haven’t played it, but I’m bothered by Square Enix’s aversion to FF’s turn-based roots. What kind of ‘remake’ changes genre entirely?