Month old post, but circumstances kept it from showing up at Pundit League for a few weeks…
Have you ever played Castlevania? It’s a classic game that spawned a long and popular series that continues to this day. It sounded great, looked good, and engaged the players of its day. There’s just one catch: the controls were terribly frustrating. Simon Belmont jumps in a realistic way, which is to say he can’t jump very well at all for a video game character. Sad to say, this wasn’t an uncommon sort of problem for a game of its time.
What about Super Mario Bros. you ask? Well what about it? While the game’s controls were remarkably good for a game of its time, by modern standards that version’s Mario is tough to operate. Slower jumping and one-way scrolling severely limit your ability to operate in the game’s levels. Missing entirely is the now-standard Mario ability to get a big boost by jumping off of an enemy.
Two games today, one good and one bad, illustrate just how far we’ve come. There’s more to control innovation than new controllers.
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