See, you are right and that’s exactly why I started with “This might be a little on the side of the main topic”…

This is a fantastic timeline if you want to go into details.

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.

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.

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”.

With the original they wanted the immersion part to feel like you are actually racing with toy cars and make everyday / mundane surroundings feel unique from this perspective and scale — I guess they still want this to be the main fun factor / appeal.

As I am now more in “jump in, jump out” mode, CS2 from time to time, but mostly The Hunter (COTW) with friends and family, mostly as a background to talk and hang out, eventually some solo missions if there is more time or on a rainy day.

My preference is „bare metal” approach, then I really know if everything is working as it should, so I had a separate drive for Linux installation at the beginning and got to my other drives by just mounting them as NTFS.

But, finally I am at the point of no return for some time now, the old Windows drive is not even inside of my PC and the other drives are ext4 already.

For a quick check Live CDs/USBs are totally fine but not fully representative.

For me the amazing part was somehow pacing. Every single time I felt like I am starting to cruise through levels, I was knocked down really hard… and my brain exploded more than a few times.

Stunningly, this created one of the best mechanics for me — “if it was too easy, you probably missed a valuable lesson there”.

Arvi created something special, where every bit of that frustration pays off at least tenfold.

Is there any way to add it to App Library without adding it to the home screen? If there is, I don’t need the app at all, probably.

Yeah, I have a tab opened to check it out too, do they have any ios app?

This is one of the most influential games ever for so many different reasons… I am definitely a big fan and have a lot of great memories with the classic one on NES, especially the 1v1 mode. It was a pure joy to play with my uncle, brother, friends or mom, she preferred Battle City tho!

This was long time ago, now if I play, I go for the Tetris Effect — which doesn’t change the main formula, it mostly builds around it or plays with it.

One of — counterintuitively — not so many games that you can just keep playing to get better at them, as your brain rewires itself and conscious decision making process goes into the deep, unconscious brain backroom magic. Of course to be the best there is a lot of technical knowledge or some tactical aspects but the base gameplay loop just keeps you in self-learning mode or more often than not, in the flow state.