Often, hardest choices to make, aren’t choices at all…

Quit your boloney, just bring some sweet honey!

No problemo, just use Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A.

You have to use administrative credentials to unlock these options.

Great! Cynicism is sensibly manageable, defeatism on the other hand — not so much.

Have you just performed a full blown FATALITY on my innocent, optimistic, delicate comment? Funk you, kind sir!

Pro tip! Go to settings > life > difficulty and change it from nightmare or hardcore to regular, easy or blissful.

It might be hard to figure out all the menus because the UX team really did a dirty one there, but it is doable.

Stay safe.

True Poet

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”.

Black Mirror was supposed to mostly be a cautionary tale, not instructional.

There are so many anchor points to respond to, from your original post and this reply…

Every well working moral compass starts any process from some form of self doubt — am I wrong here? What was I thinking? What if this is one giant mistake? Am I the bad guy? The garden can’t be all rotten, it’s probably me… and so on, right? You know those? If you do, great, compass is just reminding you to be cautious and more aware of the decision making process. Then the spectrum begins, from “nothing matters and anything I will do does not matter”, let’s call it avoidant end of the spectrum, then on the other side “I should not make any decision and this is the best decision, everything will sort itself”, the everlasting frozen stone… There are more ends but you probably already know where all this is going, the game is in progress and it is always your move. This is exhausting, hence the feeling of “hard to keep going”.

The hero visions? Ohh yeah, those are tasty, aren’t they? Equally destructive as productive. You can stimulate your ego with them into oblivion or… grow actual motivation from them. The real question is, are you ready to do the thing that might become the milestone in your story? If not, you probably just need more time, rest, preparation, et cetera; if yes, how great is that? Whenever you feel like you are failing on your part of “we all are in this together” deal, somewhere on the other side of the scale, someone is doing their best. So if you need to take it slow(er), do it. Because there will be a moment when you will not want to stop doing something and that will be great too.

Maybe let’s finish with this idea of fighting. Not all fights are yours to fight. You won’t stop everyone from littering, eating meat, or any other type of influencing behaviors of others in an instant — magically — is just in the fantasy realm. The real fight starts when you pick your way and by not forcing others to join you, finally someone who will be motivated by your choices, might use it as a starting point for their own decisions or changes… or you will get demotivated and change the trajectory.

If there is this underlying feeling that you should be doing something differently, what if that feeling is right?

This sounds like you are somehow trying to take the full responsibility for the circumstances you were forced into. It is impossible to blame one person for all the things that are not working, looking and being “as they should”. The same goes for “we all failed”. It is much more nuanced than that.

The reverse perspective is more productive, every action and even smallest nudge into the right direction counts towards much bigger pile… of dust… on the endless desert… Yet still, this is how mesmerizing dunes are formed. It’s not about the amount of grains, how long it took, it’s about all the persisting processes.

Hey there! They are simply being inclusive, blind people are potential customers too and should not miss on any “opportunities”…

Let me Bob Ross you here, that was a prime example of a “happy little accident”…

Might be instance related?

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.