Welcome (belatedly) to the fourth round of the Classic Gaming Board's "Game Club", where we play and discuss a game from the past every so often as a group. Modelled on book clubs, in this series of topics we choose a game that many of us never got around to playing - often focusing on the obscure, the historically significant, or independent releases in the classic style that may have passed under our collective radar. New people are always welcome to join in, so if you're just looking for the first time, don't hesitate to play and partake in the discussion, and if you'd like to see older topics, they're available at http://www.davidn.co.nr/gameclub/ .

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To start the series off again, because the third Humble Indie Bundle is going on just now (and also because I am utterly terrible at refusing people's suggestions), we're going to be talking about another independent game:

VVVVVV

Released: 2010
Key Personnel: Terry Cavanagh
Currently available on: PC, Steam

Quick, let's copy and paste a description I did a while ago:

VVVVVV (pronounced with five of its letters silent, though you can choose which ones) is a platformish game by Irish developer Terry Cavanagh QC, not quite typical of the genre because you can't jump. Your movements are instead restricted to going left and right and flipping the gravity of the level, making your character zoom from the floor to the ceiling or back - and this mechanic is explored in different ways throughout its two- or three-hour playing time.

It's done in a Commodore 64 style (which I hope should appeal to many people on this board!), from the graphical stylings to the music and the way that the rooms all have individual names. And the name VVVVVV comes from its habit of having massive rows of spikes lining every available surface - we're not in I Wanna Be The Guy territory here because the checkpoints are generous and you will never be smashed by a suddenly falling moon, but the level of challenge is high enough for you to really feel very proud of making progress or finding new secrets.

You can get the game from Steam, or as part of the Humble Indie Bundle at http://www.humblebundle.com/ , where you can get it along with a heap of other games and decide what you pay for the whole lot. You can even put it all the way down to one US cent if you want. You cheap bastard.
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

VVVVVV (pronounced with five of its letters silent, though you can choose which ones)

Thanks for clearing that up, as I had no clue; personally I prefer the second from the left.

One of my favorite games from last year. I'm excited to replay this. Excellent choice and incredibly classic (despite not being old.) Maybe I'll even get the Veni Vidi Vici trinket this time.

If you haven't played it and don't own it, definitely buy the Humble Bundle. I wish the Steam keys stacked because then I'd have a spare to gift. :(

I... don't have any tips for first time players. It does a good job of slowly ramping up complexity and adding variables. Don't be afraid to die... A lot.
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Sitting this one out. I played the demo awhile back, and it didn't impress me.

I will note, though, that unlocking Captain Viridian in Super Meat Boy proved to be very disappointing. Being able to flip gravity seemed like it would be an awesome power. In reality, thanks to him/her/it being very slow and unable to flip gravity in mid-air, I found a whole one level where it made par time easier, and even then it was a close shave.
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http://thecrankyhermit.wikispaces.com/
Year-by-year analysis of the finest gaming has to offer, and (eventually) more!

Just played the first stage, pretty cool. I like the whole gravity reversal thing this game does. The drill room was kinda tough.

I played through this sometime last year as I'm sure some others here have, so let me point out that in the last week it has received a massive update. Included with the new level editor is 10 bonus player-made levels from various people the creator likes and so far their quality has been rather strong (who knew the Minecraft guy knew level design?).

Basically what I'm saying is that even if you've played through already there's something new to play with and hence you could still participate in this. Just sayin'.
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bah weep grah nah weep ni ni bon?
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.

Yes, I actually realized the huge update a couple of minutes after I made that first post - the game itself has also been entirely rewritten in C++ instead of Flash, though I didn't notice this making any difference to the gameplay (pretty much the definition of a good port). It's nice to be able to come back to some new things...

Bearing in mind this is my second time through the game, I've just run through it with the twenty trinkets in an hour and ten minutes, and managed the Veni, Vidi, Vici tunnel with about the same amount of trouble that I had with it last time (I almost did it twice in a row just to prove I could, but quickly gave up). However, my difficulty in that room and the Prize for the Reckless were absolutely eclipsed by about six billion deaths (or 45, actually, as reported by the end-of-game statistics) in a room at the end called Upstairs, Downstairs - I don't remember having anywhere near that amount of trouble with it before.

Something I really loved about this when I first played it was how well it executed the C64 style, making it something that should be of interest to people who grew up with the system even though the game was only released last year - the "retro" look for independent games was popular when VVVVVV came out, but it plays into it in much more than just having graphics that are a bit blocky. I love the warm Commodore-style soundtrack, which in places is like some of the best of David Whittaker (though it's rather more hyper than I remember as well - Positive Force is my favourite music from the game but it's difficult to have it on with the volume up for long), and this time around I was noticing a lot of tiny little things that contribute to the look, like the way that the image of the crew member appears only after a barely noticeable pause after the "you've rescued..." window is drawn.

I've explored the level editor and the new levels a bit - there are definitely some inspired ideas in there, and I might have a go myself if I find myself being ambitious. Of course, my first thought was to get revenge by devising an even more brutal challenge than the Veni Vidi Vici trinket, but quickly found that everybody had done that already.
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

I'm currently going through internet withdrawl but I'm going to download and install this on my laptop to help bide the time. Fortunately the Humble Bundle version could be transferred to my desktop if I prefer. I'll consider retackling the whole game but I'm actually pretty pumped for these bonus levels.

What does everyone prefer, keyboard or controller? I found the keyboard better as it's a bit quicker to switch between left and right, and with only one action button there's no need for other things. However, I've been playing PC platformers since I was 7 or 8 so I'm a little more comfortable with it than most people.

Edit: ...Notch's level has some absurdly evil areas... Nuts. I should have sharpened my teeth by replaying the original story first.
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I'm much, much more comfortable with a controller for platformers, but to my knowledge VVVVVV has no native controller support. I'm sure it could be forced through with Xpadder or something similar, but I was able to tackle the game some months back with just the keyboard, even with my atrophied skills at doing so. It's actually the only platformer I've ever played that way all the way through.
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VVVVVVVVVVVVWVVVV reminds me of Metal Storm. This is a good thing.
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What, was Darkseid Two taken? - Comment about Brainiac 5's choice of code name.
Official Deadpool of the CAGN board.

As I think I mentioned in the last one of these threads, I'm comfortable with a controller but grew up with the keyboard (Commander Keen and company). Usually I don't have a preference one way or the other, but for especially twitchy games like this one frequently is, I like the keyboard because the controls to move left and right are on separate fingers, allowing a change of direction in an imperceptibly smaller amount of time.

This time around, I noticed a couple more subtleties in the controls - namely, that you don't get to your full speed immediately but accelerate to it over something that can't be much longer than a quarter of a second. Even though it's a tiny amount of time, understanding this really helped me get past some of the tighter obstacles a lot more easily than the first time around (just making sure to take a run up at them and keep going rather than slipping past tight spikes).
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

I haven't started VVVVVV yet, but just wanted to weigh in on the controller debate. Like you, Wong, I find that keyboards can be faster, though I still prefer controllers for platformers. I have Magical Drop on my MVS, and I also have it on an emulator. I find I can move much, much faster with the keyboard than the joystick, to the point where the game is a lot less challenging on the same difficulty level.

How are the other games in the Humble Bundle? VVVVVV is available in the Mac App Store ($5), which is the place I like to buy software so that it's all in one place, but if the other games in the Bundle are good, then I should get them there.
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stop picking on balloon fight. - kuddy53
PSN: Cinder6 | My backlog: http://backloggery.com/cinder6

Picked this up on the Bundle, and decided to play it again. I beat it about a year ago, but don't recall much, so this is a good incentive to play through.

I picked up most of the crewmembers somewhat quickly, with no real disasters other than Veni Vidi Vici (270 deaths!) and the usual aggravation at The Gravitron. The latter was much easier than I remember it being; perhaps it was scaled back in the patch?
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Official GameFAQs Gunther Hermann Fanboy
"No. I wanted orange. It gave me lemon-lime"

All right, VVVVVV main game completed.

16 trinkets (including Veni Vidi Vici and Prize of the Reckless)
3582 flips
1007 deaths
156 deaths in Veni alone (a lot of bad starts, I think I only died in it once coming down.) I think either Easy Mode Unlocked or Your Bitter Tears were my second-worst rooms, Easy Mode being very difficult on the return.

Man the ending tune alone is worth beating the game for. I'll write up some thoughts but, man, after beating the Veni challenge I felt like such a hero.
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Beat the main game a second time (convenient as the switch to version 2.0 wiped out my save game), took a bit over 2 hours to get all the trinkets and such.

I still like the main game concept, I still have issues with the execution of said concept. I think the game works fine when you are in a compact area or going through a linear set of rooms. For whatever reason the game is set-up as an "open world" of dead space which IMO adds next to nothing and breaks up the flow of things. If there was some aspect of having to enter an area from another point or a trick of navigating said space to get to the right point I could accept it better, but it has virtually none of that. There isn't even much exploring, instead you pull up the map, see which direction you haven't gone yet and proceed. Now once you get to where you are heading it works well and the game does a good job of exploring the various tweaks of the underlying gravity-flipping concept, the experience is just a bit diluted by what it takes to get there.

This may be why I liked the one "player-level" that I played (by Notch of Minecraft fame) as it was much more compact and had much less dead space. In addition it seemed to have a bit more emphasis on entering a room from a certain direction in order to get the most out of it. It was also significantly shorter but that's fine with me.
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bah weep grah nah weep ni ni bon?
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.

Ah, I actually wondered if somebody would bring that up, when I saw it again myself :) It didn't exactly bother me, but it was something that made me wonder if it was... necessary (apart from its use to hide a couple of the trinkets) - there's a lot of empty space between the levels, but it doesn't take much time to get through.

As I've mentioned before, the layout reminded me of the ZZT games - in which (in at least three of the four that Tim Sweeney created) you could explore as you pleased, but within the explorable world there were identifiable entrances to routes that would end with you getting to one of the game objectives (purple keys/crew members). In those, though, the "between" world was always much smaller and contained obstacles and challenges itself - I'm not sure if VVVVVV would have benefitted from this or if making the outside world another obstacle course would just have been irritating.

I've got to admire the perseverance in 156 and 270 deaths on the one set of rooms! It has that level of difficulty that makes you think that you might just be able to do it this time... it's surprising how much muscle memory aids you on subsequent attempts.

I've been trying out the custom levels now - I've played Notch's but couldn't find the entrance to get to one crew member (drawing a map might help), and got fed up with an absolutely brutal one called The Golden Spiral at a room where you had to hit a moving platform at one side of the screen, faff about on some wires and not die on spikes, then hit it precisely again on the other side. Get lost!
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

Really my total lifetime Veni Vidi Vici count is much higher. I attempted it in winter last year without success (I think I got to the platform twice.) This time I was able to get through Vici without too much hassle. Really the return journey down wasn't too bad, as there was really only one trick to it - hitting the Your Bitter Tears tunnel in such a way as to get the right path on Easy Mode Unlocked. After that it's a matter of holding right in the bottom half of Vici, then pulling left at the bottom of Vidi. If anything I kept having this fear that I would return down then somehow land on the wrong side of the block.

The dead space in the game is rather empty, but I think it was purposefully placed to alleviate the dense levels. I really never had any trouble finding a level entrance, as I just sort of flipped around and filled in the empty map areas. Was it a waste of time? I guess so, but it really didn't pad out my experience much, and it was nice to be able to experience some freedom and not worry about hitting spikey death. I think it was done to give the game a sense of space and location and to space out the challenges a little, giving players a breather. I liked that the world wasn't particularly puzzling or challenging because the game doles it out in such strong doses within the levels themselves.
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I've been working through the new levels lately. I'm noticing that most of them seem to be relying on the strange ticks and bugs in the game's physics to create a new challenge. Not sure yet how to feel about that.

The empty open world was, I think, meant to create contrast against the cluttered, chaotic levels. Above all else, it made things nonlinear, which adds to the whole "lost in a new dimension" thing.
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~NC http://rainwave.cc - Video Game Radio
http://backloggery.com/naturalchemical/

Well hey, I actually started playing the game! Just the first level, but it seems neat so far. Is there any way to mute the music? It's nifty, but I usually watch something at the same time I play a game like this, so it's distracting.
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stop picking on balloon fight. - kuddy53
PSN: Cinder6 | My backlog: http://backloggery.com/cinder6

For what it's worth I played this game for the first time a bit after I first played Redder, a free flash 2d game in the platformer/metroid mold built entirely around a green/red switch mechanic (either all the green blocks are filled in and red ones empty or vice versa depending on what switch you hit) and gathering 20 or so trinkets. While it is a less interesting mechanic than vvvvvv's it also required the world and rooms to be laid out in an intelligent manner (i.e. it matters how you enter a room or their layout in relation to each other). In contrast this game is just haphazardly thrown together and I've never been able to unsee that.

Anyways, I've started playing through the player-made levels more in depth so here are some brief thoughts on the first four I've gone through.

VVVV 4K: This is the one by Notch (of Minecraft fame and fortune) that was mentioned earlier. Design-wise it is in-tune with the original game albeit much shorter and more compact. It keeps the same "dead space" center but shrinks it down to nothing and makes which entrance you take a bit more meaningful. The puzzles keep to mainly the same tricks with a similar quality of design. Basically a bite-sized version of the main game.

a new dimension: This one is designed to more or less be the hardest, most masochistic game you can make out of the base design. It's version of that infamous towering puzzle from the original is near the start and is simply absurd (the game wasn't built to demand as much precision as this does). It also has rather fun writing. I'd suggest giving it a shot to see how cruel it is and learn some things about the underlying system, that's about it. Also I got to the end as it glitched out and had me falling through space until I reached it. I consider that a victory.

line wrap: A much more linear contained experience that just barely folds in on itself. Rather short in length, its spends most of its time exploring the disintegrating floors/panels and how they can affect enemy patterns in addition to the scrolling (i.e. fall off the bottom of the screen, appear falling at the top) rooms. The final few puzzles, one of them a skippable bonus one, are rather tricky but not impossible, before that the difficulty is middle of the road. Worth checking out as it has its own focus that stands apart from what is there in the main game.

pyramid of doom: A brief linear journey to the top of the pyramid. Built mainly around a series of avoid the spikes challenges. The difficulty level is rather low. There are a couple interesting little puzzles and ideas in there, mostly it is rather standard. Not bad and rather short but still rather skippable.
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bah weep grah nah weep ni ni bon?
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.

I've just started my way through this, but I've covered most of the overworld map, and saved three crew members. I'm playing this coming off Hero Core, which makes me miss having a gun. Moreso when I think about Metal Storm.

To be honest, I'm more excited about getting Braid as a bonus from the humble bundle as I've never played it, although heard many things.
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Latest: In-Depth Analysis on Zelda: Majora's Mask
Found on gamingsymmetry.com at http://bit.ly/otN2Tx

Went straight from the intro to the tower. The tower was a pain but I finished it.

If any of you guys bought the Humble Indie bundle 3 for this, you might want to check out the download page. They added some more games to it (I finally get to play Braid!)

Some general thoughts on completion:

550 deaths, with half on you-know-where, and an hour and change playtime. I didn't get all the trinkets, as I wasn't expecting the end to be so sudden; I may go back later and finish them up.

As for the game, it's a wonderful one-mechanic title, with a very nice aesthetic about it. I agree with Wong that the sheer thoroughness of the game's retro styling is remarkable; instead of the usual "here are low-res graphics" the creator went out of his way to strive for a certain feel. Oddly, the part that really drove home the early 80s feel for me wasn't the music or graphics, but the unusual enemies. Flying LIES/TRUTH, oddly-placed monochrome factories belching smoke, and walking helmets harken back to the days of games like Sopwith (evil pigeons and oxen!) or Berzerk.

I'm working through the player levels now, and the ones with the game are of checkered quality. Too many of them act as if VVVVVV controls like Super Meat Boy, which it very much doesn't, rendering many precision rooms utterly unfun. There are a lot of clever ideas in them, but it's not enjoyable when you have to slog through ultra-precise rooms to get there. I made it through most of the player levels (including A New Dimension, which is great fun when it's not unfun-hard), and hope that later ones don't emphasize difficulty/precision as much as the current crop.
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Official GameFAQs Gunther Hermann Fanboy
"No. I wanted orange. It gave me lemon-lime"

Yeah, the one thing a lot of player-made levels ignore is that the controls while fine for the main game aren't incredibly precise. Combing them with less forgiving obstacles easily risks crossing from challenging to frustrating.

Finished the rest of the included player levels.

roadtrip to the moon: My least favorite of the included levels. Too much precision required, too many times you have to die to learn what to avoid and some very poor checkpoint locations.

the dual challenge: This is a rather interesting one. It is by the same author of a new dimension (the really hard one) and while it isn't as difficult there is something... inelegant with this person's room designs. That said this has a rather ambitious overall design, that being two different paths through the game world that occasionally cross each other and can in fact at points be jumped from one to the other. That aspect of it is done very well.

variation venture: This is basically four separate little areas each with a different game mechanic explored. My favorite is the one that uses the disappearing tiles to force you to constantly run through a series of rooms but they are all decent if brief.

variety show: Rather basic, short set of puzzles highlighted by some rooms where you bounce between two gravity-switching lines and have to make your way around some stationary obstacles. Not my favorite kind of puzzle, the rest are fine if not memorable. Not bad but kinda bland.

vertiginous viridian: I really enjoyed this one. It is basically five distinct gimmicked areas around a small hub with some of said gimmicks being explored in other player levels. The difference is that I really enjoy how this person laid out their rooms. It's tricky enough to cause one to curse under their breath from time to time but it always seems fair enough. Some of the ideas in here are very well thought out, in particular I was impressed by the conveyor belt/spike sections even if I was terrible at them. This may be my favorite out of the included ten.

golden spiral: This is very very hard although not as gargantuan as a new dimension. It asks you to pull of some borderline insane maneuvers, particularly ones including the lines that switch your gravity. I managed to beat it so it is doable and it's not horribly long but I think it may be more frustrating than it is worth.
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bah weep grah nah weep ni ni bon?
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.

Yeah, I've found that the player levels, having completed them all, are sort of strange. A few of them, particularly A New Dimension and VVVVVV 4k, were great fun, if at times very difficult. But then most of the others (particularly those by Robert Svanlund, interestingly enough) are really difficult and unfair, making it into a game of memory and repetition instead of sheer skill. The worst offender is Golden Spiral, which is by far the worst offender and most poorly-designed level in the game.

I'm playing through the main game again, since for some reason the update deleted my save. I'd forgotten how much dead space there was in the overworld. I don't mind it too much, but I sort of wish there'd been something more cleverly designed or hidden in it.
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~NC http://rainwave.cc - Video Game Radio
http://backloggery.com/naturalchemical/

It's odd, because I would never have described this game (the main game, now) as "haphazard", as it has a fairly distinct collection of levels with specific different elements and challenges... still, that's why this topic's here :)

DariusTriplet mentioned the enemies, which reminded me of something that somebody else said to me - that he missed the 80s because games didn't have to make sense then (see, for example, things like Gerry the Germ, also on the Commodore 64). You could throw in enemies like sudden factory smoke, mutant telephones, have a main character that was an egg with boxing gloves, or any number of other things because... well, why not? It's in an abstract world already - we weren't entrapped by realism and coherency, at that point, though they may have their advantages elsewhere :)

I'm definitely looking forward to the other games as well (hoping that the additional games offer applies retroactively as well...!) I've played Braid before on someone else's X-box, but even though it's astonishingly pretentious, it did have some great ideas and variations on the time-rewinding mechanic in it (after I'd expected it to have just copied the idea from the PS2 Prince of Persia games at the time).
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

Braid's worth playing, if you enjoy single-mechanic puzzle-platformers. The puzzle design is more or less good - there was only one I felt was unfair - and uses the time mechanic very well. I picked it up back in Summer of Arcade 2008 (back when $15 for a downloadable title was considered expensive!) and enjoyed it.

I have to agree with its pretentiousness, though; thankfully, you can zip through, ignore the writing, and enjoy the clever play design and pleasant aesthetics. It's a member of the "obtuseness means depth!" school of aesthetics, which I can't stomach personally.
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Official GameFAQs Gunther Hermann Fanboy
"No. I wanted orange. It gave me lemon-lime"

DariusTriplet posted...
Braid's worth playing, if you enjoy single-mechanic puzzle-platformers. The puzzle design is more or less good - there was only one I felt was unfair - and uses the time mechanic very well. I picked it up back in Summer of Arcade 2008 (back when $15 for a downloadable title was considered expensive!) and enjoyed it.

Mind if I ask which puzzle you felt was unfair? I played it for the first time yesterday and got all the pieces in a little under 2 hours, only getting drastically stuck once on level 2 (called level 3, speaking of pretentious), which I would've called unfair as well, so I wonder if it's the same one. Enjoyed the game overall though.

Just an FYI, that the humble bundle #3's only active for 2 more days if people haven't grabbed it. the game count is up to 12, with all 5 from humble bundle #2, steel storm added aug. 1, and atom zombie smasher added yesterday. I love that they even give you steam codes, they've thought of everything.

Anyway, back to VVVVVV; Completed the game, along with grabbing all but one sphere; the one in the room called "Edge Games" with a bunch of flaming pac mans flying across the screen. I understand what I need to do, but I keep screwing up massively. Perhaps my fingers are just tired. Anyway, right now I have 1017 deaths, although I guess they were spread pretty evenly, as the room I died the most was the Gravitron: 60 deaths.
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Latest: In-Depth Analysis on Zelda: Majora's Mask
Found on gamingsymmetry.com at http://bit.ly/otN2Tx

Yeah, I personally thought Braid's puzzles were generally fair as well, though some of them remarkably clever. Its pretentiousness also extends to the maker, who, after making one successful indie game, acts like the Indie Gaming Messiah.

The issue I have with these VVVVVV player levels is that this game benefits greatly from stepping away for a time - it tends to wear you down. But there is no saving in these player levels, so some of the tougher ones make me look for the Quit button instead of saving and returning.
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My Backloggery: http://backloggery.com/master_yogurt
Classicgaming Steam Community: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Board204

Just an FYI, that the humble bundle #3's only active for 2 more days if people haven't grabbed it. the game count is up to 12, with all 5 from humble bundle #2, steel storm added aug. 1, and atom zombie smasher added yesterday. I love that they even give you steam codes, they've thought of everything.

Yea, I own five of the games on offer, and I'm still likely to give $20 or so just to get the other seven and support that whole cause. Even then I'm still getting those games for like $50 less than I usually would (barring Steam sales).

Yeah, I personally thought Braid's puzzles were generally fair as well, though some of them remarkably clever. Its pretentiousness also extends to the maker, who, after making one successful indie game, acts like the Indie Gaming Messiah.

I'm trying to figure out which is the worst for incredibly grand, idiotic statements - Dennis Dyack (Eternal Darkness, Too Human), David Cage (Heavy Rain), Jonathan Blow (Braid), or the head of Rovio (Angry Birds).
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Whereas most of the others have made claims they cannot nearly meet (namely Dyack) Peter Vesterbacka (Angry Birds, yeah I googled that) has announced the death of console gaming, hand-held systems, and companies like Nintendo and publishers like EA. All for a guy who made a somewhat decent but well-timed and polished Gorillas with an OGL physics engine. So my vote goes to him.

This would make a good topic all on its own, though. Also, you apparently CAN save in these player levels. Huh.
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My Backloggery: http://backloggery.com/master_yogurt
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Finished it today, pretty good for a short little game. I like the random enemy's in the game such as the yes men and the lies. It gave the game a very old school feeling.

Can't wait to find out what game 5 will be.

Master Yogurt posted...
The issue I have with these VVVVVV player levels is that this game benefits greatly from stepping away for a time - it tends to wear you down. But there is no saving in these player levels, so some of the tougher ones make me look for the Quit button instead of saving and returning.

Press enter -> go to the save menu, save the game. You'll resume at your most recent checkpoint.
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The only opinion one should care about is one's own.
We did. You did. Yes we can. No.

Master Yogurt posted...
Whereas most of the others have made claims they cannot nearly meet (namely Dyack) Peter Vesterbacka (Angry Birds, yeah I googled that) has announced the death of console gaming, hand-held systems, and companies like Nintendo and publishers like EA. All for a guy who made a somewhat decent but well-timed and polished Gorillas with an OGL physics engine. So my vote goes to him.

This would make a good topic all on its own, though.

I second both of the opinions in this post. This discussion having its own topic would be interesting, as we seem to have a lot of developers who are wont to make poorly-thought out statements.

With respect to VVVVVV: Interesting game. Haven't finished mucking about with it on my copy of the HIB3 yet though.
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*Casts Doom on everything* You all must now feel the pain that I have felt...DIE!

Here's something I wanted to throw in while I remembered (though I think I still have things to reply to above!) - has anyone tried the slowdown/invulnerability options in the menu? I'm having a titanic discussion elsewhere about an RPG that one of my friends might could possibly be thinking of starting in the future, and about some "tourist" options he's thinking about (no death, no random battles) so that more... gameplay-challenged people can also experience the story.

I was sort of worried that, particularly in the theoretical bonus dungeon at the end, the knowledge that those options existed would cheapen any struggle to win - but then I remembered that VVVVVV had them, and I just forgot that they were there and was satisfied enough with getting the hardest trinkets and completing the game myself without an easy route nagging at me.
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http://www.crystaltowers2.com - An action platformer Metroid-Zelda/Mario 64ish thing.
It only took me since 2007 to get it finished!

I think the value there, too, was that the options were relatively hidden though easily located. "Accessibility" isn't particularly insulting to those who need or want it but it's not something that calls your name, either. It's never presented to you but it's there nonetheless.
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My Backloggery: http://backloggery.com/master_yogurt
Classicgaming Steam Community: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Board204