Platform Hell/Quotes

"Beauty and the Beast introduces a whole new challenge to the world of video games: ridiculogic. Because of this exciting new feature, you'll find yourself constantly saying things like 'Oh, stupid me, I should have known I couldn't climb that wall, because it seemed like the only logical way out, and it looked exactly like the wall I climbed two seconds ago.' Or 'Ah, instead of trying to jump on the platform that tricked me to fall on spikes by falling down when I stepped on it, I should have stood still and roar until another non-tricky platform appeared.' Or 'I'm such a goof, I should have known that though they're the exact same sprite, this was a killer bat, and not a bat I could climb on.' Or 'I should have known that I would land in water when I jumped down from that tree, because I shouldn't assume that giant oaks don't sometimes grow out of the water'. Every jump is a leap of faith, all enemies appear half a second before they hit you. The result? A game that forces you to quicksave (a function of course not available on the SNES) and attempt the same goddamn jump twenty times before you find the incredibly stupid sequence of jumps and roars that are needed to keep your body off the spikes. The entire game feels like a bad practical joke, and you are on the ass end of it."

—Per Arne Sandvik on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System version of Beauty and the Beast

"In Super Mario Bros., the player has faith that no matter how high in the air it may be, if there are coins there, you'll be able to collect them without coming to any harm. If the game was developed by people with a nasty streak, then a feature like that might be used to trick the player into losing a turn. If that were the case, then no matter how much you might want those coins, you wouldn't jump towards them."

—Satoru Iwata