True Left

Badland is worse because it has several layers of background each of which move differently.

By the way, there was once a time when it was considered acceptable to have no background at all, and instead just empty space behind the foreground:

Looking back, Sonic does not pan in or out either as I initially thought it did. So I am recommending Sonic Mania also:

Another fan-made 2D mario game:

Wario Land: Shake it! for Wii:

The second that Black Myth: Wukong came out, I was waiting for you to mention it and offer alternatives 

Despite the game being designed in the modern western fashion, I’m at least slightly hopeful about the game exposing people in “western” countries to Chinese culture, and potentially even improving public opinion on China, since the game was produced by a Chinese studio. US-China and “Europe”-China relations are so rock bottom at this point, that any sort of cultural soft power emanating from China would help.

Unfortunately, due to past behavior and internet posts from some of the developers that have been interpreted as sexist by some people (which I can’t fully verify, since the situation seems rather confusing when I try to read about it), Black Myth: Wukong has turned into the battleground for the “woke vs anti-woke” culture war (as interpreted by rightists). There was also an IGN review of the game that criticized the lack of female characters in the first three chapters (since the reviewer didn’t have access to the full game), and rightists started talking about this review article completely out of context, saying that IGN was slamming the game for its lack of diversity, when the reviewer only ever mentioned the lack of women. But this didn’t stop people who didn’t wanna bother to actually read the article, from complaining that “the wokes wanna ruin the game by adding a bunch of black, gay, and/or trans characters”

Either way, it’s kind of concerning to me that online rightists, many of which would otherwise despise China and make racist comments about Chinese people, are willing to side with the developers on this issue, and parade them as heroes fighting against wokeness and DEI. Perhaps another foreshadowing for the potential Arctic Alliance?

Most of this discussion is happening online though, so a lot of regular people won’t hear about any of this drama, and will probably just enjoy the game. So I guess that’s a minor silver lining

Today let's contrast Western and non-Western 1990s golf video games (I want real-life golf to be phased out for environmental and other reasons). As usual, the Western approach values simulating real-life golf (including a 3D space) as closely as possible:



whereas the non-Western approach values telling a captivating story, with the golf itself (presented proudly in 2D) merely being the setting for the story:



Of course I prefer the latter approach.

What is your opinion on the Pokémon series? It was my first introduction to 2D RPGs, and I really liked the gameplay (which was inspired by the Mother series, as Creatures Inc., one of the development companies of Pokémon, was formerly called Ape Inc and they developed the Mother series), but looking back it did seem the concept behind it was very humanist and exploitative. What do you think?