51–60 of 165 posts
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
The number of times I've used that quote in the last 12 years . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnRdPZjoMKM
> Best read with Danger Zone playing on loopClassically featured on the Angry Video Game Nerd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZTUX1bwJ0
This is one of those cultural memes ("The Top Gun landing was ImPoSsIbLe") that tells on the person saying it for not having read the manual. If you don't read the manual, the landing sequence is pretty much impossible to figure out. If you do, you pretty much get it the first and every time after that.
That said, this is bad game design. A manual should never be needed.
Following that rule puts a hard cap on the game's depth and complexity at the design level.
It's probably why most games today are pretty shallow.
More generally, it's also why most software grew from tools into Fischer-Price toys over the past two decades.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick is just to know the numbers to aim for and ignore the instructions. I had the game and the manual, but I can’t recall if I ever read the manual. I played the game a ton and was maybe 50/50 at the landings, but just followed the on-screen instructions. I could probably have puzzled out the target numbers, but never did (was it in the manual?). Now you can just google the correct values and nail it every time…
> The trick is just to know the numbers to aim for and ignore the instructions. Interestingly, the instructions are actually all correct. If it says, "Left! Left!" for instance you will crash if you don't fix it. I think the disconnect might be that altitude and speed somewhat feedback on each other and it takes time for your inputs to settle, so it always feels like you're chasing the instructions.
This is one of those cultural memes ("The Top Gun landing was ImPoSsIbLe") that tells on the person saying it for not having read the manual. If you don't read the manual, the landing sequence is pretty much impossible to figure out. If you do, you pretty much get it the first and every time after that.
That said, this is bad game design. A manual should never be needed.
There was a lord of the rings PC RPG I played around 1990, I believe, where many of the NPC interactions said to refer to page N, paragraph M. They didn't have the space to store all the text in the game.
This is one of those cultural memes ("The Top Gun landing was ImPoSsIbLe") that tells on the person saying it for not having read the manual. If you don't read the manual, the landing sequence is pretty much impossible to figure out. If you do, you pretty much get it the first and every time after that.
That said, this is bad game design. A manual should never be needed.