In some cases, however, this devotion to the source material is a double-edged sword. While it’s clearly a heartfelt and faithful recreation of the original game, it could have made use of a few simple mechanics that have become somewhat standardized over the past 30 years. Forcing us to grind for randomly dropped items, for instance, may have been an acceptable way to extend playtime in 1990, but in 2017 it seems arbitrary and annoying that I’m not able to purchase them in shops, especially since I only need them to reach one boss fight. On a technical level, Lizardcube may have updated player hitboxes and rebalanced some physics issues from the original, but there were moments (especially in some boss battles) where it seemed my attacks were failing to land at random, regardless of how well-timed or on-target my strikes were. These issues weren’t egregious enough to make me cry foul or rage-quit, but they did remind me of just how good we have things in the modern age of platformers.
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