Common wisdom in video game design says that you can’t make death cheap. While you never want the player to quit in frustration, you also want to make them think. If death lacks consequences, players feel no tension. So a bullet wound or bottomless pit usually leads to a reload or level restart.
And then along comes a game like Super Mario Odyssey, where getting mauled by a Tyrannosaurus only loses you 10 coins, which you can go back and recover 30 seconds later. What gives with that?
I have a son who is getting interested in role-playing games. He is also extremely interested in the Mario franchise, to the point where he refers to himself as Mario. His sister gets to be Princess Peach, his mother gets to be Princess Daisy, and I’m stuck as Luigi.
Recently, I decided to fuse these two interests together, resulting in a Super Mario Brothers edition of Pathfinder.
Atari, once a big name in home video games, is coming out with a new console for the first time in decades. I have no reason to believe that the crowdfunded Atari VCS will fail except for one fact: the Atari brand name seems to be cursed, and it has been that way since the 1980s.
Babbling Brooks 