See, you are right and that’s exactly why I started with “This might be a little on the side of the main topic”…

This is a fantastic timeline if you want to go into details.

Well then… To stay true to the history, we probably would have to go back to Galaxian from ‘79, which introduced 1-UPs / additional lives, bonus stages and player upgrades, plus simple summary / statistics for hits and misses.

Well, when I was writing that, after midnight I will add, I had this feeling that Mario was doing this thing earlier but for me Mario stands as an icon for the first level design overall as a golden standard for introduction to mechanics and really efficient use of memory for data, and one of the first uses of dynamic music… So you are totally right, Mario brought a lot of things, I’ve just played Crash much more.

This might be a little on the side of the main topic but there was always something cool about Crash Bandicoot 100 Apples > 1 Life, and you could grind more to make some levels more forgiving, like semi-adjustable difficulty level based on your previous approach… And later on — warp zones, you get to choose from a few options so the progression has variation.

Another thing that comes to mind, not sure if a first game to do it, THPS for unlocking movies and later cheat codes, modes and characters for finishing the career. Plus the whole gap marathon for Private Carrera.

Oh, and chanting from Oddword where it had various uses, for saving friends or for changing into enemies, or using special abilities. This definitely was something, because I still remember thinking as a kid, “how cool is that this one ability has so many different uses”.

Quake III Arena Certified Noob here, we were gaming too, next to you guys.

My brother called this one: „Hijo de Pluto”

With the original they wanted the immersion part to feel like you are actually racing with toy cars and make everyday / mundane surroundings feel unique from this perspective and scale — I guess they still want this to be the main fun factor / appeal.

As I am now more in “jump in, jump out” mode, CS2 from time to time, but mostly The Hunter (COTW) with friends and family, mostly as a background to talk and hang out, eventually some solo missions if there is more time or on a rainy day.

For me the amazing part was somehow pacing. Every single time I felt like I am starting to cruise through levels, I was knocked down really hard… and my brain exploded more than a few times.

Stunningly, this created one of the best mechanics for me — “if it was too easy, you probably missed a valuable lesson there”.

Arvi created something special, where every bit of that frustration pays off at least tenfold.

Is there any way to add it to App Library without adding it to the home screen? If there is, I don’t need the app at all, probably.

Yeah, I have a tab opened to check it out too, do they have any ios app?

This is one of the most influential games ever for so many different reasons… I am definitely a big fan and have a lot of great memories with the classic one on NES, especially the 1v1 mode. It was a pure joy to play with my uncle, brother, friends or mom, she preferred Battle City tho!

This was long time ago, now if I play, I go for the Tetris Effect — which doesn’t change the main formula, it mostly builds around it or plays with it.

One of — counterintuitively — not so many games that you can just keep playing to get better at them, as your brain rewires itself and conscious decision making process goes into the deep, unconscious brain backroom magic. Of course to be the best there is a lot of technical knowledge or some tactical aspects but the base gameplay loop just keeps you in self-learning mode or more often than not, in the flow state.

Yeah, got this page opened in my browser already, just for the v2. I will definitely play with that and do some testing on what can be achieved with all that.

I still have no clue why I didn’t even consider AHK as a solution or at least a partial solution when it was the solution so many times before already…

Why… Why I haven’t thought about that…

Thank You! I am using my AHK script for so many different things already but I have never thought that I even could map controller inputs to do anything there… When I was rewriting things from v1 to v2 and tidying everything up, I was reading the wiki a lot but not even once saw controller mapping as an option.

Or maybe I just don’t remember?

I always knew AHK was really versatile but it just keeps on coming with yet another pleasant surprise! Plenty of reading ahead of me!

I appreciated your message, like everyone else’s here. It’s still amazing for me that I have my tiny, contrived idea of what I need, a whim, or a problem (that doesn’t exist) on a level of “duh, this button and color scheme doesn’t represent my spirit animal well enough”, and yet — there are people willing to put an effort and their time into replying, sharing their ideas / knowledge with me…

With Steam Input I once had such a twisted situation — circus would be the word to describe it best. It just somehow stopped working after my Windows updated once and made all my USB ports unusable so I had no input at all… and simultaneously in Safe Mode Steam didn’t want to start — so I just couldn’t untick that hellish option, deleting steam made things even worse, it was my second bluescreen on W10 since installation. Luckily some registry magic did the trick and I am never again touching the Steam Input.

I will probably continue using and one day get used to Kodi, but it won’t stop me from searching for a player or something that will have the closest functionality to what I am looking for.

First of all, thank you for your answer! I am starting to have a feeling as if my post sounds to everyone replying like “Kodi bad”… When the main idea was more around “I am researching the subject, need some guidance from people that know more than me and all those top five Kodi alternatives articles”.

From your reply, I have yet another feeling, you sound to me now probably like I sounded over ten years ago talking about how Photoshop is a great software and how many amazing options it has to someone asking me “is there a simple way to rotate / resize my pictures?”…

—

Sure, I am still using Kodi, I even mentioned in another reply that I’ve found quite a cool theme that already feels better for me and I definitely have some more reading and tinkering to do… But the question is still jumping around in my brain, “is there any other / simpler / better way to achieve this effect?” — I hope you understand what I mean by that and why I posted here.

I totally understand Jellyfin being recommended and praised so much. I guess if I will reconsider building a home server / media box etc. — this would be my first direction.

On the other hand, I know I am stubborn, being a minimalist is not helping in this situation. I just wish I could do as much as possible with simplest solutions on my PC and right now Jellyfin feels like an overkill, even Kodi does, if there would be a plugin for VLC to just let me go for play/pause vol up/down with xbox controller I would go for it and delete Kodi immediately.

Dang, I really felt that last sentence.