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Comment by tiltowait | Hacker News Reader

I figured that one out only by luck (I got bored and decided to spin dash), and only after multiple lives lost due to running out the clock.

I don’t think it’s even supposed to be that hard, but the way the platform bounces down if you jump on it gives you the entirely wrong idea as to the solution.

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That and the fact that it gates progress entirely using a mechanic that had, up to that point, never really been introduced -- you might have noticed it on accident, but the whole design of the game (go fast from left to right, jumping sometimes) and, as you mentioned, the fact that it bounces when you jump on it, lead you to have no idea how to solve it correctly.

My spicy take is this: that particular obstacle is not "they upped the difficulty", but is instead "they designed this poorly."

Well sonic games are… weird. The actual experience of playing them blind is frankly very poor. You want to go fast but you’re constantly stopping because it’s too difficult to play smoothly without prior knowledge of the level. The levels aren’t designed to be particularly challenging to complete; they’re designed to be challenging to master and complete “quickly”.

Most of what we think of for evaluating levels is from the ethos of mario. Which is probably the right call as most people don’t want to play platformers levels multiple times.

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