koitsu wrote:
(another one that gets me riled up: "Metroidvania")
Unlike low-resolution, which is an aesthetic,
"Igavania" or "Metroidvania" is an actual genre of exploration-oriented platformers inspired by
Metroid and
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It's called "Igavania" after
Symphony co-director Koji Igarashi. I tend to drag out that genre in discussions of mobile gaming on Slashdot.org because unlike more linear platformers, an Igavania can't be adapted to a touch screen by turning it into a continuous runner like
Rayman Jungle Run or
Super Mario Run, treating the whole touch screen as the A Button.
koitsu wrote:
levels too large
Large levels are very possible; it's more a function of memory size and how much you trust the player to take blind leaps.
Blaster Master has sixteen levels, each up to 72 screens (2048x2048 pixels). If you want me to dig up the total count of screens in
Haunted: Halloween '85 and its sequel, I could probably do that.
koitsu wrote:
animations too smooth
That's also a function of memory size. As long as a game actually uses discrete cels with baked
inbetweening, not runtime inbetweening like a Flash game, it's technically practical to animate four characters roughly as big as Super Mario at 12 fps, the same rate that Disney cel animated movies run. The primary limit to a sprite cel double-buffering system like that of
Haunted: Halloween '85 is CHR RAM bandwidth, and a game with CHR ROM or larger CHR RAM (
The Curse of Possum Hollow has the latter) could push that a bit harder.
koitsu wrote:
use/requirement of analog sticks
Optional analog sticks I'm willing to forgive, as 8-bit arcade games were already using pot paddles (
Pong), spinners (
Arkanoid), trackballs (
Missile Command), and the so-called "49-way joystick" (
Sinistar) around that time. The Atari 5200 SuperSystem came with an analog stick, and a trackball was available. Many Super NES games support a trackball, as do two NES games (
Thwaite and
Sliding Blaster).