Was it bad game design?

Was it bad game design?

Attached: Sonic-the-Hedgehog-3-Carnival-Night-Zone-barrel-of-doom-featured.png (914x914, 8.21K)

The designer actually publicly apologized for it

It was, no part in the game teaches you how it works, and it falsely teaches what to do when you start jumping when you actually just have to hold down the button

Yeah.

Actually it was great design. The game came with a phone number on the manual to call a paid tipline. I bet they made bank

Isn't there also quite a delay before it actually starts moving?

You just press up and down. Why is this so difficult for Americans?

I never got past this. To this day i havent finished the game, now i know how to get oast it but i dont really care anymore.

Would changing the barrel design to show up and down arrows on it have fixed it?

yes, it's an obtuse filler, no danger, no urgency, just press up and down until you reach the place you have to and then keep playing the game. That barrel really sucks.

it would be an improvement at least.

Just you being bad at video games.

Honestly yeah.
It's not the mechanic that's bad. It's explained in the instruction book and that's all that it needed.

It's just that Barrel specifically that was bad design. It could have been absent and replaced with nothing and the flow of the level would have been better with no drawbacks. If anything you could replace it with a standard spike speed trap and get a better outcome.

A barrel that you're forced to engage with the up/down mechanic should have only been used in a place where it would have led to a secret like a one-up or a giant ring. Using barrels in main routes is fine, so long as you're not FORCED to use it as a barrier.

Why would you do that?

>It's explained in the instruction book
It's not

>game only uses 5 buttons
>try left
>try right
>try jump
>barrel has arrows pointing up and down on it
Only a simpleton would get stuck here desu

Those are diamonds, not arrows. I guess it makes sense that the retarded were able to understand sonic better.

>try jump
It moves the barrel! And the distance grows every time you jump!

You really didn't think this one did you?

>It's not the mechanic that's bad. It's explained in the instruction book and that's all that it needed.
I too remember reading about it and I thought it was in the instruction book, but I went through a bunch of uploaded mega drive and Genesis manuals for Sonic 3 and they don't mention it anywhere. It could have been the ondisc manual for the PC Version that made mention of that.

Wha people don't remember (and what the designer later apologized for) is that the barrel of doom isn't an impassable obstacle at first. The barrel of doom is the third of its kind on the stage. On the first two barrels, you can sort of make the barrel bounce by jumping on it with proper timing, thus clearing the jump. The bad game design part is teaching something to the player that is obviously wrong (jumping on the barrel). So when the player arrives on the third barrel, they think they need to do the same thing. Just this time, it doesn't work.

There you have it. If they made the barrel of doom the first one, and didn't give you enough height to clear it by jumping, people would have tried every button and soon succeed.

Jumping works, but not very well, and is the first thing you'll try.
The input from the up/down is a delayed reaction.
So you very easily "learn" from experimentation that the correct action is jumping, and that it's just shitty to do.

I don't remember this part being hard. I just figured out what to do.