The year is 1999. My best friend has exasperatedly urged me to come over to finally play the then universally proclaimed greatest game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I sit down to play it. I move Link around Kokiri Forest and eventually reach the Deku Tree. It's time for me to go home. Before I leave, I try to match my friend's unending enthusiasm for the game. It is only on the way home when I am able to admit my lie. I did not like the game.

For kids whose introduction to 3D video games was Super Mario 64, I imagine I was not alone in feeling underwhelmed by the new top dog of the medium. Controlling Link is functional but not inherently enjoyable unto itself. I did not move Link for the joy of moving Link. I moved Link in order to get him to the next objective - be it a puzzle, combat encounter, NPC, or some other curiosity.

This stuck in my craw for nearly a decade. How could a game in which you control a player character be the greatest of all time if the act of moving that player character was not in and of itself interesting or fun?

After broadening my tastes, however, I clicked with the game. I learned to appreciate the environments, the puzzle design, the world design, the puzzle-box dungeons, the translation of A Link to the Past's tropes into 3D, the depth the time travel mechanic adds to inhabiting a 3D space, etc. I surmised that those elements could not be so accomplished had the development team focused on creating expressive movement a la Mario. It was a necessary compromise.

Playing Pseudoregalia reveals that compromise wasn't necessary at all! Any genre of game where you control a player character can have interesting and engaging movement, and it would be all the better for it.

So yeah, 9 year-old me was totally right. Thanks, Pseudoregalia.

For over a quarter century, game enthusiasts have contended with a necessary evil when choosing a 3D Platformer to play - do they want to relish in deeply creative movement in a loosely defined sandbox, or would they like to tackle tight, bombastic course clear levels with simply functional controls?

With Penny's Big Breakaway, this necessary evil has been rendered unnecessary. There is now a 3D Platformer with some of the best movement in the genre married with imaginatively curated course clear level design.

It's a great day for fans of jumping along the Z-axis.

Today's video game discourse is clogged with such anal nitpickery over the localization of the written word when it should instead direct some of that energy towards the localization of pixels to polygons. Maybe Celeste's precision platforming can make the jump from pixels to polygons, but this game jam doesn't make a strong case.

We take for granted the witchcraft required to convey depth on a two dimensional screen until we’re confronted with something whose attempts to do so fall totally flat. As a 3D platformer veteran who recently delved into the wonderful world of Super Mario 64 rom hacks (including some light kaizo stuff) that are much harder than this, I don't remember the last time I under and over shot my jumps so frequently. Flatly shaded floating platforms hovering over a flatly shaded skybox are just that - flat.

If Maddy and co. ever decide to revisit this to flesh it out into a full release, they should probably give that 1996 interview with the Super Mario 64 dev team a read (or re-read). https://shmuplations.com/mario64/