Clu-Clu Land

Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Puzzle – Action 

Over the years, video game design has changed. Back in the Nintendo games, game design was a crapshoot – if you had an original idea, you might be on to the next big thing, or you might be about to discover, to paraphrase Edison, one of the 10,000 ways it does not work. Point being that, in the Nintendo days, many games were released with game mechanics that, in the modern era, would immediately end up on the cutting room floor.

It is now generally understood, for example, that game controls have to be intuitive. This can be a game breaker for nearly any game, but if the controls are sufficiently counter-intuitive, it can contribute to fake difficulty. If it goes far enough, however, it can become the entire game.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present “Awkward Controls: The Game”

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