Does Not Illustrate: Unwinnable By Insanity

I honestly don't know where the trope is supposed to be in this. Motion to pull.

I can infer what's happening, but to anyone not at least passingly familiar with the game, it's gonna be lost on them. I'm fine to pull it.

This seems like a situation like the recent That One Puzzle image thread, where adding a before picture (with all of the sand on the left in place) would help.

(Insert Rambling Old Man Monologue about a lack of videogame literacy among our youth forcing us to insert context into our video game images. )

The image seems self-demonstrating as it is. The game is clearly side-view, and the player has pulled out every dirt block in one branch of the level. They wouldn't be able to get out without wall-jumps or a very large jump height - neither of which are assumed, since the page refers to the game being in an unwinnable state.

Edited by iwantedtoaddsomething on Feb 11th 2019 at 10:05:47 AM

I'm just as video-game-literate as you are, I just prefer newer games.

Edited by SomePerson on Feb 11th 2019 at 9:08:27 AM

This image was chosen by IP thread, and it's clear to me that the player's trapped themselves. I say keep, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Edited by rjd1922 on Feb 11th 2019 at 10:27:17 AM

Pull. Not seeing how the player is dooming themselves in the pic.

Keep with a comparison pick showing why player is stuck.

Pull if no one comes up with a comparison panel to use.

This one's always looked unillustrative to me, as well. Pull regardless of replacement.

I'm definitely in favor of keeping this pic, for the reasons stated x6.

I think we can add a "Before" for comparison too.

I think a "before" shot would be redundant in this case. The right side of the image illustrates what the left side looked like before just fine.

But people unfamiliar with the game, like myself, wouldn't know that. We can at least try to come up with a comparison pic to see how it looks.

You can easily infer that the left side was filled with dirt just like the right side is. You can see the player character still clearing the dirt out.

Besides, a comparison shot would require the images to be either side-by-side or stacked. Side-by-side is out since images can't be any wider than 350px, and the base image is already at 256px, while stacking the images would make it over 700px tall, which is obviously too big.

Keep current.

I'm also unfamiliar with the game. I can kinda see that the player seems to be trapped somewhere, and assume based on the page title that that shouldn't have happened. But I definitely didn't understand anything beyond that until I read the other suggestion thread.

Btw, the image on Didn't Think This Through tries to illustrate the same trap-yourself scenario, likewise with a questionable result.

Keep. Only played 1 to 2 levels of the original and I can still tell what's going on.

There's a difference between (1) making a one-time lapse in judgement that would get you a powerup if successful, and (2) spending a minute digging up sand to put yourself in a position where you can't leave, can't kill yourself by touching an enemy (or by the timer running out, but see below) and had no reason for doing so, since the door needed to progress through the level was visible on the other side the entire time.

And this is why I made the "video game literacy" comment. I don't expect everybody to have played Super Mario Brothers 2 (for example, I don't expect people to recognize that the timer won't mercy-kill the player), but I sort of expect people to have enough familiarity with the gameplay of 2d platformers to recognize that the player in question has been wasting time digging up sand on the left when the door they need has literally been in plain sight the entire time. (Even if you think that's an entrance rather than an exit, the obvious way out is to go up, not to keep digging.)

Edited by thok on Feb 11th 2019 at 8:15:43 AM

I guess my problem is that I'm having a hard time even seeing that the player has dug themselves into that position. Like, is the fact that it looks like there's dirt under Peach meant to be her digging?

Yeah, the digging wasn't super clear to me either. Especially since the dirt in her hand isn't the same color as the other blocks. I was also confused about how she got down there in the first place. Looking at all the blocks above, the area seemed pretty sealed off.

You are assuming too much. Not everyone will have played these kind of games and will be enable to understanding what's going on in that pic.

There's a reason my original suggestion was to add a "before" picture that would show some of the context that I mentioned in my comment.

Pull or add a "before" shot; I'm defaulting to the former unless someone posts the latter. I'm familiar with the game, but this thread shows that not everyone is, and Fan Myopia is bad.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 20th 2019 at 2:58:21 PM