Back in the days when sprites were moved around the screen in a linear fashion, with pixel-perfect accuracy often required to overcome single-screen levels and similarly limited enemies, Super Mario Bros on the NES opened up opportunities for creative level design and an equal amount of creativity on the player’s part to navigate them.

This more freeform approach to character movement was mainly provided by a reliance on inertia, giving a constant sense of analogue manipulation of speed providing cautious walking, adrenaline-fuelled running and controlled jumping throughout each of the carefully created levels.

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Today the alsoran would like to talk about one of his greatest inspirations – the eternal optimist – Skeletor.

Beset by the same obstacles almost daily, you can be sure he will be back again next time with a new plan, always 100% convinced that this this time it will work. Regardless of how many times he is thwarted by the “Musclebound Menace”, his resolve is as stiff as ever, and his plans become even more cunning.

His unfortunate run of bad luck can be attributed in part to the incompetent company he keeps. Eternally undermined by these “fools” and “boobs”, only his simultaneous mastery of both bravado and cowardice lend him the warrior-like wisdom of when to fight and when to run to fight another day. Regardless, he is never one to apportion blame.

The alsoran cannot stress enough the importance of a positive outlook when working in game development, god knows he’s met enough cynics already to last a lifetime, and for that he takes his hat off to the anorexic one.

Have we all seen this site hawking promo-shots of female videogame characters entitled Girls of Gaming? And we wonder why girls don’t buy games. Now the alsoran likes the ladies as much as the next guy, but this is Old Videogames at it’s worst, and it needs to be stamped out if we wish to advance the medium beyond the area of pre-pubescent male fantasy.

Well done, Play Magazine. Of course, the alsoran would never add a picture like this just to brighten up the page.