T⛦here's something upsetting that too many video games have in common. No, not the $70 price tag. No, not excessive violence and gore, that stuff rocks, actually. And also no to microtransactions. Those don't ro🐠ck, they just aren't what I'm talking about right now. No, I'm talking about balls.
More specifically✃, characters turning into balls. For d♔ecades, we've been dealing with the spherical phenomenon. It first reared its ugly head in the 1980s, and it shows no sign of slowing.
Pokemon Scarlet & 𒁏Violet P🍷rove That Quick Balls Are The GOAT
An ode to my favourite balls
Sonic The Ball Hog
I started thinking about this during a recent session with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic X Shadows Generations, the latest game in a series where just about every playable character can turn into a ball, rev like an engine, and go speeding through loop-de-loops. Sonic, Shadow, Knuckles, Tails, Amy, Cream — they all seem to have hidden motors powering them as they careen into enemies like runaway cue balls. Sonic's transition to three dimensions made this even stranger, as the orb could now not only roll like a self-propelled tire but could 💦also shoot through the sky like a homing missile seeking out enemies. Do these characters have jet engines I can't see?
Sonic is far from the only video game character who can defy the laws of anatomy to go globe mode. Since the beginning of the Metroid series, Samus' Morph suit has༒ allowed her to become boneless, turn into a ball, and rol𓃲l around. Samus is 6'3", yet she can somehow shrink down to the size of a muskmelon and slip through cracks and crevices, effortlessly guiding her newly globular body without any obvious method of sight.
Of course, there’s also Pokemon, which may be the most famous example of this phenomenon. In the games and anime, Pokemon are captured in balls that can fit in the palm of your hand — regardless of the creature's size. Whether for gigantic Gyrados or minuscule Caterpie, one size seems to fit all. And what do they do inside the ball? This is not a new question — people have been 16ꦯ8澳洲幸运5开奖网:exploring the under examined🌜 dark side of Pokemon for decades at this point — but I find it ওodd that this, too, fits the ball theme.
Pokemo♏n seem to be transformed into energy at the moment of capture, as a flash of light accompanies their transfer. Tღhey may even become data, as the games let you store your extra monsters in a PC.
Sphere, There, And Everywhere
Though these are some of the more obvious examples, video games keep returning to the spherical form factor. Wrecking Ball in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch 2 becomes the ball, and the force of this action is so powerful that the game switches to third-person to allow it. Or, in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Monkey Ball, the titular ball entraps the simian stars who are forced to complete r🤡idiculous obstacle courses for their survival.
Then there’s the other variation, where the character uses a ball as a tool. That’s the case in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Katamari Damacy, where the prince protagonist rolls a pile of trash around, gathering more mass as it gains debris. In Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg — from Yuji Naka, the notorious sphere fiend who gave ไus Sonic — the titular character rides around o𒉰n the titular egg, using the ovum as a vehicle.
What is it with this form factor? Why do video games keep returning to the sphere over and over again? Are developers like🐭 wizards, up pondering their orb? Or am I the wizard who has lost myself within the orb’s glassy depths?
Where On Earth Are Metroid Prime 2 And🧔 3 Remastered?
It would be nice to be💧 able to play through the series on Switch before Metroid Prime 4: Beyond hits next year.
