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« on: May 28, 2014, 07:26:27 PM »
LoveTrap was released in early 2010, and updated through early 2011. The readme is very thorough and details a lot of information about the game including its version history ("1.03: Introduction of BGM of a boss was too long, add a skip function. You can press the S key during prelude." lol) and plot ("Story: no").
The design of giant Kid fight is ingenious, in my opinion. There is a ton of pattern recognition and strategy that is involved, which seems surprising considering how much the boss is based in randomness. The more you play this boss, the more you realize there is virtually no situation that isn't possible for an adequately skilled player. You go from saying "That situation was impossible!" to "Oh crap, I see what I should have done there" to finally developing a maneuver out of the situation in question. Any combination is a pattern that can be learned. This is the basis of the fight: learning how to overcome simple patterns at increasing speeds under the restraint of hopping between water bullets.
I have long stated that there is no other video game boss with the difficulty of the second Kid without resorting to bullshit design (like covering the screen in absurd amounts of bullet hell, which is the go-to for high level challenge). Sure Happil 2 is hilarious and fun to watch, but as a serious high-level challenge it's obviously pure bullshit.
Anyway, I agree with Lemon that the second Kid is beatable with hundreds of hours of practice using savestates to learn the strategy at each segment of the battle (the strategies change significantly as the apples gain speed, even within a single phase of the battle). I'm undecided on whether Nekoron is telling the truth, but I'm inclined to believe him as the design of his games suggests to me that he is a very serious gamer who puts incredible effort into creating and testing challenges. Should we try probing him further (how long did it take, his approach to practice, etc.)? If he's still active online, Nekoron's email address seems to be ねころんにじゅうはちあっとまーくほっとめーるどっとしーおーどっとじぇーぴー (I have no idea how Japanese email works at all).
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