I’ve noticed a big upswing in various games getting the randomized item treatment. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a lot of A Link to the Past and Super Metroid randomizer runs as of late. Of which, the latest Entrance Shuffle mode for A Link to the Past is stupidly fun to watch. If you haven’t watched one of the Entrance Shuffle runs, you should seriously consider giving one a watch in the not so distant future! Yet, these are not the only games that now have a random item location mod.
Recently I was watching one of my favorite Dark Souls streamers playing two different types of mods for Dark Souls 1. There was an item randomizer run where the game had all the weapons, armor, and items randomized. So you never knew if he was going to get some sort of badass weapon from a boss, or if he was about to get trolled with some crappy item that really wouldn’t help him out.
The second run he did, he used a mod that made it so every three hits he scored on enemies/bosses would “level” him up. It would also assign some random gear to his character and level his stats appropriately to use said gear. If he got hit, he was back to level 1 with absolutely no gear outside of some basic weapon. This run was extremely entertaining to watch due to just how much skill went into trying not to get hit to lose an overly powerful setup.
Some other notable randomized games I’ve watched have been Mega Man X1, Pokémon Red, and even Super Mario Bros. Currently, all these randomizer runs exist due to mods or changing some code in the ROM that the people are playing. Yet, it has me wondering if we will soon see a developer take note of how much fun these types or games are and actually develop a game around this idea of randomizing where items appear in the game. I think it would be fun while adding a new level of challenge to video games. Hmmm, I wonder if SpeedGaming has anything on right now!
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