Originally posted by RageyAt this moment, SA-1 is the only feasable solution for this enormous problem.
The actual solution to that is good level design. Admittedly there are times when slowdown is a problem because there are too many non enemy sprites that need to be on screen at once, and with the limitations of the SNES these can't be handled another way, but more often than not slowdown is caused by bad level designers throwing bad amounts of enemies at the screen and hoping that makes it interesting.
Originally posted by KaijyuuSelf-imposed limitations are a more directed form of this. It can force artists and inventors to break out of their regular habits and find new ways of doing things (maybe even better ways of doing things!). Sometimes those limitations actually do get in the way too much and should be done away with, but deciding when that is true is all part of artistic skill.
I have to agree with this. A month or so ago, I created a hack where I limited myself to be only allowed to do things I suck at. Because of this limitation, the hack sucked. However, and more importantly, the things that I did (level design, music, mostly) were the best instances of those things that I've ever done, and I could implement what I learned while working on them in a more interesting hack. Which I think is neat.
Edit: regarding flavor designations: They are pretty stupid. Vanilla means the base SMW game, chocolate means you have shitty taste in ice cream.
I'm mostly being facetious. There needs to be some way to keep the filthy coders out of some of the contests, and flavors seem as good a delineating name as anything else.