Craft and heritage get a nostalgic spotlight
The Super Mario 64 interview with Giles Goddard drew attention to team size (about 15 people) and to where the effort went: 99% of the game is concerned with Mario's movement and the camera, and the secret to the feel was fine-tuning through many days of playing. A commenter summed it up: quality takes time. A Total Annihilation rebuild, Citroen's electric 2CV revival, a holography retrospective and The Onion hunting for missing print issues all drew similar warm responses.
Citroen's move also carries a business point. Facing Chinese competition, European brands are leaning on their heritage to sell modern products.
This reads as a counterweight to the AI-slop threads. When output is cheap, people are visibly drawn to things that carry evidence of long, careful human effort.
So what?
A distinctive, deliberately crafted feel and a real origin story are differentiators when competitors can clone features in a weekend. Spend your scarce time on the one thing users feel every minute, as Nintendo did with movement. Heritage is a moat only if the product underneath is actually good.
Read these
The Making Of Super Mario 64 – full Giles Goddard interview (2001)
Total Annihilation, rebuilt for modern computers
Citroen revives the 2CV for an electric age
So, you’d like to sell your print issues of The Onion?
Whatever became of holography? (2011)