Dude, I really wish you could have enjoyed it more. Being one of my all-time favorites on the SNES, I would have recommended Plok as a fun and innovative platformer anytime. I thought of it as very balanced back in the day, like a lot more challenging than the artstyle might suggest (could haven been more childish than amiga-like), but totally doable over a weekend, which was essential to us, when renting Saturday to Monday, because the Sunday wasn't charged with stores remaining closed. I loved the score that you mentioned positively and found bumping around once out of arms and legs hilarious 😂. I actually had a little replay more recently to try it for my console games on stick list and found it really enjoyable, so I can't say the shine wore off. I understand though Plok is actually often missing from fave or even hidden gem lists, so I still want to thank you for digging this out, maybe giving Plok a little more exposure. Having had above average ratings in our german magazines and my friends enjoyed as well back in the day, I'm just wondering if it's more a european preference thing (as said it would totally be imaginable on the Amiga that afaik was less prominent elsewhere) or you had to experience it in contemporary context with all the weird platformers coming out at the time.

@Merkur_Schroeder You are german? That's coolll. I'm from Argentina born in 2002, my family didn't have any money so I played Sega when I was a kid 🤣
I can see why this would be nostalgic to play, it does have a weird vibe with all the stuff happening and as I said sometimes it does have some interesting moments, like the flashback levels. It does have that "european platformer vibe" I can't quite describe well, but regularly it meant some mismatched mechanics for me (like the excessive speed in Zool, though I don't remember if it was european) or lazy and generic art design (the backgrounds of James Pond 2).

However it was by europeans that one of my favourite games from this time was made, Another World, with a great sense of visual storytelling, so this more generic "colorful" world that they create with Plok not feeling like something special to me isn't a fault of being an european platformer and its design descitions, as some exceptions like that one prove the contrary, it's the fault of it looking and feeling like another game from that time I've played, with the added annoyance of the change to gimmicks that are not well implemented in the back two thirds of the game, compare it to how Rare implemented them in Donkey Kong Country games where the controls are less twitchy regarding "vehicles" (animals) for example

@Blowing_Wind I see, thank you. I'm actually born 1980. Seems possible it's a matter of autobiography then and Plok hit me at the right point in time. I've heard btw Sega and especially the Master System in the nineties had a much longer lifespan in South America due to availability. As much as it sure sucks, it can also be nice looking back on having played classics early that you might have missed otherwise. I wouldn't say my family was poor, because they bought a house when I was a kid, but money was an issue because of that, especially in the beginning when the place had to be made over and we needed kitchen, furniture and stuff. So that year when I wished for either a NES or Master System all I got was an Atari 7800, that was still distributed by a german mail-order as if it was relevant. Wasn't much of an upgrade to the 2600 I played lots before, because there were never many 7800 games, but at least it was compatible with 2600 games, that I kept exploring. I then worked over a year, maybe more a year and a half, mowing lawns, sold stuff at flea markets and didn't ask for anything but money as present for birthday and Christmas, so I could finally buy me an Amiga then. Makes you value things differently for sure.

@Merkur_Schroeder Yeah, I don't regret playing Sega, at least most games that came over here were very cool, I still have it with two 117 games in 1 (not repeated) cartridges. Treasure games are a good example of "colorful" games that make use of their visual style to make for really cinematic experiences that really pop up, but it took me a long time when discussing with a friend from Spain to admit that modern indie games generally have much more potential displaying the capabilities of the medium as artistic than when it was treated as toys during its infancy. Now you have games that can be purposely boring (The longing) or painful to complete (That Dragon, Cancer; another one with colorful graphics but which still has its own visual flair complementing the mental deterioration of someone) to communicate something apart from it being fun (Hotline Miami and its disappointing final boss because it needs to put a stop to the psychotic killings of the main character). Plok in comparison (like with Lion King) is just frustrating because it needs to last longer than it should because of design philosophy of the era and not have anyone rent it to completion (Again, unlike Another World from 1991 which you can finish in half an hour without overstaying its welcome despite basing itself in trial and error to communicate the player the hostility of its world). I've even searched about it and that's why it doesn't have passwords and makes use of that weird continue system that sents you backwards and those weird warps that require you to shoot health restoring items counter intuitively
My whole family isn't poor but my branch is, my mother depends a lot from my grandmother and we are using the house of my great grandmother (Latin American family relationships make you have a close contact with your relatives even after independence XD) but I can see how it feels special and rewarding to upgrade your console after working and saving up cash. With the current state of my country, where the peso devaluates each month a lot, even if I worked it would be a chase with no end to buy new technology, our newest computer we bought two years ago was done because of our grandfather's insurance and not because we could afford to change what was a 12 year old computer by 2021. Emulation was my only go to to play games with good performance for a long time
Also, you mentioned the Amiga in the previous comment, I started playing Monkey Island 2. The first one was hilarious and had that inventive combat system where you are a loser and need to get humilliated before you can humilliate others with comebacks, I'm expecting a lot from the sequel 🤣

@Blowing_Wind Amiga with its superior sound technology is a great platform to play Monkey Island, especially for the dynamic iMuse system introduced with part 2. It took a lot of time for me to comprehend its ending though, especially with that bumpy transition when they were trying part 3 without Gilbert. I'm sure he could have made more sense of it, as his later games helped me understand and make my peace with how things are. I still enjoyed part 3, but 4 and 5 are really off that much, I'd say it's not essential to play them before the awesome Return to Monkey Island, that created tension with the old fans not accepting the new art style. And that should be interesting for your theory. Using dithered pixel art today is a choice, whilst back then it has been a limitation. They might have made beautiful art back then, but because it was the only possible way to get an imagination onto the screen. What though would they use today with the available technology?

@Merkur_Schroeder Can you imagine the governor from Phatt island in Monkey Island 2 with realistic graphics? XD

Spittin