The Standard Mario Biome Checklist Theory | Semi-Ramblomatic

The "green meadow" as a home is kind of turned on its head in Final Fantasy X. The game starts with an epic colosseum battle and a flooded temple level, but the Calm Lands, basically a big meadow, come very late in the game as the game approaches its final act.

These explorations are always fun. I wonder what the urban equivalent is (sewers-slums-docks-high rise-fancy final boss penthouse suite)?

There's a lot that can be said about video game world biomes, and has been in various places, but it's a fun thing to discuss. More than many other genres, the particular environments have a way of defining and characterising the narrative and experience, and I think one of the interesting parts is how different ones can be used depending on the genre, the tone and even the particular franchise. Mario as a default is quite understandably as good a starting point as any, and Zelda his close genre buddy, but I think it's worth looking at the contrasts. Donkey Kong, for example, has a history of games starting out in the jungle, literal Jungle Japes as it were, to emphasise they are not a particularly foreign or hostile environment to the big gorilla but the place he calls home and is comfortable in; it's later on he has to deal with the twists; the underground, the ice and fire, and industrial or more built up environments like pirate ships of his nemesis is where he finds himself truly challenged. There's a fair few other franchises that start out in environments where the main character is more at home, and more conventional environments are introduced later with different twists to emphasise that they are no longer in safe and familiar territory. Sometimes things come full circle, with a final world that's at least outwardly an idyllic and comfortable place, sometimes literally the same location that the game began in or a deliberate reflection of it. Mario's done this a few times itself, like Peach's castle being the final area of Bowser's Inside Story. The finale in general can be done in quite a lot of ways, sometimes coming after a 'lava world' or similar hostile area to express a particular aesthetic of the antagonist if they aren't a Bowser type comfortable with molten rock. I'm sure people can provide some examples of unexpected yet thematically appropriate finales.

Awwww I missed the transition sound effects :D

Maybe casino world in the sonic games could represent the hero succumbing to their hereditary gambling addiction