Things devs should be punched in the face and crotch for

[Stark]

I think Shovel Knight did the boss run thing correctly.

Indeed. I also love them at the end of the Mega Man games.

I like them thematically more than gameplay wise.

[Tanooki]

Developers should be cockpunched and blackeyed over...
1 - Abusing the HDD in consoles
2 - Microtransactions
3 - Day One DLC (including it already on the disc with a $ unlock like Capcom did)
4 - Only selling part of a game, charging for the rest more than usual
5 - Watered down ports/playing favorites on consoles if not exclusive

1: Buy a game today, you're a beta tester. It isn't finished, it doesn't work right, and you end up waiting 15min or 1+hrs to 'get ready' with patches after the install.

2: Enough said, some are optional (cool) some aren't (understandable on design) and many are predatory paywalls.

3: Great you made a $60 game, then hid formerly included content for an up charge

4: (Again) great you made a $60 game, then you released part of it, to then charge more than it would have cost at retail to get what would have and should have been on the game in prior years (A few years back Tiger Woods Golf came with like 2 courses instead of the usual 20+, EA charged like $5 a course and the game ended up being like $300 at 5x the going $60 rate. Even Nintendo did it with Mario Golf 3DS leaving out a course and a few players, the charge for the other 20% of the game was $5-10 over MSRP.)

5: I get there are budgetary reasons, but leaving out entire modes despite a network being there, or the right parts, or whatever because it's easier to cut corners on one system over another because either total projected sales numbers(makes sense) or being a fanboy favorite (no sense) is just wrong. You punish people for the hardware they got.

Bonus gripe, not really worth a beating of sorts -- Unnecessary backtracking of any kind in a game. Is it to collect a 100 pieces of garbage to open a door to do it again? Having to re-run over the same area X times because false game length? Stuff along those lines are very annoying and you either love it or hate it.

[Exhuminator]

Artificial longevity of any sort usually aggravates me. Definitely backtracking to collect keys to open a door kills all my fun (why I stopped playing Metroid Prime 2).

[ElkinFencer10]

Call of Duty's stint on the Wii is a perfect example of your 5th point. I totally understand watering down the graphics significantly and size of the matches - that makes sense with hardware restrictions - but leaving out online multiplayer ENTIRELY on the Wii? If the PS2 could handle online multiplayer in Call of Duty, the Wii definitely could (considering that it DID with the later CoD releases). Actually, Nintendo's consoles are usually the ones to get lazy ports with features cut out for absolutely no discernible reason.

[Tanooki]

Good point and I agree. They converted Medal of Honor Heroes 2 from the PSP as well, and EA actually went above and beyond on that one adding a 32player multiplayer setup for that title and it worked very smooth. Activision/Treyarch was just being straight up lazy and rude with that stunt. I don't play it really that way so I didn't midn but I know a lot of people did. I only had World at War on there until I got it later on better hardware which I bought because it was a killer WW2 campaign years after they abandoned what they did best.

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[ElkinFencer10]

Good point and I agree. They converted Medal of Honor Heroes 2 from the PSP as well, and EA actually went above and beyond on that one adding a 32player multiplayer setup for that title and it worked very smooth. Activision/Treyarch was just being straight up lazy and rude with that stunt. I don't play it really that way so I didn't midn but I know a lot of people did. I only had World at War on there until I got it later on better hardware which I bought because it was a killer WW2 campaign years after they abandoned what they did best.

I didn't get Call of Duty 3 until they took the Wii online servers down, and I don't play online much anyway, so it was really just the principle of it that irked me. I agree, though, about World at War - while it wasn't as good as their first two games or some Medal of Honor games IMO, it was a damn good WW2 shooter.

[Stark]

5 - Watered down ports/playing favorites on consoles if not exclusive

This one is a little unfair, there may be many reasons that a game is stronger on one console or another, especially with retro games. You have to choose a platform as a lead platform, it is too difficult to try and be partisan about it, with the way games are developed.

[ElkinFencer10]

5 - Watered down ports/playing favorites on consoles if not exclusive

This one is a little unfair, there may be many reasons that a game is stronger on one console or another, especially with retro games. You have to choose a platform as a lead platform, it is too difficult to try and be partisan about it, with the way games are developed.

It's definitely not fitting for retro games, but with modern games, the only differences should be visuals in cases of different hardware capabilities (Modern Warfare 3 on Wii vs PS3, for example), peripheral based (Zombi on PS4 and Xbox One lacking ZombiU's local multiplayer, for example), or copyright based (the extra Nintendo costumes and modes on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on Wii U vs the Xbox 360 and PS3, for example).

[isiolia]

In some cases it still may not be a choice by the developer though. Platform holders may have policies in place, or may have built their service differently, impacting ports to their platform outside of what could technically be achieved.