the highly defined aesthetics of most of the game's updates definitely weren't any more than an afterthought by rob. during that initial year of consistent updates I'd imagine it was mostly a lot of "here's a good spot in my development to release this chunk of features, hit send", and very little "this is the precise way I want the game to look". and yet we've ended up in a community steeped enough in nostalgia that update numbers have become visual shorthand in their own right, these moments in history forever crystallized and internalized by creators as looking a particular way.

you probably have a very similar mental of image of 1.9 as everyone else, despite the diversity and wonder of the update, and you're probably sick of what you see because it's been drilled down so hard over the last 10 years (the way it shows up in the portfolio of every design creator trying to "retvrn to stripped-down arrangements" like they're taping for MTV unplugged). we are obsessed with the affects of that update probably a hundred times as strongly as rob ever was. and 2.0's awkward middle-child-syndrome vibe has been making similar waves, indicating it's not anything really special about 1.9 but rather a general affinity for the romantic past

you ever think about how it could've all been so different? if the move trigger was a thing in 1.1 rather than 2.0? if we didn't get access to the Newgrounds audio library until 2.2, 10 years later? if different block sets had been entirely rearranged and folded into completely different updates? imagine how one or two subtle changes in an update, a delayed feature here, a rushed feature there, would've radically altered the fabric of everything, perhaps uprooting the entire lineage of creating as we know it.

spanish love songs is a brief wormhole peering into that alternative timeline. seldom have I seen a stronger examination into the butterfly effect than here

i really love this level. music sync and design tend to be my favorite qualities/styles and seeing it expressed here using limited types of objects while still feeling very finished and purposeful makes me happy