The Big 20 Feedback

Okay, so for those who don't want to sit through 2.5 hours of stream including what was probably a 15-minute digression into Wikipedia culture and history, I'll quickly post the highlights of my feedback here. If there's an official feedback form later, I'll definitely post there as well, but wanted to get my thoughts down before I forgot. Some of it I've posted here already, some of it not so much.

For some context on where I'm coming from, I was one of the 10-20 hour a week practicers, and I ended up 16th in a race with over 100 people. I don't know if that's enough to consider me in the "top-tier" of people who do Big 20s, but I'm definitely in the larger "took it seriously" bracket; any of my feedback should thus be filtered through that lens. I bring it up because one fo the struggles of a Big 20 is "Who does it cater most towards?"

Overall, great Big 20, fantastic list of games. Even the games I didn't like were "fine" in terms of absolute quality, and given that the games were in, I felt the goals were pretty appropriate in terms of length.

My main complaint about "The Big 20" versus individual goals is that end times weren't consistent from game to game, even for games that would have similar logical ending points. For instance, SMB3 and Mega Man ended on "Grab the trinket". Cool! But Castlevania, which also has a trinket to grab after beating a boss, did NOT end on "Grab the trinket".
Okay, fair enough, Castlevania is also logically similar to Ninja Gaiden, which ended on a fadeout after the countdown was complete. Except...Castlevania didn't end there either, instead ending when the timer hit 000 (Notably before the hearts began counting down).
I understand that part of this was a desire to end times how the runners of the individual games did it, but I ended up making a "cheat sheet" of when timing began and ended for the games due to my confusion as to which end goal was which. I fortunately ended up not needing it.

The other big complaint, which was already addressed, was the wording of the Zelda 2 end timing, which the attempted clarification about experience only made worse. In hindsight, "When the second jewel you place reaches the top of the altar and the jingle begins playing" would have been better wording. I think the suggestion about having pictures for end times where possible will help this going forward.

I already mentioned it in the Discord, but I did like the "roller coaster effect" of the difficulty. The second half was overall harder than the first, but there were never more than two punishing games in a row before a respite in my eyes. As a result of that, I was grateful for the placement of DuckTales and Rescue Rangers in particular. I wouldn't mind seeing them back as "breather games" in the future, even though I don't think there's much else you can do with them from a goal standpoint (Maybe Ducktales on Normal?).

Also, I did love Mega Man 2 as the final goal/"victory lap". That was great. Just want to point that out.

I'll try not to complain too much about games/goals, understanding that this was a People's Choice. Even the games I didn't like so much (Hi Darkwing Duck! Hello Kid Icarus!), I thought the goals for them were fine given that the games were in--I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wouldn't mind some kind of "New Game +" goal for Kid Icarus, starting at 1-2 ultra-powered up from a previous playthrough. Guess I'll need to actually vote next time around.

I understand some of the complaints about the unique goals meaning they have limited utility in learning the actual runs of the games. I'm not bothered by this, since I view the Big 20 as a challenge in itself, not as a "speedrunning gateway".

But in short, I'm thrilled the Big 20 is back, and eagerly look forward to the next one.