An Underrated Feature From Original Fruit Ninja
I've been playing a lot of older Halfbrick Games lately, as I've mentioned before, including the original Fruit Ninja and its HD version. Of the three modes in Fruit Ninja, zen mode is probably the one I play the least, but only after playing the older version I noticed a feature that's not part of the game anymore: The best combo screen.
According to Luke Muscat, one of the main design philosophies of lots of Halfbrick's games was to "make dying fun" by having something in the game over screen to take your mind off losing. Fruit Ninja already had this with Sensei's fruit facts, but when the zen mode and combos were added in update 1.2, that mode's time up screen also showed your best combo! It not only said how big the combo was, but also showed all the fruits that were sliced and gave a specific name for each combo! Also the accompanying fruit fact is always about the main fruit of the combo (I think).
I don't know what it is exactly about this feature that makes me like it so much, aside from the general positive feedback. If I had to guess, it's probably because it displays another part of the round aside from just your score, and it's also fun to seek out all the unique combo names!
Combos of just one fruit all have wholly unique names, like all watermelons being Melon Mania, limes being Scurvy Cure, passion fruits being Passion Punch, and coconuts being Lovely Bunch (which used to give you an achievement for seeing). There's some general names for combos of all unique fruits, but if there are a few repeats you do get things like Two Pair and Three of a Kind.
Regardless, I just felt like writing a quick thing about this while it's still in my mind, just to shed some light on a now forgotten feature! Maybe one day I'll learn how to look into the game files to find a list of all names and how they're achieved, but that's not today.
Also, fun fact! Throughout its whole existence the screen actually used the old red apple texture, which was slightly golden (and frankly looks tastier) and was replaced in Update 1.6 for the current one, so that's neat. The only other fruit to receive a change this big was the plum, which coincidentally changed in 1.2, and used to be much more purple.
