used to have a good time with this, but after playing Rebirth is painful to go back to playing this. Agree that the soundtrack is still superior than Rebirth's, though.
i love this game and spent a lot of time playing it at 5fps on my terrible laptop instead of paying attention to my classes but i'll never forgive it for permanently ruining the word roguelike. i know that spelunky technically did it first but this is where it really started to take off.
was a huge McMillen stan after 100%ing SMB back in 2011, spent all summer waiting for it and not knowing what it will be. still remember how when you unlocked something, the game froze for several seconds, steam achievement popped up and huge notification with some odd writing like CAT'S HEAD UNLOCKED appeared on screen. fond memories!
Coming back to this is so painful after Rebirth. Low framerates, bad room layouts, cheap champion enemies... Why did they have to add a hard mode, I had all the achievements before they did that!
From what I remember Florian Himsl added hard mode by himself to help this version maintain relevance. I don't think he succeeded but gotta respect the hustle
Still haven't played Rebirth btw, this is the only version of TBoI that I know