We've already established that Jason Rohrer from Arthouse Games is a big of a big Braid fanboy, but his interview with Braid creator Jon Blow is handy because it lets Blow talk about the complex and interesting influences behind the game.

This bit is particularly thought-provoking: "I'm on a few mailing lists for game designers; some time later, on one of those, a discussion arose about Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Blinx: The Time Sweeper. Both of these games provide the ability for the player to rewind events, like rewinding a movie in a VCR. One aspect of the discussion was that both these games used rewinding as a gimmick---your ability to use it was limited for when you collected power-ups or whatever. A very opinionated friend of mine, Casey Muratori, said that all games should give you the ability to rewind without limitation. In a lot of games we already effectively have that---the ability to save anywhere and then reload that save point -- it's just a much, much more inconvenient interface."

Blow continues: "This was a controversial position, because if players can just rewind any time they want, then consequence and tension seem to go out the window. So there was this big argument with everyone taking a different position. Nobody actually tried implementing the unlimited-rewind in a game, which in retrospect seems kind of weird (but not too weird, because the people on the list tend to be pretty busy.)" So that's what Blow did, x10, in his game, which will be released eventually at some point, haha!