It's the most asymmetrical symmetrical map you ever did see! While each player has a perfect mirror on the board, the difference between players 1 and 2 and players 3 and 4 is staggering.
In your typical 4-player free-for-all map, a player only really has to worry about fighting two neighbors at any one time; the player opposite them is much further away and has their own things to worry about. The goal of this map was to defy that by making the map in a narrower diamond shape, pushing two players on opposite corners closer together so that they're in fightable proximity to every other player on the board at the same time! Of course, this by necessity pushes the remaining two players even further away from each other, creating a situation where two players have to deal with 3 foes at once while the other two only have to deal with 2. Most of the map's asymmetry comes from giving the two players who are stuck in the middle an array of advantages to help compensate for having an extra front to worry about versus the players on the edges.
This map is named after the song "Hard Times" by the Jetzons, which is widely considered to have been repurposed as the background music for Sonic the Hedehog's 3's Ice Cap Zone.
