Platform Games through the Ages
With New Super Mario Bros poised to spring into action on the Wii, join us as we scroll through the colourful story of platform games.
Once upon a time, in a land that’s since been demolished and turned into luxury riverside apartments, a boy walked into an arcade, put 20 cents into a machine called Space Panic and bludgeoned some aliens. Then he walked home, had his supper and went to bed.
That night, he replayed the game in his dreams, but this time it didn’t stop after all the aliens had been exterminated. By level 2 he could jump, and on the next he was a blue hedgehog.
As he rolled to the edge of the bed, the boy imagined he was a big blob of yellow goo. No, wait! A spaceman, leaping between planets he’d designed himself. With a jolt, he woke up… in the year 2009.
Donkey Kong 1981
Arcade
The first platform game of note was actually Space Panic, a coin-op from 1980, in which you prowled platforms connected by ladders, digging holes for aliens to fall into before battering them with a spade. But Donkey Kong was the first that really caught on, adding jumping and a series of screens (or levels) to the mix. Its star was later named Mario.
Jet Set Willy – 1984
ZX Spectrum
Brit platform games of the ’80s were typically odd, anarchic and humorous, following an agenda set by the mythically elusive Matthew Smith. His classic Manic Miner was in a league of its own but its sequel, Jet Set Willy, was even better. It threw out the linear model for 60 freely roamable rooms of rock-hard morning-after psychosis.
Prince of Persia – 1989
Apple II
US games publisher Brøderbund deserves a ripple of applause for the super-tiny sprites and customisable levels of Lode Runner (1983), but a standing ovation for the original Prince of Persia, which sparked the motion-captured animation systems that underpin most of today’s games. The central character’s moves were “rotoscoped” from footage of creator Jordan Mechner’s kid brother David. The prince was the original tomb raider, embroiled in swordplay, environment puzzles and death-defying leaps over spiked pits.
The remade game is now being turned into a Jerry Bruckheimer movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, out in May.
Sonic The Hedgehog – 1991
Mega drive
In 1991, Sega’s hopes rested on Sonic sticking it to Mario – which he did in style. The obsession with precision jumping and avoiding high falls was gone, replaced by a much faster style of play, where the emphasis was on storming through levels as fast as possible. Who’d have guessed the rivals would one day co-star in the same games?
Pandemonium – 1996
Playstation, Saturn
Pandemonium (along with Crash Bandicoot) plugged a gap between boring old 2D and full-on 3D platform action. This was “2.5D”, where characters and backgrounds were rendered in 3D, but control only worked in a 2D plane. It later turned up on the ill-fated Nokia N-Gage. Now the concept is back in favour with LittleBigPlanet on PS3.
Super Mario 64 – 1996
N64
They said it couldn’t be done – but Super Mario 64 proved you could have a fully 3D platform game that actually worked. In fact, it worked better than any platform game ever. Drawing on the N64’s cutting-edge graphical grunt, it presented a magical, free-roaming world via an unobtrusive camera and fluid control system that became the benchmark for everything that followed. The success of the N64 can be put down to this one game, still well worth playing today.
LocoRoco – 2006
PSP
With its simple control scheme and relentlessly cute design, this surprise hit on PSP marked a return to the frontline for a genre that had spent the past few years in the wilderness. The left and right bumpers tilted the world and rolled your wobbly space hopper thing. The end result was a calming, beautiful and fiendishly addictive game.
Super Mario Galaxy – 2007
Wii
Nintendo had enough faith to launch the Wii without Mario’s help, but it wasn’t long before he popped up to prove he was still king of the swingers. This incredibly inventive romp sees him hopping tiny worlds, with each spherical level representing a completely different challenge. Still the best Wii game, and a masterclass in game design.
LittleBigPlanet – 2008
PlayStation 3
Alongside Spore, LittleBigPlanet was one of the first games to truly exploit user-generated content. Over a million levels have been created and shared by fans, thanks to the game’s willingness to let you get stuck in and rearrange everything. The ability to rate other people’s designs encourages ever more imaginative creations to appear.
Mirror’s Edge – 2008
PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
The nearest thing to real life platform gaming is Parkour, and things went full-circle with Mirror’s Edge: a sci-fi Sonic The Hedgehog with enough high-rise action to send your knees wobbly. You played Faith, a free-running courier evading the goons of an oppressive future regime, leaping across rooftops, slipping through gapsand death-sliding over urban ravines. A slight disconnect between the controls and your on-screen limbs hold it back from classic status.
Text by Simon Munk. This article was taken from the March-April 2010 edition of Stuff .
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