It feels like a long time since platform games ruled the gaming world. The rise of ‘mascot games’ in the 1990s and 2000s saw 2D and then 3D platformers dominate the best-selling charts, with Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon to name but a few amongst the most beloved franchises of their respective eras.
And although platform games have had their occasional resurgence in recent years, they’ve often felt novel or nostalgic – rather than the envelope-pushing blockbusters they represented several decades ago.
Indeed, search Google for ‘platform games’ and you’ll see a wealth of articles – dating back to the early 2010s – proclaiming the death of the genre. But is that a fair assessment – are platform games truly dead? To understand this question and its possible answers, we will examine the past, present and future of the genre.
The Prehistoric Era
Gaming, as a medium, has come a very long way since its unassuming origins of Pong, all the way back in 1972. Most games now cost about as much – in some cases more – money to make than your average A-list blockbuster movie. However, it hasn’t always been like that. Games originally, after Pong, entered a strange ‘neither here nor there’ phase in their lifespan and innovated the ‘platform game’ genre. This tended to be medium-cost and high-effort in development.
The platform game is a sub-genre of action gaming. While in action gaming, the player has to survive enemies and hazards primarily, platform games add a level of strategy, timing, and puzzling to the proceedings.
The first ‘true’ platform game was 1980’s Space Panic. In it, the player was tasked with climbing ladders and digging holes in which the enemy aliens would then fall into. The game lacked the jump function, which would go on to pervade the genre to this day, but the core mechanics were in place for games like Donkey Kong to enter the market and succeed. Speaking of which…
The Birth of the Platformer
Donkey Kong entered the market in 1981 from a company mostly known for arcade cabinets and trading cards. Now an industry legend, Shigeru Miyamoto saw his career debut as the lead game designer for the concept of Donkey Kong with a budget of $267,000. A budget which, if seen today, would lend the game ‘indie game’ status. Donkey Kong, in no small part, saved Nintendo of America as it recovered from a series of license acquisitions, which failed before negotiations really began. Donkey Kong also introduced us to the Mario concept, which would later go on to immortalize the genre as a whole.
The concept of an unassuming character being tasked with a world-changing journey is a tale as old as time. In actual fact, it is realized in the vast majority of Greek epics and, later, Joseph Campbell’s A Hero’s Tale, which is still used to this day to structure and retell narratives throughout different mediums.
Platform games may not be the first thing one thinks of when considering an immersive and engaging narrative, but very often, the combination of puzzle-solving, hectic traversal, and full-screen visibility of the environment can help long before it hinders. This unfortunately didn’t translate into the market at this time for the future and one thing is for sure by this point, platform games are dead.
The Decline of Platform Games
In recent years, we have seen platform gaming take a decline in the main market due to the success of epic world-scale games such as Assassin’s Creed and military-simulation shooter games like Call of Duty. Games like these use open-world environments or mechanics to simulate a real-life experience. They tend not to focus too much on narrative by gameplay, as this is often delivered in the form of cut-scenes, etc.
However, these games did come to prominence during the last great platform days, which offered up such platform classics as Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Spyro the Dragon, Jak and Daxter, and the incredibly irreverent and silly Abe’s Odyssey. To say that the genre died at that time would be correct inasmuch as the genre hibernated, cocooned itself within a self-replicating environment, and went on to evolve into something much grander.
This lull in platform games can be laid solely at the feet of the PR teams behind big releases. Whenever a new Halo, Call of Duty, or Assassin’s Creed is due to be released, the marketing/hype train is fueled, aimed, and released straight into our brains. This does not happen when a new platform game is due to be released. Often now, indie spaces are where the majority of platform games originate. Nintendo still releases Zelda and Mario almost religiously to a zealous crowd of nostalgia-chasers, but new and interesting IPs are few and far between.
The Rebirth of the Platformer
The rebirth of the platformer didn’t happen in isolation, but it did happen with a bang. Within only a few short years, the market had been flooded with games like Limbo, Super Meat Boy, and Celeste. These titles were by no means the only platform games making the comeback worthy of the phrase, but what made these special is the lack of pedigree. It is easy to think that the likes of Ratchet and Clank and Crash Bandicoot may have been at the forefront of this return to form, but nothing could be further from the truth. The return was being headed up by indie darlings and passion projects alike.
The newer platform games understood the world of old and decided to take it upon themselves to innovate; after all, you can’t reinvent the wheel, as this often leads to you running yourself over. The stage was set for the gimmick-filled decade that followed.
Platform games have always had longevity due to their – often – complex nature and demand for split-second timing, but this was entirely different. The newer platform games were introducing things like permadeath, ever-changing levels, and even time-control mechanics; this certainly wasn’t the platform scene of old, and game developers knew this. They knew something had to change. The tried-and-tested method would no longer work, and gamers would demand an entirely different experience. Enter the first-person platformer wholesale.
The Regeneration of the Platformer
Just like The Doctor from the Doctor Who TV series, the platform game genre was regenerating into something else. Not worse, not better, just… different. The new platformers had started to include open-world gameplay and a first-person perspective. Any gamer worth their salt will be more than happy to discuss their opinion on first-person platformers, and more often than not, it won’t be a positive opinion. First-person platformer games suffer due to the player being unable to contextualize their movements and time jumps, etc., correctly. Alas, the market exploded with these games.
It was now more than obvious that the platformer had receded into the background, worked on its image, had a long hard think about its future, and returned stronger than ever.
Where Are We Now?
This brings us to today. The market is no longer saturated with just one type of game any longer, yet the platformer remains a firm fan favourite. One could argue that one of, if not the most popular online PvP games, Fortnite is, at its heart, a platformer. It relies entirely on player-controlled navigation through an ever-changing world of hazards and dangers while ensuring the player’s survival from PvP combat. Fortnite took the concept of platforming, melded it with the concept of Minecraft, and sprinkled it with Quake. What is left is a multi-billion dollar game product that people flock to in their millions on a daily basis. Platform games are back; they’re just not the ones you remember from when you were younger.
What Next for Platform Games?
Looking to the future, the outlook for platformer games is strong. People still regularly play the original Mario games, speedrun Sonic The HedgehogThe Best Modern Sonic the Hedgehog Games, and dabble in the likes of the unlikely hero of the platformer, Broforce. So where do we go from here? That remains to be seen, but out of the thousands of gaming genres, platformers seem to be the most willing to change. With this in mind, I am extremely excited for what comes next because we can guarantee it will be worth every second we wait.
I hope you have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane and the musings towards the end. Most gamers began their gaming lives in platform games, and they hold a place dear in all of our hearts, so I anticipate the next big platformer to change the rules again. And I wait patiently for the day that a new mechanic can breathe life into this ever-changing environment.