platform games

NES

Wayne’s World

In typical THQ fashion, the level design is less than extraordinary. On the first level, for example, Garth literally just has to walk to the right while firing his gun in order to reach the finish, despite the fact that there is an upper level of bounceable drums to travel across if he wished to. Other stages feature precision-jumping parts, annoying fly-over type enemies who bomb the character, and occasional items dropped to replenish the health bar. This is a bare-bones, minimalist, very basic platformer effort, and tellingly behind the times for a 1993 release. There are also amusing screens between the levels where Wayne and Garth engage in witty banter.

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Game BoyHandheld Games

Castlevania 2 Belmont’s Revenge

There are lots of things to like about this Castlevania. First of all, you can start the game from four different levels so the game won’t feel very linear for once. The gameplay is your usual kinky wiping and jumping procedures and the enemies will be more familiar if you played the first gameboy Castlevania. The game does bring out an enjoyable enough experience so that you will have the will to come back for more. The game is not that easy so it’s suggested for moderate players that won’t get mad and throw the gameboy against the wall when they get their asses handed to them.

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Sega Master System

Penguin Land

Luckily, with his eggs trapped on apparently such a hostile planet, Overbite is free to walk and jump around the rounds to his hearts content. A vast majority of the blocks are blue ice blocks. Overbite can break the ice blocks beneath him by pecking them and the egg can then be pushed through the gap. Be careful though – the egg can’t fall more than three blocks downwards without breaking, so you’ll have to take some time to consider which blocks to break.

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Interviews

The Interview: Jonathan Biddle: Curve Studios

I think it’s been used just plenty! There’s definitely been a resurgence in the classic platformer in recent years. If we look at remakes or retro revivals such as Bionic Commando Rearmed, Rocket Knight, Mega Man 9 and 10 there’s a trend to bring back exactly those kinds of games experiences. Mario is still around in his classic 2D form as recently as last year in New Super Mario Bros Wii, Contra was recently released on the Wii, Hard Corps Uprising is a classic game in the same vein, the new Rush N Attack also leans heavily on the retro style.

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TurboGrafx-16

Dragon Egg

RPG’s for example, are pretty much rendered totally unplayable as you might imagine, but sometimes even relatively simple platform games like Dragon Egg can’t be fully understood either. The game is perfectly playable and features little text beyond the intro sequence, and yet the premise behind the game remains a mystery. It seems some terrible creatures were summoned by a dark power and let loose upon a peaceful land but I couldn’t be certain. All I can tell you for sure is, there’s a little girl and she has a backpack, and nestling atop this backpack is an egg.

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Indie Games

SNES inspired action platformer Explodemon

“I’d been a games designer for many years, but had always wanted the ability to prototype ideas myself. I decided to learn Game Maker and started making a platform game about an exploding man. After working silently away for a few months in my spare time, I let a few people at Curve play Explodemon! and it became obvious that I’d managed to create something very fun.”

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The Music Hall

Super Castlevania IV OST

If you haven’t checkout my review on Super Castlevania IV go see it now. SCV4 was one of my favorite games on the SNES and it featured a ton of great tracks. The music sounded great for even today, but back then it was really incredible. The game features a number of remixes of themes from previous games and many new ones. The Castlevania soundtrack is one of the best in the gaming industry.

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SNES

Super Castlevania 4

There were also some level changes which made me a sad panda including changing pools of blood from red to green, removing the blood dripping from the title screen and changing the topless status in level 6 of the game. Strangely enough the monster called Medusa remained topless however her nipples were removed, how kinky.

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