Anatomy Of 2D Side-Scroller Lecturer Picks Favorites

Thanks to GameSpy for its column discussing some of the choicest 2D side-scrolling games of all time, as discussed in a lecture at the recent Game Developer's Conference in San Jose. Some of the "ten games from the past that have something to teach the aspiring platform game designer" listed included "Batman (1989, NES): Best wall jump ever (and game over music, he noted)", as well as "Ghouls 'n Ghosts (1988, AC/Gen/etc.): 'If your game is harder than this, you're in trouble.'", and even "Super Mario All-Stars (1993, SNES): Everything you need to know in one cart." What are your favorite 2D side-scrolling platformers of all time?

Missing options (as usual)

[Haeleth]

I can't believe they managed to pick ten platformers and not a single Castlevania among them.

It'd have been nice to see a nod to the Commander Keen series, too... very different to anything on a console, and truly remarkable given that the PC of the day still wasn't taken seriously as an arcade platform.

Why do people always reference Ghouls 'n Ghosts?

[cgenman]

Have you not played Ghosts and Goblins? I mean, it's actually possible to beat Ghouls 'n Ghosts. You only have to be human, and have a lot of time. I managed to beat Ghouls 'n Ghosts on the Genesis many years back. Ghosts and Goblins stayed unbeaten until emulation added a "save state" feature. The swooping-red-demons-of-death-on-ladders were finally tamed by moment-to-moment saves and a truly ludicrously low fps. Even the Ghouls 'n Ghosts "Statue Tongues" level was nothing compared to that beast.

In all fairness, Ghouls 'n Ghosts was a better game. But that doesn't make it the harder of the two.

Don't forget throwing in general

[cgenman]

Treasure understood that if you want to create dramatic tension in your players, you have to force them to come as close as possible to danger.The player in Gunstar Heroes had the ability to run up to any enemy, bomb, friend, or object, and throw them as a projectile weapon. It forced a dramatic tension between fleeing and running in, resulting in lots of running in. Narry an object was too large to be thrown, including all of the bosses. Additionally, there was a close-range repeated attack that did tremendous amounts of damage on a jump-in, and a weapon whose sole purpose was to do high damage at close range.

The two player aspect was also well-played. Like all of the best multiplayer cooperative games, you could really tick off your friends. Despite the fact that it doesn't really hurt them, very few people like to be spiked into enemies. Likewise, the spacecraft level had one player controlling the ship and one controlling a rotating turret, but the turret had the ability to jerk around the main craft for short, annoying distances. Furthermore, any dead player was entitled to 1/2 of the surviving player's life. It was this ability to irritate though not destroy that made Gunstar Heroes one of the best side-scrollers of all time.

Still, it is rare that Strider and Bionic Commando get their dues, so to see this Hardcore favorite left off of the list isn't too heartbreaking.

Top Hat Willy

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite is Top Hat Willy [pastrytech.com] for the Amiga... near goddam impossible.

Based on good old Jet Set Willy (play it in java here [twinbee.org]) which WAS goddam impossible. (One had to hack the code to win the first ZX Spectrum and C64 versions, which were originally impossible as released.)

Somebody loved their Nintendos

[xf]

Aw, almost everything there is NES/SNES. Given, there were some awesome scrollers on the console, but what about such classics such as the Sonic series on other platforms?

This isn't a list of best...

[Snowspinner]

It's a list of important. Or, more to the point, it's a list of games with important and unique features. So I take it that the reason Castlevania was left off was that there was nothing especially unique to it - it was merely really good. Similarly, no one actually argues that the first Mega Man is the best.

In that spirit, I'd offer Lode Runner or Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle as a variation on the sidescroller/platformer that really works, but isn't mentioned.

Re:Somebody loved their Nintendos

[bersl2]

Sonic needs to be mentioned, if at least for the perfect treatment of parallax scrolling.

Cybernator never gets the love it deserves.

[robson]

Just because it didn't have cute characters? Bah!

Cybernator [gamefaqs.com] for the SNES, and its unofficial sequel Metal Warriors [gamefaqs.com].

Re:Mario Allstars?

[MilenCent]

Er, how was Super Mario Bros. not revolutionary? If it's not the first scrolling platformer then it's certainly the earliest I can name. It also pioneered what I'm suddenly going to call "casual secrets," with almost every level having *something* cool hidden away somewhere, ranging from warp zones to six extra coins on world 1-4.

For the record, Lost Levels *was* too hard. Period. One of the most frustrating things I've ever seen Nintendo produce.

Mario 2's very good, but not as interesting to me now as Mario 3.

Mario 3's great innovations were the incredible, even by today's standards, variety of powerups and the way that a level can be a completely difference experience depending on what you have going in, the sheer variety to the levels, and how all the different aspects came together as a whole.

Re:Mario Allstars?

[miyako]

I certainly agree that for its time, and for a long time afteward, Super Mario Bros. was the best executed game of it's genre, however being a good game is not the same as being a revolutionary game.
The fact is that there were sidescrollers before Mario Bros. and Mario Bros. did not add any revolutionary features to the genre, the only thing it did was take existing ideas and refine them to make one hell of a good game.
In general, revolutionary games are not the games we remember, because they tend to suck. It takes the developers a few tries with a given formula to figgure out how to best apply it.
There are of course exceptions, but in general we tend to remember Best of Breed, not First Of Breed.
The article was about games that were revolutionary, games who did something first and effected the rest of the genre.
None of the games in the mario allstars packages really did this. It was not untill Super Mario 64 that the Mario series introduced a concept that was revolutionary.