So I grew up on Mario (actually Sonic), and platforming seems like it’s in my blood. I love platformers. And it seems like my generation do as well, given the number of indie platformers being made right now. See New Super Mario Bros, Braid, Thomas was alone, etc.
I wonder though - are platformers really fun, or is everyone collectively banking on nostalgia? I can’t stand pac man or pong or space invaders, for example. Super Mario Brothers 3 released in 1990, and Sonic and Knuckles was released in 1994 - do people born in the late 90s/early 00s enjoy platformers as much as I do?
No poll, since I doubt we have many 10-15 year olds on this board, but some of you might be parents of 10-15 year olds or have nephews or nieces
Interesting question. I grew up on NES and SNES so I certainly can’t answer objectively. I too don’t really enjoy games from before that era.
A point in favor of platformers being actually fun would seem the be the New Super Mario Bros. series. They’ve been very successful and the target demographic for the series would certainly include many younger players not being influenced by nostalgia.
It seems like many younger kids these days associate gaming more with smartphones and touchscreen devices rather than traditional consoles. Touchscreen games don’t lend themselves to platformers very well, so it certainly wouldn’t surprise me that younger players are much less exposed to them.
Well, I grew up on those systems as well, and I tend to not enjoy platformers unless they have something else compelling. I enjoyed Ratchet and Clank, for example because it was funny and had interesting weapons and upgrades. Not a fan of pure platform games, though.
i think the kids these days prefer playing whatever online multiplayer games their friends are playing, so by default they don’t have the time needed to die a million deaths to finish a platform game.
Well, there are a lot of indie platformers that do well enough . Mario definitely does well in that age bracket–to the point that it seems to be more designed for it now then back in the day. You get bubbles carrying you while someone else does the hard stuff, stages you can skip if they get too hard, etc.
Anecdotally, kids seem to be into FPS games. I taught at a camp for young middle school students, and of those that played games, they all liked Call of Duty and such. When they asked me what kinds of games I liked – generally NOT grey and brown military shooters – they decided this was “gay”.
Of course, 6th grade or so is often when kids start trying too hard to be “mature”, so I can’t really speak for younger elementary school kids.
My son is 14 and largely into the FPS thing, both military shooters and games like Skyrim. He plays some racing games on occasion to mix things up but doesn’t have much interest in platformers. Even back on the PS1 and PS2 they weren’t games that held his attention.
Of course, I never liked platformers much myself. Some I’ve enjoyed for other reasons (liked the art and feel of Alice: Madness Returns for instance) but the general principle leaves me unexicited in both 2D and 3D formats. Back as a youth in the Colecovision era onward I was more interested in side scrolling fighters/shooters or top down games until we reached the points where strategy games and eventually FPS games took off. Played a bit of the original Sonic on my Genesis and finished it but that’s only because it came with the system.
One thing about platformers that I think is hard to recognize because MY CHILDHOOD!!! is that “mediocre mascot platformer” was basically the “gray and brown FPS” of the post-Nintendo pre-3D era.
If you wanted a quick buck, you made a shitty platformer with barely passable controls. There were other cash grabs like shoot 'em ups, but platformers seemed to be the dominant “we have no idea what to make so here you go” genre.
Their decline is probably related to the fact that platformers are incredibly tricky to get right in 3D. In many cases, “3D platformers” are barely recognizable compared to their 3D counterparts. Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 are barely recognizable compared to Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Bros, or Sonic. 3D platformer and 2D platformer are only superficially related genres. Platforming mechanics still exist, but they tend to be rolled into other things like puzzle games, or adventure games. (I’d argue that recent 3D Mario games are closer to a subgenre of action-adventure/puzzle games than anything else)
I don’t think it’s much surprise that kids nowadays trend towards FPS games when they basically control the same segment of the market that platformers controlled in the late '80s and early '90s.
For my son’s age group (2nd grade) platformers are still extremely popular.
The 2D platforming Super Mario is still a best seller in all it’s current forms (Wii, WiiU, 3DS) as well as the Donky Kong Country series.
I started on those earlier arcade games, the Space Invaders, Centipede, Galaga, etc. I never really got into the Mario/Sonic platform games, they were too long and too difficult (and mostly, we didn’t own a Sega or Nintendo system so I only ever played them at friends’ houses so I was terrible at them).
As an adult I have enjoyed games like Braid and Fez, but those are more puzzle games that just happen to take the form of a platformer, and have a gameplay feature where you can either immediately rewind back past your mistake, or there’s nothing actively trying to kill you so you can take your time jumping around. More traditional modern platform games like Super Meat Boy I still suck at.
Interesting! Do you enjoy modern remakes of Tetris, Space Invaders and… “Arcaders”, for lack of a better term? I don’t know what a modern update would be though. The physics puzzler? Does Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja scratch the same itch for you? Or match 3 types? There was an indie type pacman that won awards, not sure if you heard of it - I tried it and hated it.
Oh no, I’m under no illusions - I remember Cool Spot. Even back then, shit sucked. there seems to be a wave of nostalgia for platformers, though - indies love platformers. Cannabalt, even iphone games like League of evil, or the weird typography game Type:Rider, platformers as a game type seem to have survived, and flourish, whereas I haven’t seen a true galaga shooter or a top down space invader type indie game, or a new kind of Tetris? Maybe their time is over - Tetris kinda gave birth to Columns, Klax, Puyo Puyo, Magical Drop, and now people that grew up with Tetris aren’t making games any more, so there aren’t any indie “falling piece puzzle” games being made.
I too grew up with Mario and Ninja Gaiden, but I haven’t really been into those games in a looong time.
Today, I’ll only pick up a platformer if it’s offering me more than platforming mechanics. I enjoyed Limbo, the swapper and Braid, for example, mostly for their art style, puzzle elements, and narrative. Platforming was just something I had to do to get to the good bits.
Today I have exactly 0 interest in anything Mario.
Nah, if I’m going to play an old-school game, I’ll go find an actual arcade machine.
Tetris is a stand-by phone game.
Angry Birds was fun, but it’s pretty played out now. The Star Wars tie-in was interesting, but it didn’t really freshen up the gameplay for me.
Fruit Ninja I don’t really get. Seems pointless.
Match-3 games like Bejeweled or Chuzzle are okay, if sometimes frustrating for various reasons (I’m colorblind, for one).
Are you thinking of Pac-Man Championship Edition? I played it; it also didn’t really freshen up the gameplay. I’d rather just play the original game if I get a Pac-Man hankering.
Actually, by all reports, Cool Spot is an EXCELLENT platformer. I haven’t played it though.
When you start talking about crappy Mascot Platformers, you’re talking more about your Awesome Possum or Bubsy or Conker or something.
That said, while I enjoyed many, many platformers back in the day, even ‘back in the day’ I preferred what I tend to think of as the ‘platformer plus’; Which is to say, a game where the platforming mechanic wasn’t the only one. Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, even Ninja Gaiden all fall into this category - there are portions where the gameplay is strictly ‘jump from platform to platform’ but those are the exceptions and not the rule, compared to your more ‘pure platformer’ like Mario or Sonic.
I still like games that use platforming without being “pure platformers” (Though I actually hated Braid and Limbo). I enjoyed the hell out of Hard Corps: Uprising (Sorry PC only gamers, you’re SOL on this one.) and I’m also enjoying Mercenary Kings. Oh, and I loved both Trine games. But I have no interest in Mario. And we do not talk about Sonic.
So overall, though I am oldschool, describing a game as a “platformer” is actually a small negative for me, because in a lot of ways, it speaks to me of you lacking creativity.
Of course, I pretty much haven’t played an FPS game since like 2004, unless you count getting maybe halfway through Bioshock Infinite before getting bored and giving up.
there seems to be a wave of nostalgia for platformers, though - indies love platformers. Cannabalt, even iphone games like League of evil, or the weird typography game Type:Rider, platformers as a game type seem to have survived, and flourish, whereas I haven’t seen a true galaga shooter or a top down space invader type indie game, or a new kind of Tetris? Maybe their time is over - Tetris kinda gave birth to Columns, Klax, Puyo Puyo, Magical Drop, and now people that grew up with Tetris aren’t making games any more, so there aren’t any indie “falling piece puzzle” games being made.