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What if 2D Platforming had never been kicked out the back door by 3D gaming?
My answer is it would have become niche and extremely difficult in the same way shmups have progressed from the stuff we have on Genesis to bullet hells. There's some evidence of this in the raised difficulty found in hacks of old games such as Battle Kid (from Mega Man) and numerous Mario takeoffs. Hence, the Pitfall Hell genre would have been born.
Your thoughts?
You may be right. I wonder if I would like modern 2D Platformers if this would've happened, or if I would just stick to the classics. I think it would've pushed younger, less skilled gamers away from platformers, even the easy ones if they actually thought the majority of them would have become "Pitfall Hell".
I can see it now, you land on a ledge, but collide with an enemy...
You are knocked back to the start of previous stage, if it happens on stage 1, you must complete the stage twice for it to allow you to continue to stage 2.
So you mean things would be the way they are now?Quote:
Originally Posted by StarMist
Games like VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, and I Wanna Be the Guy are all niche and "difficult" platformers. They just replaced bottomless pits with tons of spike pits.
Rayman Origins has plenty of bottomless pits and leaps of faith.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...6666/drill.png
What the hell is that from?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA! It's obvious you've never played Battle Kid by your comment. So, I'm going to overlook this ridiculous statement, but Battle Kid isn't a Mega Man hack. It's a brand new game programmed by Sivak and sold through retrozone. He's currently working on a sequel to it. He has an update thread in the "brewery" forum section on Nintendo Age. There is also a demo of it that you can download. Also, the series was inspired more by "I wanna be the guy" than MegaMan.Quote:
Originally Posted by StarMist
http://sivak.nintendoage.com/
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info...products_id=86
It played and looked very much like Mega Man from what I played. The sprite size and design, the screen orientation/dimensions, the character movement are all Mega Man; the power ups may be absent, but for what it's worth they can largely be treated as absent from Mega Man as they're seldom needed. And it's definitely tougher than Mega Man (which is boringly easy) if you're objecting to that. I shouldn't have put it in the same way I did the Mario hacks, that was actually in haste to undo an exm that wasn't a platformer (though apter), but I do find it very much like Mega Man, whether there was another homebrew its creator wished to credit or not. I don't mean to call it Thunder Blaster Man by any means, but it bears a strong MM resemblance.Quote:
Originally Posted by old man
Sprite size and screen dimensions are pretty much determined by the hardware (I think megaman is a tile taller than BK actually) I'm not going to claim that BK doesn't have some MegaMan inspiration behind it though. They both have the same basic player mechanics (i.e. running, jumping, 1d shooting), but I feel that's where any real similarities between the games end. At least as far as the NES is concerned anyway. BK has more of a Metroid style layout to it with a focus on single screen, action puzzles. It's kind of funny. I remember reading that MM's creator wanted those games to be almost an affront to gamers. I think BK did that better than MM ever did.
Anyway, the point of my post wasn't just to give you a hard time. I didn't want people to think an awesome game like BK was just a MM hack. Got to stand up for mah home brew heroes. :U
edit an OT: I really like masocore games like BK myself. There's something immensely satisfying about them to me.
I meant the playable screen: MM always has a lot of pointless overhead, as do the Castlevania games, where the sprite could for all intents and purposed been twice as large (Astyanax's size) for the amount of movement one's capable of doing in it. Basically think of a 1 foot square box with a 1 inch tall MM standing at the bottom, an opening out of the screen 6 inches off the ground on one side, a couple meaningless pipes decorating the ceiling, a couple 2 inch long platforms, and there you have a MM screen. I'm willing to trust you BK's lv design improves greatly over this as the game progresses.Quote:
Originally Posted by old man
Fine. Just bear in mind I'm trying to create some discussion and the OP has a 50 word limit for readers' attention spans: go over 50 words and it's nothing but "tl; dr".Quote:
Anyway, the point of my post wasn't just to give you a hard time.
edit an OT: I really like masocore games like BK myself. There's something immensely satisfying about them to me.[/QUOTE]
Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings 3Quote:
Originally Posted by Bastardcat
If 2D Action and Platformers had continued to evolve I expected more advanced AI with complex survival scenarios, like N+ but with enemies. I expected Shinobi III to be advanced upon with the assumption that the players wanted more gameplay complexity in the form of more moves, better smarter AI, more complex level designs that may even create puzzles in the process of learning to be awesome. I expected Sonic to advance to the point of being more than a speed fest with jump and bump attacks, with more puzzle elements like using enemies, and new gameplay techniques, to reach secret areas or higher tiers.
I think Shinobi PS2, even though it is 3D, represents the platforming equivalent of "bullet hell". Entire levels with no floors where you have to wall run and one hit sends you to the beginning of the level. They could have made it more entertaining if they had focused more on the Air Tate technique and gave the damn goofy looking Ninja a grapple or something, but noooo, it had to be "hardcore" and rely on cheap level design like Sega games never did in the past.
Have you played super meat boy?
The last levels of Adventure Island for NES come pretty close to this! Getting through the final world (8-x, as I recall) was one of the most intense platforming challenges I've ever experienced -- every second of my run had to be carefully calibrated.
Actually, my perfect score run on Pitfall was the same way, except that time was the pressure (really the only pressure), rather than continuous enemy assault. Which I guess is, after all, the whole point of this thread -- though I don't know that I could stand 20 minutes of Pitfall's time/psychological pressure with Adventure Island's obstacle/enemy pressure. But someone out there could.
No, I have not. Should I? I have been very negligent in exploring indie games and XBLA in general.Quote:
Originally Posted by Orchid87
The "Pitfall Hell" style didn't emerged in the 32-bit era due to the fact that many of the platformer players were those guys who would by anything 3D. Those types were looking for a "full 3D experience" and certainly the platformers with 2D gaming were not for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by StarMist
The scrolling shooter lovers (at least many of them) use to be older guys with little hype about 3D, even in those crazy 32-bit days.
But if it had "evolved" it would be more of the same in the most stupid way possible, as the shooters did. Probably a hell fest of enemies and explosions on screen to show that the 16-bit days were gone and a painful cinematographic spanking of the main character across the levels to show that the genre "evolved" as the gamers...
Something like a revamped Doom Troopers would have been a "good start".
I don't think it would be to such an extreme extent, because unlike other genres, over the top difficulty Isn't accepted in "pure" platformers. However with that said, what I think would be more likely to happen, is a lot more platformer hybrids would be made(aka Faxanady, Blaster Master, Mana Khermia and Solar Jetman for example) or games with multi dimentional gameplay(aka as in Sonic CD for example), which personally I think would be awesome.
Well, when we got Rayman, Gex, and especially Tomba, I thought it was turning into the golden age of 2D... and then the sequels were all crappy 3D games. :(
I have spent countless hours on Super Meat Boy and I can safely say that it’s one of the best 2D platformers of all time. XBLA has dozens of excellent games, you’re gonna love it.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
I can't say it would be possible to have crazy hard platforming madness (didn't Gunstar Heroes get close to that?).
Anyway, the mechanics of jumping/punching/meleeing/shooting don't really fit the idea for me, but I would love to see some sort of revamped, crazy new versions of Metal Storm and Cybernator. Besides being outstanding fun, these platformers are the closest I can think of as suitable for a "bullet hell"-esque style.
Am I the only one that thinks bullet hell shooters are actually easier than 16/32 bit shooters? I mean, your hitbox is like one pixel.
Anyway... not sure I'd want a super, super hard platformer, but it would be nice if platformers were a bit more difficult. Also, real 2D in high res.
Also, VVVVV is excellent.
I think what hurt 2d platformers the most was all the shit mascot characters that came out after sonic. You had crap like cool spot and Chester Cheeta on the cover of Gamepro. Then with over-hyped trash like Bubsy wasting everyone's money it's no wonder people stopped buying them. If Donkey Kong Country proved anything it's that people still wanted good platformers.
I guess it depends on the game or developers. A lot of the Arcade versions of Toaplan games are extremely difficult. Out Zone is one I just went through recently on MAME.Quote:
Originally Posted by GohanX
After finishing that video of Jaguar and 32X 2D platformers I noticed that Rayman has some incredibly brutal level design with a lot of pitfalls and spike balls and character wide moving platforms. I haven't ever enjoyed playing any of the Rayman games, they just seem slow and artsy to me.
The only other game I have seen with that kind of brutal level design is Super Ghouls N Ghosts.
Yes, some levels were brutal, but over all, I love the game. Some types of games appeal more to some people than others. Have you tried Tomba? That was probably my most favorite 2D platform game.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath