Platformer
A platformer is a subgenre of action game in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels with uneven terrain and suspended platforms that require jumping and climbing to traverse. Other acrobatic maneuvers may factor into the gameplay, such as swinging from vines or grappling hooks, jumping off walls, gliding through the air, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines.
1980’s Space Panic, which has ladders but not jumping, is sometimes seen as the first platformer. Donkey Kong, released in 1981, established a template for what were initially called "climbing games". Donkey Kong inspired many clones and games with similar elements, such as Miner 2049er and Kangaroo, while the Sega arcade game Congo Bongo adds a third dimension via isometric graphics. Another popular game of that period, Pitfall!, allows moving left and right through series of non-scrolling screens, expanding the play area. Nintendo's flagship Super Mario Bros. and the subsequent Super Mario series were the defining games for the genre, with horizontally scrolling levels and the player controlling a named character, Mario, which became Nintendo's mascot. The terms platform game and platformer gained traction in the late 1980s.
During their peak of popularity, platformers were estimated to comprise between a quarter and a third of all console games. By 2006, sales had declined, representing a 2% market share as compared to 15% in 1998. In spite of this, platformers are still being commercially released every year, including some which have sold millions of copies.
Concepts
A platformer requires the player to maneuver their character across platforms to reach a goal while confronting enemies and avoiding obstacles along the way. These games are either presented from the side view, using two-dimensional movement, or in 3D with the camera placed either behind the main character or in isometric perspective. Typical platforming gameplay tends to be very dynamic and challenges a player's reflexes, timing, and dexterity with controls.The most common movement options in the genre are walking, running, jumping, attacking, and climbing. Jumping is central to the genre, though there are exceptions such as Nintendo's Popeye and Data East's BurgerTime, both from 1982. In some games, such as Donkey Kong, the trajectory of a jump is fixed, while in others it can be altered mid-air. Falling may cause damage or death. Many platformers contain environmental obstacles which kill the player's character upon contact, such as lava pits or bottomless chasms. The player may be able to collect items and power-ups and give the main character new abilities for overcoming adversities.
Most games of this genre consist of multiple levels of increasing difficulty that may be interleaved by boss encounters, where the character has to defeat a particularly dangerous enemy to progress. Simple logical puzzles to resolve and skill trials to overcome are other common elements in the genre.
A modern variant of the platform game, especially significant on mobile platforms, is the endless runner, where the main character is always moving forward and the player must dodge or jump to avoid falling or hitting obstacles.
Naming
Various names were used in the years following the release of the first established game in the genre, Donkey Kong. Shigeru Miyamoto originally called it a "running/jumping/climbing game" while developing it. Miyamoto commonly used the term "athletic game" to refer to Donkey Kong and later games in the genre, such as Super Mario Bros..Donkey Kong spawned other games with a mix of running, jumping, and vertical traversal, a novel genre that did not match the style of games that came before it, leaving journalists and writers to offer their own terms. Computer and Video Games magazine, among others, referred to the genre as "Donkey Kong-type" or "Kong-style" games. "Climbing games" was used in Steve Bloom's 1982 book Video Invaders and 1983 magazines Electronic Games —which ran a cover feature called "The Player's Guide to Climbing Games"—and TV Gamer. Bloom defined climbing games as those where the player "must climb from the bottom of the screen to the top while avoiding and/or destroying the obstacles and foes you invariably meet along the way". Under this definition, he listed Space Panic, Donkey Kong, and, despite the top down perspective, Frogger as climbing games.
In a December 1982 Creative Computing review of the Apple II game Beer Run, the reviewer used a different term: "I'm going to call this a ladder game, as in the 'ladder genre,' which includes Apple Panic and Donkey Kong." That label was also used by Video Games Player magazine in 1983 when it named the Coleco port of Donkey Kong "Ladder Game of the Year".
Another term used in the late 1980s to 1990s was "character action games", in reference to games based around named protagonists, such as Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bubsy. It was also applied more generally to side-scrolling video games, including run and gun video games such as Gunstar Heroes.
Platform game became a common term for the genre by 1989, popularized by its usage in the United Kingdom press. Examples include referring to the "Super Mario mould" as platform games, and calling Strider a "platform and ladders" game.
History
Single screen
The genre originated in the early 1980s. Levels in early platform games were confined to a single screen, viewed in profile, with climbing between platforms. Space Panic, a 1980 arcade release by Universal, is sometimes credited as the first platformer. Space Panic has ladders and climbing, but not jumping. Another precursor to the genre from 1980 was Nichibutsu's Crazy Climber, in which the player character scales vertically scrolling skyscrapers.Donkey Kong, an arcade video game created by Nintendo and released in July 1981, was the first game to allow players to jump over obstacles and gaps. It is widely considered to be the first platformer. It introduced Mario. Donkey Kong was ported to many consoles and computers at the time, notably as the system-selling pack-in game for ColecoVision, and also a handheld version from Coleco in 1982. The game helped cement Nintendo's position as an important name in the video game industry internationally.
Games with ladders and platforms rapidly followed from other developers, such as Kangaroo, BurgerTime, Canyon Climber, and Ponpoko, all from 1982. Also from the same year, Miner 2049er shipped with ten screens vs. Donkey Kongs four. Jumpman upped the count to 30. Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory includes a level editor.
Donkey Kong received a sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. and then Mario Bros., a platformer with two-player cooperative play. It laid the groundwork for other two-player cooperative games such as Fairyland Story and Bubble Bobble.
Beginning in 1982, transitional games emerged with non-scrolling levels spanning multiple screens. David Crane's Pitfall! for the Atari 2600, with 256 horizontally connected screens, became one of the best-selling games on the system and was a breakthrough for the genre. Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle was released on the ColecoVision that same year, adding uneven terrain and scrolling pans between static screens. Manic Miner and its sequel Jet Set Willy continued this style of multi-screen levels on home computers. Wanted: Monty Mole won the first award for Best Platform game in 1984 from Crash magazine. Later that year, Epyx released Impossible Mission, and Parker Brothers released Montezuma's Revenge, which further expanded on the exploration aspect.
Scrolling
The first platformer to use scrolling graphics came years before the genre became popular. Jump Bug is a platform-shooter developed by Alpha Denshi under contract for Hoei/Coreland and released to arcades in 1981, only five months after Donkey Kong. Players control a bouncing car that jumps on various platforms such as buildings, clouds, and hills. Jump Bug offered a glimpse of what was to come, with uneven, suspended platforms, levels that scroll horizontally, and differently themed sections, such as a city, the interior of a large pyramid, and underwater.Irem's 1982 arcade game Moon Patrol combines jumping over obstacles and shooting attackers. A month later, Taito released Jungle King, a side-scrolling action game with some platform elements: jumping between vines, jumping or running beneath bouncing boulders. It was quickly re-released as Jungle Hunt because of similarities to Tarzan.
The 1982 Apple II game Track Attack includes a scrolling platform level where the character runs and leaps along the top of a moving train.
The character is little more than a stick figure, but the acrobatics evoke the movement that games such as Prince of Persia would feature. B.C.'s Quest For Tires put a recognizable character from American comic strips into side-scrolling, jumping gameplay similar to Moon Patrol. The same year, Snokie for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers added uneven terrain to a scrolling platformer.
File:Pac-Land gameplay ss.png|thumb|left|Pac-Land was a pioneering scrolling platformer and alleged to be an influence on Super Mario Bros.
Based on the Saturday morning cartoon rather than the maze game, Namco's 1984 Pac-Land is a bidirectional, horizontally-scrolling, arcade video game with walking, running, jumping, springboards, power-ups, and a series of unique levels. Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani described the game as "the pioneer of action games with horizontally running background." According to Iwatani, Shigeru Miyamoto described Pac-Land as an influence on the development of Super Mario Bros..
Nintendo's Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, became the archetype for the genre. It was bundled with Nintendo systems in North America, Japan, and Europe, and sold over 40 million copies, according to the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records. Its success as a pack-in led many companies to see platformers as vital to their success, and contributed greatly to popularizing the genre during the third and fourth generations of video game consoles.
Sega attempted to emulate this success with their Alex Kidd series, which started in 1986 on the Master System with Alex Kidd in Miracle World. It has horizontal and vertical scrolling levels, the ability to punch enemies and obstacles, and shops for the player to buy power-ups and vehicles. Another Sega series that began that same year is Wonder Boy. The original Wonder Boy in 1986 was inspired more by Pac-Land than Super Mario Bros., with skateboarding segments that gave the game a greater sense of speed than other platformers at the time, while its sequel, Wonder Boy in Monster Land added action-adventure and role-playing elements. Wonder Boy in turn inspired games such as Adventure Island, Dynastic Hero, Popful Mail, and Shantae.
One of the first platformers to scroll in all four directions freely and follow the on-screen character's movement is in a vector game called Major Havoc, which comprises a number of mini-games, including a simple platformer. One of the first raster-based platformers to scroll fluidly in all directions in this manner is 1985's Legend of Kage.
In 1985, Enix released the action-adventure platformer Brain Breaker.
The following year saw the release of Nintendo's Metroid, which was critically acclaimed for a balance between open-ended and guided exploration. Another platform-adventure released that year, Pony Canyon's Super Pitfall, was critically panned for its vagueness and weak game design. That same year Jaleco released Esper Boukentai, a sequel to Psychic 5 that scrolled in all directions and allowed the player character to make huge multistory jumps to navigate the vertically oriented levels. Telenet Japan also released its own take on the platform-action game, Valis, which contained anime-style cut scenes.
In 1987, Capcom's Mega Man introduced non-linear level progression where the player is able to choose the order in which they complete levels. This was a stark contrast to both linear games like Super Mario Bros. and open-world games like Metroid. GamesRadar credits the "level select" feature of Mega Man as the basis for the non-linear mission structure found in most open-world, multi-mission, sidequest-heavy games. Another Capcom platformer that year was Bionic Commando, which popularized a grappling hook mechanic that has since appeared in dozens of games, including Earthworm Jim and Tomb Raider.
Scrolling platformers went portable in the late 1980s with games such as Super Mario Land, and the genre continued to maintain its popularity, with many games released for the handheld Game Boy and Game Gear systems.