Reflecting on the golden age of platformers in the 80s and 90s makes me feel like I’m stepping into a time machine. Those were the days when games felt simple yet deep in their engagement, when they hit just the right balance between giving players a pure, unadulterated challenge and offering them a reward for getting it right. At the time when these games were made, they stood up as not only the most popular kinds of games but also the titles that more or less represented what a “game” was. With their great, precision-built controls, these games let players dream up whole new worlds in which to have adventures, and they invited us to inhabit a series of secret, delightful identities that momentarily replaced our own. But what do we see when we look back?
During the early 1980s, the video game industry was just starting to amass some momentum. It was an exciting time for video game enthusiasts because they were presented with an opportunity to be a part of an entirely new medium. The first group of pioneers started to lay the groundwork for what would become some of the most beloved franchises in all of gaming, and their main man of action was—far and away—Mario. Upon his first appearance in Donkey Kong in 1981, the Italian plumber from Brooklyn changed everything. Although Mario was, in the original game scenario, taking on the role of the protagonist against the evil antagonist (Donkey Kong), there was a twist to the simple narrative.
Yet, it was not until 1985 that the plumber from the delightful two-dimensional levels of the arcade” games truly spawned not only into our homes but also somehow, it seemed, right into our very minds and spirits. That happened, of course, when the seminal *Super Mario Bros.* side-scroller (remember when a game going sideways was the new thing? And that it was going to be, of all things, fun?) arrived for the NES. It looked not fantastic but nevertheless impressive. After all, next to the zero-elbow-room and barely knockout-able visuals of the old world, this new kingdom appeared.
An aspect that sets apart Super Mario Bros. in the missal space of play—from its eight-bit iconic art; to its progressive, riff-like music; to its levels,43 which begin with a riff (1-1), and then develop the same to their terminus straight through to 8-4; to the tight control—precision felt in the hands, not the head of the player; to the breadth and depth of an interactable, 3-D open world that only seems flat—could be entered into an encyclopedia of video-game arts.
The platforming genre started gaining popularity around the same time the Mario series itself did, and in response to its popularity, the Mario series gave birth to a ton of new and diverse characters to inhabit their own side-scrolling worlds. The late ’80s and early ’90s were a particularly good time for memorable characters because developers were still riding the high of the initial Mario games’ successes. Such worlds oftentimes had all the strange mechanics and quirkiness that the Mushroom Kingdom had. And obviously, the most memorable and successful of these was Sonic the Hedgehog, who rocketed by our screens way faster than any plumber ever could.
In 1991, the Sega Genesis premiered Sonic the Hedgehog and introduced players to a blue blur who’s now an iconic video game character. While he’s been seen in a ton of games since 1991, this was still a huge moment for the series. Sonic is all about reaching the end of each Act at a high velocity. His onscreen maneuvers suggest he’s much closer to The Flash than Mario. The original Sonic game sent us head over heels through Green Hill Zone for the first time, and doesn’t that music still get stuck in your head?
The original Sonic the Hedgehog’s triumph led to a number of follow-ups, each one improving on the original’s already solid mechanics. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 presented a new character, Tails, to serve as Sonic’s Player 2. The top-tier, memorable level design and gotta go fast mentality of the original were preserved but allowed for a better experience thanks to a series of small yet effective tweaks to the gameplay. The new co-op mode let Player 2 be Tails, and gamers worldwide were collectively delighted with the milestones that the adorable sidekick combination helped them reach. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, which came next, helped keep the ball rolling with inventive gameplay that expanded the Sonic universe.
Another iconic platformer of the 90s is Donkey Kong. He came back in style, as Waluigi would put it, in his 1994 vehicle, Donkey Kong Country, which was truly something else back then. And then there was me, preferring this something else to another famous platformer you might’ve heard of, but to operate a point much closer to home, we’re arguing simply put country over contretemps (a liqueur made with real peaches – see right hand) and country comes out on top every single time. You prefer him underrated; I prefer him overrated. But regardless of how we get into these picayune preferences, we’re still getting into the story of why a life-sized ape is always better than Stretch Armstrong.
Donkey Kong Country stood out because it established an incredible atmosphere, thanks to composer David Wise. The original soundtrack for the game remains unmatched in how the music feels like a part of the environments. You can feel the brassy jungle theme in Jungle Groove, a track that still holds up so well that it was good enough to be remixed for the Battletoads reboot last year. You can feel the icy chill of Northern Hemispheres or the sheer industrial rhythm of Oil Drum Alley. You can even feel the prickle of danger and adventure in Fear Factory, another timeless favorite of mine. You could argue that this is an OST that remains timeless because of how well it animates the environments you’re making your way through.
Platformers were exploding. But the new mechanics that were built on the old foundation helped to further the huge leap in genre evolution that was started in the mid-’90s. One part of this push, which remains understudied to this day, was the late-’90s vital shift and the 2000s growth from 2D to 3D gameplay. Platform game mechanics and the fundamental rule set for basic object interaction made an excellent test bed for what could and would work in 3D. And the explosion of the platformer in the bit era was a very good sign that it would, indeed, work quite well.
The forerunner of 3D platforming was Super Mario 64. Launched in 1996 on the Nintendo 64 console, the game was a revolution in the history of platformers. In a crisp, cartoon style, Super Mario 64 presented an iconic, mustachioed hero working his way through an open Princess Peach environment. And if we’re talking about freedom of movement, forget the 2D button-jumping of previous games: Mario was pyramiding, backflipping, spinning around in the same way his controller could, all of which showed off the N64’s analog controls re-dictating the genre’s rules.
Super Mario 64 was filled with novel ideas. Everything in the game—from the levels to the very engine that drove it—seemed designed to push the Nintendo 64 to its limits. It was designed to encourage players to go looking for adventure, to take whatever path struck their fancy, towards any given wonder they might wish to explore, behold, or conquer. Thursday Section One was a wonderfully weird journey.
Developers started making 3D platform games after Super Mario 64 came out. Rare, a studio that was known for its imaginative and refined games, was one of those. In 1998, it released Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64. As one of the first 3D platform games after Super Mario had shown the way, it followed in his footsteps and also managed to strike out on its own, straight to the tune of memorable music from Grant Kirkhope, an insanely colorful and vibrant art style that comic creator Joe Madureira would probably approve of, and just enough self-awareness to keep its humor appealing instead of annoying.
Banjo-Kazooie stood out for its insistence on humor and character. The heroes always had something to say, and the game’s dialogue was filled with snappy comebacks, veiled braggadocio, and jokes at the expense of the fourth wall—previously the sort of stuff found only in adventure games. In a time when players could silently and sullenly get through most games with a humdrum assortment of moves, Banjo-Kazooie featured a carnival of abilities for its title characters. These could be upgraded throughout the game, thereby deepening the platforming and puzzling aspects of the adventure and allowing players to feel more and more creative as they got further and further into the story. And the even better news? The game’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie, by and large, did the same thing with an even more intricate and beguiling setup.
The new millennium advanced the evolution of the platform genre, maintaining the substantial influence of 80s and 90s classic platform games. That first decade of the 2000s was one of my favorite eras, and when I look back on it, I see that I mostly played games that were light sprite-and-scrolling platformers. That’s what I got a delightful taste of when I plugged my portable cassette player into the 3DS.
Classic platformers are alive and well in modern indie games. Hell, indie gaming is where most of the genuine innovation in platform gaming (and, for that matter, gaming in general) is happening right now. Indies are the smart kids who looked at what was going on inside smart games like the original Super Mario Bros. and have returned to us, all these years later, with smarter games like Celeste—while keeping the rhetoric of the old, revolutionary games-playing revolution alive.
Of all the contemporary works of art, the one that feels most like an instant classic to me is Celeste. This game about jumping and climbing up an environment that literally is out to kill you seethes with a confidence in its mechanics, its art, and its story that is all but unrivaled in the current gaming space. Even though you’re going to fail a lot and possibly die upwards of a hundred times on your journey to the top of Mt. Celeste (such is the nature of the challenging platformer), it’s clear that the Celeste Team loves and understands not only the platformer but also the player of the platformer.
Another indication of the returning influence of classic platformer games on modern video games is the rebirth of retro-style games. Beloved platform games, including in their remade forms, continue that trend. These games are often remade and collected in a set—think the Mega Man Legacy Collection or the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. That is a subtle way of influencing a new and younger generation with platform games. These new players have likely never experienced platform games before, yet they are a part of the genre’s foundational fan base.
For me, returning to those classic platformers—Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Donkey Kong Country, to name a few is a treasured method of accessing my past self. It is a way of being a kid again, but telecommuting somehow, while also still remaining a well-rounded, responsible adult of a youngish grad student/partner/film writer with a plethora of interests, by far the longer part of the day, very fond of the hours of 8 PM–12 AM. To be fair (to me), this is also a tinged-with-fetishization way of taking an established idea of what the good ol’ days of gaming were with my dorky self and, well, reimagining and trying to surpass them anew.
In conclusion, the best platformers of the ’80s and ’90s were much more than games. They were significant cornerstones of gamer culture and the foundation of a generation of players. When you talk about games that inspire, reward, and mechanically excel, you’re mostly talking about those two decades of gaming. Games from the NES to the N64, and playground brawlers to the early internet, this is an era mostly before online multiplayer and when local co-op and rivalry fueled games, and games even more special. In the top half of this text when I talk about those two groups of games, I set the stage for two distinct camps to reward two different groups of players.
