Flicking through the latest reports and reviews on the web and reading all about the different genres and sub-genres, a thought occurred to me: Whatever in the hell happened to platform games? We seem to have adventure games, action/adventure games, cartoon adventure games, kids adventure games, action/puzzle games and action shooters, yet it seems that the humble platform game has fallen at the final End Of Level Guardian (you heard me) and disappeared without so much as a "Game Over".

Back in my day (Dad? Is that you?) Platform games were the be all and end all of video games, every console and home computer was saturated with them, and each had its own mascot. Of course, you all know Mario and Sonic, but do you remember such classics as Robocod, Fire and Ice, Rainbow Islands or Bubsy Bobcat?

...

Alright, Bubsy Bobcat wasn't much of a classic, but I liked it anyway.

The point is that platform games appear to have been all but replaced by a far more "grown up" mélange of different genres that seek to define themselves as something far more challenging and superior to your bog-standard platform of days gone by. Gone are the once feared End of Level Guardians (oh, how I mourn you!), now replaced by "Bosses" at the mid-section and closing act of a stage. There is a marked difference now in the language used to describe the various segments of the game and the characters therein. What was once a "Level" is now a "Stage", your "energy" has become your "health", the "Bad Guys" have now metamorphosed into "Baddies" and "Underlings" � the latter being a rather imperious term for the hordes of mindless little annoyances that block your way to the newly-christened "Boss" or even the "Mid-Boss" of the "Stage" you are on.

You may or may not remember my rant about the new trend in breaking up the stages into smaller "missions" (they used to be called "goals", you know...), so let me refresh your memories: classic platform gaming dictated that you would travel through a level in order to meet the End Of Level Guardian so that you might progress to the next level. During the level, you would meet all sorts of little nasties blocking your way, somewhere around the middle of the level (now called a "checkpoint") you would catch a fearful glimpse of the Guardian and he or she might speed off into the distance, or fire unavoidable energy-sapping missiles that really put you at the brink of death throughout the rest of the level. Now, however, we are faced with a multitude of menacing meanies all throughout the level that make the final boss seem like something of an anticlimax. All this serves to render much of the level a mechanical slog from mission to mission, checkpoint to checkpoint, turning a once fun genre into a purely soulless playing experience.

In its heyday, the platform game was the choice of virtually every developer who gained a movie licence. Box office blockbusters such as The Untouchables, Batman, Hudson Hawk, Lethal Weapon and the early Star Wars games were platform titles; there was even a Blues Brothers movie game. True, most of them were utter and inexcusable rubbish, although almost nothing has changed: licensed games are still almost universally terrible. Now, however, licensed games are almost all of the action/adventure meta genre that has emerged from the burning pyre of Megadrive cartridges marked "Earthworm Ji..." in charred letters.

The pressing question is: is the platform genre worth saving? It's a difficult question to answer though, as evolution in games is quite a natural thing. On the one hand, traditional platform games were often adrenaline-filled visual feasts that sent the player on an exciting journey through worlds fraught with danger and adventure. On the other hand, platform games could be unplayable nightmares with dodgy controls, unfair enemies and a clear lack of effort put in by the developers � that is, however, an accusation that can be levelled at the vast majority of modern games as well. True, platform games were horrendously flawed, but so is modern gaming as a whole. Perhaps a throwback to the days of gaming at its purest and most undiluted would snap developers out of their collective reverie and remind them that its all about the fun...

The recent phenomenal success of Sonic Mega Collection Plus on the PS2 and XBox has brought pure platforming back into the public consciousness. And what better example of the platform genre can there be other than Sonic the Hedgehog? By turns beautiful and thrilling; by others, frustrating and confusing. This sales explosion has reawakened the classic platformer, proving that it is not yet as dead as might be thought.

Recently, whilst playing the re-released Sonic games, it struck me that they were rather unforgiving and puzzling when compared to modern-day adventure games. That's not such a bad thing, though; it's rather patronising to play a game and every five seconds a highlighted action button appearing on screen along with a hint on why you should press the button. Great! There was I believing that I had to actually think for myself while playing a game, why bother however, when I can get the developer to think on my behalf? In fact, why not just play the whole game for me while I watch and stuff myself silly with wine gums?

Nah.

I want my games to be hard. I want to bang my head on the joypad in frustration. I want to fall off the same ledge four hundred times in a row before I finally get the timing right. I want to get bitten by the annoying little bad guys and stomped on by the ridiculously difficult End of Level Guardian. I want to have to play through the entire game in an afternoon because there's no save function.

I want my platform games back.

Please note, the above article was written with tongue only half-in-cheek. The author can beat most modern adventure games in eight hours flat, but still has not finished Sonic 2 without the cheat on. *cough*

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