/vr/ - Retro Games

behold the GOAT

>>6929818
Rare is British though isn't it?

n: the way of the ninja

>>6929845
OP specified Western, not American.

>>6929831
Serious replies only please.
>>6929860
Is this retro?

>>6929885
it's retro now.

>>6929867
Britain is in the old world though, not the west.

Every retro game in this image except for Ico was made by westerners.
Another World in particular is the most influential platformer game of all time.

>>6929818
Mr bones

>>6929918
I specifically mentioned that I'm leaving out cinematic platformers, as I think they're too different from what people commonly refer to as platformers (the likes of Super Mario Bros or Adventure Island)
>>6929929
It's interesting for sure but I would't put it among the best. Gameplay/design wise it's not really better than stuff like the 5th gen Tarzan or Tigger games.

>>6929918
Oh and by the way, you should check out Bermuda Syndrome. Kinda underrated/overlooked cinematic platformer with dinosaurs.

>>6929818
Jazz Jackrabbit 2

Is this thread for 2D shit only?

>>6930023
Yeah, I forgot to specify that.
Not like there's many 3D platformers anyway, japanese or western.

>>6929902
You're ruining this board

>>6929818
Most Apogee stuff, although some of them have kinda floaty physics.

>>6929818
Dangerous Dave series, Duke Nukem 1-2, Jazz Jackrabbit 1-2.

>>6929885
Why dismiss Manic miner? It's the only platformer I can recall where you need to master the jumping angle from the first level. See the purple and blue keys on the top of the screen >>6929831

>>6929818
Jet Set Willy

>>6930081
>>6930084

>GOOD
>western

*crickets noise*

Turrican games are pretty sweet

>>6929902
Filtered

>>6929902
cope if I ever saw it.

>>6929818
>forgetting the 1st 2 duke games, jill of the Jungle, GODS and Commander Keen and

>>6929902
That's not how that works.

The Great Giana Sisters?
It's literally just Mario, but solid enough clone.

>>6929818
Were those Commander Keen games any good?

>>6931601
They are p.good but definitely not because of their jumping mechanics and physics.

>>6931601
They don't really hold up.

>>6931601
All of Apogee's DOS platformers are fairly solid, and Keen is probably the best of the bunch. The first three are kind of archaic, so 4 is a good place to start if you like things such as music and actual environments.

>>6929818
The Lost Vikings
Cool Spot
Wild 9
Kid Chameleon
Aladdin
Pandemonium!
Chakan: The Forever Man
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was Sega Technical Institute and its campus was located in Palo Alto and Redwood City. Yeah they had nips there as well, but, it's technically developed in the west with westerners involved.
Comix Zone
The Terminator Sega CD
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure
Super Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi
>>6931601
Commender Keen on Game Boy Color is one of the finest Keen games and a damn good platformer.

>>6929929
Mr. Bones is kinda like the thinking man platformer. If you know, you know.

>>6929818
This thread makes me think we should have a Platformer General kinda like Schmups have. I was thinking about making one for a while but I never got around to it. Thoughts, lads?

>>6933110
>Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was Sega Technical Institute and its campus was located in Palo Alto and Redwood City. Yeah they had nips there as well, but, it's technically developed in the west with westerners involved.
Check the actual credits, it's mostly Japanese except for the special stages and 2 or 3 westerners that worked as non-programming matters such as marketing and stuff.
Point taken with the Super Star War games though, I forgot about those.

EWJ is a good game

I don't know why you think Plok got it right. The game is good for about three levels, then it completely shits itself.

Bestwestformer.

>>6931561
>>6930281
>>6930037
>>6930278
It is though. Western is the Western Hemisphere. Old world is in the East.

Also, this thread is part of the speccy spammer's spam, so why should I care when a fucking faggot is in charge here?

>>6930131
That is probably their only good game.

>>6933245
It has a LOT of charm, great characters, great art, great music and great humor.
As a game... it's barely decent.

>>6933312
Western Europe is not "the East". That's not how that works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

Jazz Jack Rabbit 2 and Rayman are the best examples I know. Captain Claw looks like it might be #3 but I can't get it to run.

>>6935020
What made rayman different anyway? Floating? Mario has jumping. Crash avoids shit. Sonic used velocity and became a meme boost game. What’s rayman?

>>6935020
OP here... I'm still not sold in all those (or all the other DOS/PC platformers), I don't think their controls or level design manages to be good enough. I will give them another try soon and see if I change my mind.
Rayman is another game that I don't think is remarkable enough. Great graphics, but controls and levels are not polished enough, gives me a similar impression as Flink.

all of the best westformers got released on ibm pc.
get forever mad console and micros babies.

Jazz Jackrabbit
Jill of the Jungle
Xargon
Claw
Commander Keen
I could go on and on.

>>6935185
Most of those were already mentioned. Clunky, slow-paced controls and messy, lazy maze-like level design, a common problem with western developer platformers.
I will try the later Keen games, I only played the first one, but wasn't impressed at all.
Some others I've played Prehistorik 1 and 2, Titus the Fox, Hocus Pocus... all very mediocre, far from the best.

>>6935214
>PC platformer: clunky and mazelike
>Console platformer: hold d-pad right to win

>>6935225
Look, I'm not here to start a console VS PC war, or even an east vs west war.
If you consider these games good, then I'm happy for you. I'll consider giving the later Keen games an honest try. The rest of the games you mentioned didn't do it for me, sadly.

>see this thread
>decide to try mc kids, thinking it's gonna be some shovelware title
>it's actually amazing
what the fuck? how did I not know about this game before?

>>6935149
Unique projectile attack. I suppose the crushing difficulty is a gimmick, too.
With that said I don't think a platformer needs a gimmick to stand out, Rayman's music and strange dream-like character and world design help it stand out, too.

>>6936389
The McDonalds game for Megadrive is also good. Treasure made it.

>>6936394
>Unique projectile attack
I'm not sure if I'd call it unique, Plok did it 2 years prior. And also not sure if Plok can even be called a unique projectile attack. It may be unique in the sense that it's a limb, so it's conceptually unique, but mechanically it's just a boomerang, like in Castlevania, or Megaman X.

Rayman's not a very good game. Good graphics and music, but it's clunky and has no sense of flow. A good platformer should be almost like a rhythm game, when you get good.

Today, I will show them

>>6936652
No one cares, memebrain.

>>6936389
Glad you liked it, it is a pretty good game.

>>6929902
Are you trolling or legitimately this retarded?

>>6930084
What is this from?

Alfred Chicken

>>6935149
Initial poster here.

Rayman is one of the most beautiful environments in platforming. It's actually hard.

If challenge and beauty are not important then really what is?

Kid Chaos? Amiga game whose physics are an almost perfect copy of Sonic 1's. Unfortunately it did not copy Sonic's art direction.

>>6933249

I've heard others say the opposite, that the game doesn't start being good until after the first world.

Which is one reason why Plok was never considered a classic. There's people who like the linear levels, and people who like the open levels, but not many who like both (and then there's the final world, which nobody likes),

>>6931451
Ok is obviously oblivious to the fact that computers exist. This is true for the majority of "retro burger gamers"

>>6937264
Go To Hell on ZX Spectrum

>>6937706
Flow. Think how when you get good at Mario you can blast through levels, and how cathartic that feels. Rayman never lets you have that. It's designed in such a way that you're constantly stopping dead still to charge your punch, or wait for a platform to scroll across the screen. it's an annoying game. It's not even so much that it's hard, because lots of hard games still manage to maintain that sense of flow.

>>6938397
No, those are all just bad to mediocre games. Actually try playing them as an adult.

>>6938405
>>6930084
It's another one of the same spectry games with slow ass controls and without scrolling. hard pass.
Funny edgy graphics though.

>>6936798
Possibly both and he's just bad at it. I think he's a proud redditor that found this board due to the gigaleak.

>>6937901
Was curious and checked that game out. It's far from a perfect copy of Sonic physics, but what bugged me the most was the camera. Many western platformers suffer from the same issue: the camera constantly moving every time you jump.

Skullmonkeys is a good one. From the creators of EJ except it's actually a good game.

Say hello to the greatest Western platformer of all retro time.

>>6929818
zniggy the znigger

Always bet on Duke

>>6929818
Kid Chameleon is better than any jap platformer

>>6940132
I actually considered adding Kid Chameleon to the list, the controls are actually decent enough and although the camera wobbles a bit when you jump, like in many western platformers, it's not as bad. The problem IMO was the level design, it's too focused on the block breaking/find hidden block gimmick, way too focused on that, in a way that doesn't really seem cohesive. It's like they spent a lot of time coming up with cool costumes and abilities, but forgot to actually do good level design. Enemies are also there just moving left to right without any interesting pattern, also a lot of the levels feel very empty.

>>6929902
>being this american

>>6933312
Asia is the East you absolute retard, these terms have been used this way for literally 2500 years, only Americans think everything is automatically about them.

>>6933312
>Also, this thread is part of the speccy spammer's spam, so why should I care when a fucking faggot is in charge here?
OP here, what makes you think I'm part of the spam? The spammer tried to derail the thread (on the first reply) and I promptly stopped him.
I just want to see if I'm missing any really good western-developer platformer, as I'm going to write a thesis on western video game development, and platformers is one of the genres I'm covering.

>>6938619
Are you saying that challenge and beauty or not important or just appending to the list?

>>6940907
As far as 2D platformers go, they were pretty much bad until the modern indie era kicked off in the mid 00's, and people started to "get it" a bit more.
Westerners have had much more success with 3D platformers, for whatever reason.

>>6941019
I think the number one priority is that the game has to feel good to play.

>>6941024
3D platformers, as it is, is actually a very scarce genre... there aren't that many.

>>6929818
Ruff'n'Tumble

>>6929983
Duke Nukem I&II
Commander Keen
Hocus Pocus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Bpm9iOGkM

Quintessential slavformer here.
The game still has an active community: http://doom2d.org/landing/index.html

Sink or swim, personal favorite
Risky Woods, the first game i've ever beat.
Abuse

>nobody's said Psychonauts yet
how. Best platformer full stop.

>>6938619
This could be said of Castlevania too and those are great.

>>6942119
CV is all about flow.
Take level 3 of the first CV for example. If you stop, you get fucked, it's all about going forward while whipping, never stopping. The level is designed to flow nicely that way. Hesitate and you're fucked.

>>6941894
During the 5th gem heyday, they were everywhere. Spyro, Crash, Medieval, Banjo Kazooie, Rayman 2. Lots of good ones.

>>6942138
That's a handful not "lots", and honestly I'm still not entirely sold on ones like Crash.

>>6942139
Those are just some cherrypicked highlights. Basically everyone was cranking these games out left and right.

>>6938405
But anon, i don't want to hell, ESPECIALLY on ZX Spectrum!

pretty solid game

>>6942452
Unironically, Newgrounds would probably be a better place to look for good Western platformers, than any platform from before that era.

>>6942452
>>6942462
I thought this game would be bad, since most flash games I tried back then were rather unpolished, but at least on videos this looks fun. Although the video I'm seeing is from iOS, not sure if it's the same version that was on newgrounds.
At any rate, I'm focusing on retro games only (I mean retro as in pre-1999 hardware, I still go by the old rules).
I'll separate a chaper in my thesis for more modern indie games, since the way of developing games changed a lot by then. Not the same to develop a game for NES or Mega Drive than to develop a game for modern devices using a modern engine/gamedev tool.

Might stretch the definition of platformer but Abe's Oddysee is great.

>>6942536
Isn't it a cinematic platformer ? Then it counts

>>6942536
>>6942854
OP here, not really counting cinematic platformers (as I already said in the OP), as they're fundamentally very different (and also, I think it's mostly a western genre anyway? is there any japanese cinematic platformer?)

>>6929918
>another world
Too bad i'm a brainlet and can't figure out what to do in the game

>>6944096
If loading a checkpoint sends you far back it's because you forgot to do something. Try something else. For example, you have to do something in the watery caves before you can progress through the enemy-infested palace.
Shoot the chandelier orb when it is directly above the guy's head, not before he walks under it.
Also, don't leave your Buddy behind!

I really want to say Mickey Mania, because I have huge nostalgia for it and it's frankly one of the most visually amazing games of 4th gen... but yeah I know the gameplay is rather bad, so it doesn't meet OP's criteria.