Something you can say about a lot of great games is that they know their roots. We all have love for the classics, of course, but making a game inspired by those classics isn’t just about copying and pasting.
It’s about knowing what worked, what didn’t, and incorporating modern quality of life standards, all with the ultimate goal of creating something reminiscent, yet distinctive.
10 Best Platformer Sequels That Improve On The Original
The jump to the second game landed incredibly well with these games.
Newplatformersin particular, both 2D and 3D, naturally draw a lot from their roots. After all, the platformer is one of the oldest, most distinguished genres of gaming, with fans in just about every echelon of the industry. Whenever I see a new platformer that very clearly carries a torch for one of my old favorite games, that’s a great way to grab my attention.
The ones that hold that attention, though, are the ones that take those concepts in new and interesting directions, with original stories, novel gameplay mechanics, and generally broadened scopes.
9Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon
The Blood Of A Vampire Slayer
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
While Castlevania is best known these days as one half of the Metroidvania equation, it’s easy to forget it wasn’t always like that. The original Castlevania games were more straightforward linear platformers.
While he was working on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night,IGA decided to release a gamecast in those classics’ image to tide fans over:Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.
At a glance, you can see the obvious influences from the original NES Castlevania games, right down to the solid coloration of your player character sprites and the quick-swapping mechanic from Castlevania 3.
It’s thankfully not as brutal of a game as its inspirations in the difficulty department, though you do still need to have a degree of skill in timing your jumps and attacks to not go flying into a pit.
What I find particularly neat about Curse of the Moon is that, despite ostensibly being a linear game, it has a small degree of story pathing, reliant on how you react to potential new party members. It’s obviously not the same as a full-on Metroidvania, but you kind of see the shades in it, which made it a fun teaser for Ritual of the Night.
8A Hat In Time
Like Mario Sunshine, But Cuter
Games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine are 3D collect-a-thon platformers, but in a slightly different vein than something like Banjo-Kazooie. Rather than one big world with everything already in it, they used instanced versions of their worlds, each tied to a single objective.
That’s the particular framework thatA Hat in Timeuses for its level design, alongside a few other cribbed notes.
I’d say A Hat in Time takes the most cues from Super Mario Sunshine, specifically in its greater emphasis on movement-assistive abilities like the scooter and grappling hook, as well as the platforming challenge levels you occasionally encounter on certain objectives.
The nice thing about A Hat in Time compared to Sunshine, though, is that those platforming challenges are built around the abilities you have, rather than stripping them from you and forcing you to rely exclusively on jumping.
I also enjoy the generally wider scope of objectives and activities in A Hat in Time. Don’t get me wrong, Sunshine’s a classic, but A Hat in Time is better at diversifying its gimmicks and mechanics to create something novel, particularly in the detective and dance party levels.
7Shovel Knight
Pogo Like Scrooge
Shovel Knight
Classic games can come from all kinds of unexpected sources. Licensed games are almost never good, for example, yet Ducktales on the NES is widely agreed to beone of the best Disney gamesever made.
I certainly love it, and that’s part of why I was so excited forShovel Knight: because he does Uncle Scrooge’s pogo bounce on his shovel.
Shovel Knight takes cues from a few different classic platformers, chief among them being Ducktales and Mega Man. There’s a wide variety of stages and bosses to overcome, and you get new abilities as you go, but you’ve also got a strong starter kit of skills, including that awesome pogo bounce.
It’s an oddly underutilized tactic in platformers, which may be how Shovel Knight distinguished itself so much. Of course, in addition to that, it’s a perfect marriage of modern and retro design sensibilities.
Yes, there are plenty of instant death spikes and pits, but there’s no lives system, so you can keep retrying as much as you want. Just not having to worry about that is a huge weight off my already-frayed nerves.
6Freedom Planet
Lilac Used To Be A Hedgehog
Freedom Planet
Okay, be honest with yourself: you’ve made at least one Sonic the Hedgehog original character in your life, right? It’s alright, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, we’ve all done it. While everyone makes Sonic OCs, though, not everyone actually does something novel with them.
For an enterprising few, such as the creators ofFreedom Planet, an OC can pave the way to something genuinely original. Freedom Planet is heavily inspired by the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games in both style and gameplay.
The protagonist, Sash Lilac, was originally a hedgehog OC who was going to be used for a Sonic fangame, but the devs had to change her into a dragon when Freedom Planet became its own thing. It’s just as well, I actually love Lilac’s draconic design and abilities.
I remember the first time I played Freedom Planet, I thought, “I haven’t played a game with this kind of steady speed in years.” Freedom Planet gets that the fun of classic Sonic is high-speed, high-flying escapades, which is why both its platforming and combat are built with speed in mind. It’s a game that knows how to preserve its flow, and does so brilliantly.
5Pizza Tower
Less Treasure, More Pepperoni
Pizza Tower
While there are plenty of games out there that have drawn inspiration from Super Mario Bros. over the years, the Wario Land series gets substantially less love.
Wario Land 4, in particular, still has a fond place in my heart for its blend of puzzle platforming and frantic racing to the finish line. It’s precisely because of that fondness that I was intrigued by the initial announcement of Pizza Tower, an interest that ultimately paid off in spades.
Pizza Tower Somehow Manages To Out-Wario Wario Land
It takes a certain kind of game to beat Wario at his own, but Pizza Tower more than delivers.
Compared to Wario Land 4, Pizza Tower has a greater emphasis on speed and mobility than puzzles, though there is still an occasional environmental snafu woven into the terrain. It’s still a game with a big emphasis on exploration, though, as Peppino’s many movement abilities can get you to impressive heights if you know where and how to use them.
Most importantly, every level has an escape segment, wherein you race back through the level you just completed to get to the starting line before time runs out. Seeing Peppino run at a frantic Mach speedgives me those same vibes as Wariobrutishly charging through walls, shoulder extended.
4The Messenger
A Little Gaiden, A Little Vania
The Messenger
Despite having a reputation as a classic, I feel likethe original Ninja Gaidendoesn’t get a lot of love for its mechanics. In fairness, that game had an absolutely ridiculous level of difficulty and earned more than a few valid grudges, but you wouldn’t have those grudges if the game wasn’t distinct enough to warrant them.
That’s why I likeThe Messenger; it takes what works from those old mechanics and reworks them into a slightly different package.
The Messenger is still technically a linear action platformer, same as Ninja Gaiden, at least for its initial stretch. You get many of the same abilities, from running up walls to a grappling hook, albeit with a milder difficulty curve thanks to the lack of a lives system.
However, after that initial stretch, the game pulls its mask off and reveals itself as a pseudo-Metroidvania.
It’s a little difficult to put The Messenger’s precise vibe into words, but it’s kind of like a Metroidvania pie with an action platformer center. You’re still navigating the same linear levels you already were, but the difference is that you can now go back the way you came and explore further.
3Gravity Circuit
Instant-Death Spikes Included
Gravity Circuit
While the original Mega Man games had plenty of jumping, it was the transition to Mega Man X on the SNES that really ramped things up, thanks in large part to the addition of mechanics like wall jumping.
There are plenty of run-and-gun platformers that get the first part of the equation down, but only a handful of games, such as Gravity Circuit, invoked those same feelings in me as my first playthrough of Mega Man X.
While the game places a greater emphasis on short-ranged melee combat than X’s long-ranged Buster Gun, Gravity Circuit still achieves a similar combat flow state thanks to its multiple movement abilities.
Besides wall jumping, you can also grab onto ledges, as well as fire a grappling hook into ceilings to swing and hang. Of course, the level difficulty is proportionally ramped up to accommodate all that; there are still plenty of instant-death spikes around.
Gravity Circuit also cribs one of the hallmark elements of the Mega Man franchise, that being obtaining new weapons from the bosses you defeat. It’s not as overt as Robot Masters being weak to each others’ weapons, but the order you do the stages in can affect how easily you progress.
2Corn Kidz 64
Like Conker Without The Drinking Problem
Corn Kidz 64
In addition to the big-name stuff like Super Mario 64, the Nintendo 64 was home to somedownright bizarre, yet still entertaining platformerslike Chameleon Twist or Conker’s Bad Fur Day.
Strange as they were, they still hold a special place in many a heart, mine included, which is why there’s a small niche of indie 3D platformers that seek to emulate that particular blend of weird and functional.
One of the most well-received attempts at this is Corn Kidz 64, a game that wears its N64-era influences right on its sleeve. It’s jagged, angular, and covered in a perpetual CRT filter just to sell the illusion that you’re actually playing it on old-timey hardware.
The platforming and exploration are also very similar to games like Conker, placing a large emphasis on precision jumping up the sides of walls and occasionally launching yourself long-distance.
I think what reminds me most of games like Conker specifically, though, is Corn Kidz’ distinctly off-kilter tone. It’s kind of like if there were an Invader Zim N64 game, completely mildly off-putting NPCs and dialogue. In a good way, I mean.
1Antonblast
One More Wario-Like
ANTONBLAST
Pizza Tower isn’t the only kid on the block to carry a torch for Wario Land 4. In fact, Pizza Tower and Antonblast were announced relatively close to one another, which sparked a bit of a pseudo-rivalry between the games’ fanbases during their respective developments.
I think that’s dumb, personally, because I say you can never have enough Wario Land-inspired platformers.
As you’d expect from a game with the same influence as Pizza Tower, Antonblast shares some of its overarching design philosophy, from high-impact platforming to a mad dash back to the start after every level.
Where I find Antonblast distinguishes itself is in level layout and mechanics; Antonblast’s levels are a little more deliberately labyrinthine, encouraging greater exploration in addition to the usual level of speed and verticality. It also gets a little more into unique level gimmicks, such asan entire open level you need to beat on a timer.
Antonblast’s boss fights are also a bit more involved than its contemporaries, employing larger monsters that need a little extra ingenuity to find weaknesses in. Don’t even get me started on the fight against the opera guy, it took me ages to figure that one out.
10 Forgotten 3D Platformers That Need A Remake
They may not have been big hits in their own time, but the remake treatment could do these 3D platformers some good.
