I don’t want it to be nostalgia

I’ve seen genres come and go, which is only natural in a young, dynamic and constantly growing industry. The most egregious casualty was the point and click adventure game, a genre I was addicted to as a young lad but which until recently was not so much dead as coughing up blood and ignored in the gutter. It always annoyed me when pundits and journalists went on a rant about how game storytelling needed to be more betterer, yet everybody seemed to have forgotten that we’ve had magnificently scripted games for a long time. Luckily this particular genre seems to have made a bit of a comeback, surged back from the pits of amateur freeware, where, to be frank, some hobbyists made some excellent adventures, to the mainstream, more or less, with titles like Sam & Max, hurray!

But there is one beleaguered genre I, personally, am aching to play again: the 2D platformer. Now obviously the genre is still around, specifically on the handheld consoles where more often than not they are licensed IP shovelware, and occasionally in the realms of homebrew. But ever since home consoles have become powerful enough to carry amazing, visually eye-popping platformers, nobody has really been making them anymore.

Xbox Live Arcade has had a few attempts, mostly in the lower end of the quality bell-curve, and a few more are on the horizon, like the much anticipated, by me, remake of Bionic Commando which by all accounts looks to be much better than the actual new title in the series. But that’s about it.

The death of this genre can be pinpointed to the time where consoles went all 3D on us and platform holders made it an unspoken requirement that all titles make the best use of their hardware, i.e. being in 3D. Of course the much lauded Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a last hurrah for the genre, but since then, not a sausage. More optimistic readers may point to the better 3D platformers, like Mario 64, of course, the Banjo Kazooies and whatnot, but if I’m brutally honest, these never really grabbed me. Half of the game was always battling the camera and learning new controls, whereas the simplicity of the mapping of the 2D platformers always meant they were easy to play and difficult to master rather than the reverse which seems to be true with most 3D games.

On top of that, 3D graphics age badly. Check out any Playstation 1 game and see how horrific the textures, how limited the polycount. Yet open up one of the later Super Nintendo games and bask in the glory of their beautiful 2D graphics, even today. Though today’s better 3D titles are indeed gorgeous, I am the first to admit, I have no doubt this time next year there will be several titles that look even better and come the next generation we’ll look back on Uncharted and laugh at the quaintness of its visuals. And now I have a big telly and some powerful consoles, I want to sit on my sofa and play 2D games!

What I’m selfishly aiming at is for people like Konami to just damn well bite the bullet and give us another home 2D Castlevania. With 3D graphics, possibly, and classic 2D gameplay how could this do anything but rock hard? Better yet, give the current masters of gorgeous 2D visuals, Vanillaware, makers of Odin Sphere, free use of the Castlevania IP and you’ll have a title on your hands that will sell forever and ever. Or Nintendo should put a full-stop after this recent and excellent Metroid Prime series and make another 2D adventure for Samus to plough through. Make it WiiWare if you must, I’ll buy it!

In the commercial sphere Sam & Max have proven there is life in an old genre yet. Who will do the same for the 2D platformer?