platformopolis

There is an argument to be made that Super Mario Bros. is an elaborate mental training sequence for the controls of a theoretical fleet of spaceships. So ingrained into the muscle memory of children of the 80s and 90s are the nooks and crannies of this game, one could believe that Shigeru Miyamoto, with his superhuman design talent and odd perma-smile, is an alien or a time traveler sent back to indoctrinate a generation of pilots to be at the ready to escape our doomed planet when the moment is right. Every invisible block, every warp zone, every Koopa’s Castle maze, part of a secret stellar map to a new homeworld that can only be navigated by a small, rectangular, two button controller.

A great 2D platform game infects me. Somewhere subcutaneously lurks the ability to avoid spike traps in Sonic the Hedgehog or the exact pattern of doors to get through a Super Mario Bros 3 fortress maze. In all truthfulness, a lot of this is a product of the limits of 8 and 16-bit technology multiplied by the expense of cartridges (leading to only getting a couple of games per year at most unless you were that kid) multiplied by copious amounts of free time. But there’s something more…

Even before they burned themselves into my brain, even when they were brand new, the very best platform games had a crackling energy, a masterful flow, something beyond the aesthetic, beckoning me to explore every new world with the same enthusiasm I had for the first.

What are the invisible ingredients that transform a computer program, a rule set, into a wonderful old neighborhood to visit, or a challenge from a great sparring partner, or a perfect song that never gets stale? What can I learn by studying the component parts of my favorite 2D platformers? Are there differences in design philosophy between American, European, and Japanese developers? What do these games tell us about the personalities of their designers? What do my favorite kinds of platformers have to say about me?

To try and answer some of these questions, and to feed my endless hunger To Try To Make Fun And Cool Things, I'm going to build my own side-scroller. Despite my love for the genre and it's wonderful new resurgence due to easy to use creation tools like XNA, Game Maker, Multimedia Fusion, and Construct, I still feel a void for the kind of game I want to play. Plus, I've always loved making games as a hobby and I think I'm ready to tackle something more substantial. In fact, as you're reading this, I've already started! But, I think keeping a log of it here will help me to keep focused and moving in the right direction. And maybe I'll get some more folks to bounce ideas off of.

Here we go...