Single Screen Platform Games #17

Lode Runner (1984)
By: Broderbund / Irem Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: NES, Game Boy, SG-1000, PC Engine, PC, Apple Mac, Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Vic 20, Amstrad CPC, MSX, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Pravetz 82/82M
Download For: Wii Vitual Console, Xbox Lives Arcade, PlayStation Network, Android, iOS

I've been reviewing games here for a long time now, and a good few of them have been platform games as they're one of my favourite genres, perhaps my very favourite, but I don't think I've ever come across a game that was ported to more systems than this one. Just look at that list - I haven't even heard of one of them! Despite this, however, I never really encountered it in its day (I was still largely-dependent on my parents for new games back then, or even magazines to let me know about the games), but I still keep hearing its name after all this time so I figured it was finally time to give it a proper once-over. I had assumed the arcade version would've been the first, as it usually is, so I got stuck in to that version only to find out the game actually debuted on several American home micros first. Oops! Oh well, too late now!

Platform/Puzzle Games #6

Squirbs (2015)
By: Team Indev Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: PC
Also Available For: Nothing

A couple of months ago now I did a preview of a rather interesting-looking indie platformer I chanced upon known as Squirbs. Though not entirely unique, it featured an unusual game-mechanic as well as a rather peculiar main character, but it worked well and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm therefore very pleased to say the final game is now ready! Its star is called Squirb and, in his apparent foolish curiosity, he began fooling with a crystal he found which resulted in him breaking it. The many shards were spread over a wide area but also split Squirb himself into two. Your job is simply to recover all the shards, reconstruct the crystal, and (hopefully) return everything to normal. Sounds simple enough!

Indie Games News/Previews #3

Squirbs by Team Indev (2015) - PC

I've long had a weakness for those platform games with cute/weird characters so this upcoming indie title caught my eye easily enough, but I quickly noticed another thing that makes it stand out - you don't control just one cute/weird character but two simultaneously! The main character, you see, is the Squirb of the title whose world has been split into two, both of which contain copies of him. Your job is to search the 125+ stages for fragments of a magical stone which will return the world to normal, but you do this by controlling both Squirbs in both worlds at the same time by way of a split-screen view, with the simple controls (left, right, jump) moving both Squirbs in the same way.

PSN Downloads #4

Vessel (2014)
By: Strange Loops Games Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sony PlayStation 3
Also Available For: PC, Mac

There doesn't really seem to be a massive amount of games starring genius/mad scientists but most of the ones that are around seem to be platformy puzzle games. One of my favourite such examples is the Amiga game, Morph, but Vessel, while further proof of my theory, is quite a bit different. It's a game I recently happened upon via PSN and is a port of a game I've now discovered was released a full two years earlier in it's original PC incarnation. Not sure what the delay was as it seems to be pretty much the same game, and that's one starring M. Arkwright, an inventor who has created a type of splooshy liquid automaton called the Fluro (fluid robot). They were supposed to take over all the laborious monkey jobs that us lazy humans can't be arsed to do but, unsurprisingly, they soon had other ideas.

Indie Nuggets #4

Nebula Retro (2013)
By: Simple Interactive Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: PC
Also Available For: Android, iOS

I'm always on the lookout for the latest bright 'n' colourful platform games to wet my gaming whistle, so to speak, so you can imagine my delight when this one recently came my way. It consists of twenty-six floaty stages through which you are charged with guiding 'Blockman' who doesn't appear to be a man at all but a white square with a face on. He isn't the first platform hero to be handicapped by the absence of limbs though, and it seems to cause him little trouble here as he attempts to recover the 'Pearls of Blockoo' which are the numerous yellow blobs that occupy each stage. This is a simple enough process to begin with, made even simpler still by a handful of training stages before the game proper begins, but things soon start getting tougher.

Platform / Puzzle Games #5

Toki Tori (1992)
By: Two Tribes B.V. / Capcom Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo Game Boy Color
Also Available For: Nintendo 3DS, PC, Android, iOS
Download For: PlayStation Network, Wii Virtual Console, Wii U 

Early 80's platformer, Chuckie Egg, is undoubtedly an all-time classic and has been one of my favourite platform games for a great many years now too, so when I recently stumbled upon the superbly-named Toki Tori it was hard to avoid noticing a few similarities between the two games. The most obvious is that the objective of both is to collect all the eggs on each given stage, but whereas the older game cast you as Henhouse Harry who was presumably a farmer seeking to collect and sell the many eggs produced by his possessive (and deadly) cluckers, this more recent effort casts you as the former occupant of a recently hatched egg who has bravely taken upon himself to liberate his as-yet unhatched brethren who were whisked away by a mysterious and no doubt evil force. Spying the eggs from atop a cliff (as seen in the brief intro sequence) which are now being held in and around a spooky castle, Toki Tori (for that is our hero's name) ventures forth undaunted...

First Look PSN #2

ibb & obb by Sparpweed (2013) - PlayStation Network (PS3)

As a platform game fan (2D ones, obviously), it’s very pleasing for me to find so many new ones turning up in the world of homebrew and independent developers. This particular example is one I’d never heard of and just happened to stumble upon during a rare flick through the PSN Store. It is indeed a platformer, you see, but not a normal one. It was designed to be played by two, each controlling one of the titular characters - semi circular green and red creatures respectively - who must simply make their way from left-to-right through each of the surreal scrolling stages. The trick is, the 'platforms' in them consist of a single line representing the horizon. Both characters can walk and jump around at will, but they can also flip from one side of the horizon to the next by passing through wibbly sections called warps.

Puzzle Games #14

Kula World a.k.a. Kula Quest, a.k.a. Roll Away (1998)
By: Game Design Sweden AB / SCEE Genre: Puzzle / Platform Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sony PlayStation First Day Score: 104,770
Also Available For: Nothing
Download For: PlayStation Network

When the fancy 32-bit consoles arrived, every developer around was frantically trying to convert all the game genres under the sun into equally fancy 3D games to wow expectant gamers. Most tried but few succeeded, at least as far as some genres were concerned. One of these was that of puzzle games which probably didn't really seem like a priority at the time. However, from nowhere, courtesy of a developer no one had even previously heard of, came Kula World which, like so many puzzle games before it, seemed like such an obvious idea that it's amazing no one had thought of it before! Accordingly, the concept is a simple one: you are charged with guiding a beach ball (a 'Kula' beach ball, no less) across/around a floating geometric shape with the ultimate objective of reaching the exit. As any gamer should already know, however, it's not quite that simple.

Game Gear Games #2

Magical Puzzle Popils (1992)
By: MTJ / Tengen Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega Game Gear
Also Available For: Nothing

Of all the hand-helds released in the wake of the Game Boy's monstrous onslaught, none were particularly successful but I think you'd have to say the most successful one was Sega's effort. However, although slightly superior to the Master System from a technical point of view, games released on it were mostly ports of titles on Sega's older console. Exclusives were much rarer but there were a few, and one of them was this unusual puzzle game which, curiously, arrived courtesy of the usually-multi-format publisher, Tengen. As is often the case with puzzle games, they've seen fit to incorporate a story of sorts which really doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but it doesn't hurt to try I suppose! The nameless boy whose actions you direct, you see, recently met a beautiful princess and they fell in love. No sooner had that happened, however, then the jealous Wizard of Forest Popil kidnapped her and trapped her in his labyrinth!

MegaDrive Platform Games #4

Rolo to the Rescue (1992)
By: Vectordean Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis First Day Score: Still Going!
Also Available For: Nothing

Sega's splendid MegaDrive had a rather sizeable library of games available for it which covered a wide variety of genres but the two most commonly featured must surely have been shoot 'em ups and platformers. Offerings of the latter were generally either serious, combat-heavy ones or happy, cutesy ones featuring anthropomorphic animals. I personally like both kinds very much but have always had a particular soft spot for the cutesy ones. There were quite a few of these to begin with though, and once Sonic had been unleashed on an unsuspecting gaming world there were many times more. Some games understandably got lost in that avalanche and one in particular that seemed to get largely overlooked by critics and gamers alike is this British effort published by Electronic Arts (back when that was a good thing).

Platform / Puzzle Games #4

Lost Vikings, The (1992)
By: Silicon & Synapse / Interplay  Genre: Platform / Puzzle  Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis
Also Available For: SNES, GameBoy Advance, Amiga, CD32, PC

Now that I think about it, the sub-genre of platform/puzzle games, on which I am rather keen, is a little obscure as genres go, but the combination of two older and exceedingly popular types of game has proved to be a fantastic partnership. Examples have taken many weird and wonderful forms over the years and one of the most interesting (though not necessarily best) is of the sort that includes multiple characters with differing abilities. This was of course made popular by the great Lemmings. Dozens of similar games soon appeared and most were average at best, but The Lost Vikings is a pretty rare example of another game taking that premise, putting a different slant on it, and actually succeeding.

Platform / Puzzle Games #3

Circus Lido (1991)
By: Unipost Company Ltd Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16
Also Available For: Nothing

I've always been a big fan of these so-called platform/puzzle games despite seldom being very good at them, so I'm always happy to discover a new one, and this is a pretty obscure one! I've been able to find out very little about it but it appears to be a Japan-only release which could go some way to explaining that. As you probably hadn't guessed from the somewhat peculiar title, the star of the game is actually a little chameleon who goes by the name of Leon. Under your control, it's his job to clear each of the single-screen stages of insects. To do this, he must lick them up with his long sticky tongue, carry them one at a time to the deadly (not to mention hungry) carnivorous plants that also populate the stages, and then proceed to regurgitate them so the plant can eat them! The insects are of course scattered around the screen in some awkward corners which necessitates our hero clambering around the many platforms. The only problem here is that he can't jump!

Platform / Puzzle Games #2

Penguin Land (1987)
By: Sega Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega Master System  First Day Score: 9,450
Also Available For: Sega SG-1000, ColecoVision

Back in the late 80's when my beloved Master System was my console of choice, I was rarely able to add to my game collection. I had around 8 games, mostly considered classics nowadays and highly rated back then. As I spent time looking through the magazines of the day, there were, however, always a few games that I wanted but was never able to get my hands on. Penguin Land was among these. Despite the unspectacular scores it generally received in the magazines, I found myself taken by the premise and screenshots and decided that I had to have it! This was, I suspect, mainly due to my fondness for platform/puzzle games, but it wasn't until many years later - around 10 in fact - that I finally got round to buying it. Was it worth the wait?

Platform / Puzzle Games #1

Morph (1993)
By: Millennium Interactive  Genre: Platform / Puzzle   Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga  First Day Score: 38,950
Also Available For: Amiga CD32, SNES

Hey! Who remembers Morph? He was a weird brown thing made from plasticine who changed shape and lived in a box and who had his own TV show when I was a kid. I think only British readers will know who I'm referring to, but whether you remember him or not is irrelevant because this game is nothing to do with him! This Morph is a boy, Ralph Morris, who helps his crackpot uncle (called Professor Krakenpot, appropriately enough!) to test his new teleporting machine. The test inevitably goes wrong and alters his molecular state, leaving him in a 'state of limbo'. Happily for us, however, this results in a type of game that was fairly common on the Amiga - a 2D scrolling platform puzzle game!

Overrated! #2

Marble Madness (1991)
By: Atari / Electronic Arts Genre: Platform / Puzzle Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis
Also Available For: Arcade, Master System, NES, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, PC, Amiga, Atari ST, C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Apple IIGS

Originally released in the world's arcades in 1984, Marble Madness was another cracker from the then red-hot Atari. At least, that's what you'd be forgiven for thinking, given the game's popularity. In truth, it was a competent enough arcade game for its time, but somewhat less suitable as 16-bit console release seven years later. Marble Madness, you see, is a very simple game - you control a marble which you have to guide to the end of the level or 'goal' within a strict time limit. Achieve this and you'll get to tackle the next level. Each level is viewed from a 3D isometric perspective and is set on a series of raised platform sections. The surface of these levels is far from even though - it leans at all manner of angles, and ramps, chutes, bridges, and other such things also adorn the landscape and must be traversed in order to succeed.