Thread by @gravislizard

i've probably talked about this before but i think a lot about how "platform game" was basically the cheap cop-out option for license titles and other shovelware for most of the 8 and 16 bit game eras

a tremendous number of games that you could describe as "platform games" did not have good mechanics beyond having figured out jumping after like '86 for the most part. the first few years of platform games absolutely had no idea how jumping worked but at least they nailed that

like, arcade proto platformers had it right from the get-go for the most part i think, but it turns out jumping's actually really hard to program? so a lot of cheap 8-bit titles (and boy howdy were there a lot of those) didn't figure it out at all

but what they largely never figured out (or chose to ignore) is that nobody fucking wants to have to crouch to attack shit. contra understood this but a lot of platformers were like "lol, your attacks happen 10px off the ground but we have 8px tall enemies"

the bane of videogames for seriously like 17 years can be summed up as "frogs." i.e. enemies shorter than your characters default (or, more commonly, *only*) attack height which you can only attack via weird sidelong methods

imo it absolutely wrecks the flow of any videogame to have an enemy that you can't attack until it jumps or whatever. Mets in megaman are a staple of the series but they suck shit and i hate them. They aren't fun, they're just irritating time-wasters.

megaman at least INTENDED that. but a tremendous number of games were like "here's some frogs! they don't QUITE jump high enough to pass over you so you're almost certainly going to take damage unless you nail the frame-perfect snapshot to kill them on their way up GOOD LUCK ASSH

here, Arumana no Kiseki starts right out with snakes that you can't attack unless they jump, either to jump over you or jump up onto a platform. and it doesn't make any sense - why can't your character attack any direction but straight forward?

i get sprite limitations and intentional gameplay restrictions but this was *rampant.* the vast majority of 8-bit platform characters are bizarrely stiff, and it never jibes with the implication that they're crack mercenaries or experienced adventurers.

I get that Bionic Commando would have been a ten minute game if he could have just *fired upwards* or *jumped* but i played it Back In The Day and it felt like I was in a straitjacket

the end result is that even games with really iffy movement overall often felt liberating *if they provided alternate ways to attack.* Ys 3 in fact is not the best platformer by a long shot but you can stab your sword downwards and that changes *everything.*

and actually, other 80s japanese action RPGs took this even further - landing on an enemy DOESN'T HURT YOU. you can just stand on them, in a number of games, and that means you have *another* route to not getting wrecked

the highly abstracted combat of early videogames was always frustrating to me. why does bumping into something hurt you in the majority of videogames, even when the enemy doesn't actually swing or bite at you? mario, sure, but not everything needed to be mario

mario is highly abstract, but stuff like contra was turbo frustrating *because* there were so many ways to die by touching single pixels together

then there's the thing some japanese games did where they expected you to take damage in order to accomplish things. like as far as i know multiple Dragon Slayer games expected you to just tank damage in order to *climb enemies*

in Legacy of the Wizard in particular, there are parts in the dungeon that are MUCH easier if you ignore the platforms and just climb an enemy. you can walk in front of them and press Up to climb them like a ladder, it's absolutely intended. you also have a LOT of HP

furthermore, Pochi, the playable monster character, takes no damage from this and has very little jump height; he's *absolutely* intended to get places by climbing enemies. it's a really interesting twist, much like Samus freezing those croissant bugs to use as platforms