Turrican 3 on the Amiga. It had some really subtle graphical effects going on that it made it look as good as a SNES game even though it was on a 32 colour palette. Very underrated.
The Lost Vikings, also on Amiga. One of the only platform games to keep me completely engrossed from start to finish. Not something I can say about the Mario games. An excellent original idea that didn't grate as the puzzles got harder.
Yoshi's Island. Widely accepted as the best SNES platformer. Attention to detail was almost psycopathic in its application. Even Yoshi's Story on N64 was not quite as good, despite the graphical improvements.
I didn't like Sonic on megadrive because there was too much guesswork. There was no real logical progression to the game. It was maze-navigation and nothing more.
The SEGA master system versions of Sonic and Sonic 2 were reasonably appealing. They were necessarily slower than the megadrive versions and seemed to have a bit more thought put into them.
Leander on Amiga. Excellent graphics and reasonably good gameplay. It was let down by repetitiveness in the end though.
Brian the Lion on Amiga. Again, some of the best graphics and effects (realtime rotation of bitmaps, woo!) but not enough thought gone into the gameplay.
Fire and Ice. Good concept, good character, bit too hard.
Creatures and Creatures 2 on C64. They did push the 64 to its limits in the day and the sub games really did make it all worthwhile.
No platformer would be complete without a couple of original sub games. They help break up the monotony and gives the player a chance to associate more with the in-game character. This is assuming that the game designer doesn't make the mistake of excluding the in-game character from sub-games!
Things to avoid:
Slippy slidey ice levels.
Leaps of faith (having to jump/fall into a part of the level with no chance to forsee the outcome).
Making the player trawl back through previously visited parts of the level.
Unfairness (there should always be a predictable way of overcoming an enemy or obstacle).
Forgetting to include an in-game 'music on/off' option. Seriously.
The Lost Vikings, also on Amiga. One of the only platform games to keep me completely engrossed from start to finish. Not something I can say about the Mario games. An excellent original idea that didn't grate as the puzzles got harder.
Yoshi's Island. Widely accepted as the best SNES platformer. Attention to detail was almost psycopathic in its application. Even Yoshi's Story on N64 was not quite as good, despite the graphical improvements.
I didn't like Sonic on megadrive because there was too much guesswork. There was no real logical progression to the game. It was maze-navigation and nothing more.
The SEGA master system versions of Sonic and Sonic 2 were reasonably appealing. They were necessarily slower than the megadrive versions and seemed to have a bit more thought put into them.
Leander on Amiga. Excellent graphics and reasonably good gameplay. It was let down by repetitiveness in the end though.
Brian the Lion on Amiga. Again, some of the best graphics and effects (realtime rotation of bitmaps, woo!) but not enough thought gone into the gameplay.
Fire and Ice. Good concept, good character, bit too hard.
Creatures and Creatures 2 on C64. They did push the 64 to its limits in the day and the sub games really did make it all worthwhile.
No platformer would be complete without a couple of original sub games. They help break up the monotony and gives the player a chance to associate more with the in-game character. This is assuming that the game designer doesn't make the mistake of excluding the in-game character from sub-games!
Things to avoid:
Slippy slidey ice levels.
Leaps of faith (having to jump/fall into a part of the level with no chance to forsee the outcome).
Making the player trawl back through previously visited parts of the level.
Unfairness (there should always be a predictable way of overcoming an enemy or obstacle).
Forgetting to include an in-game 'music on/off' option. Seriously.