How The 90s Platformer Could Dominate Gaming All Over Again

So does that mean platform games are just for noobs? Scrubs? People who need to shut up and git gud? Well, not exactly.

As we covered earlier, some levels in The N. Sane Trilogy are controller-breakingly difficult. Harder than a brick wall built by Vinnie Jones, some of them were. Yes, the pillbox hitbox and uniform jumping mechanics meant the first game was palpably more difficult than the third, but there was still that sense of pride and accomplishment usually only found when giving EA your money if you could finally beat The High Road.

Even once you’d finished the main campaign, there were still coloured gems to get, many of which were only obtainable if you could avoid death for an entire level. And after that there’s the platinum time trial relics. Then, to truly test your side scrolling skills, the developers added in Stormy Ascent, a level so fiendishly difficult developers originally cut it from the 1996 release, saving millions of childhoods in the process.