How The 90s Platformer Could Dominate Gaming All Over Again
3. Attracts The Hardcore
If anything, some modern platformers have gone further in the other direction, alienating players wanting to pick up and see some simple progression. Super Meat Boy has the cartoonish appeal of the friendliest of 90s chums but it’s punishingly sadistic. Super Meat Boy is the kind of agonising game that does not respect safe words. And then there’s the magnificently designed Cuphead, which won praise for both its inventive art style and invigorating gameplay, but !*$% me it’s a hard game.
The Betty Boop-esque visuals might have roped in some curious casuals, but by the time they’d had their cup heads smashed to smithereens by two rowdy toads, a lot of them switched off. Cuphead was a great game, but it appealed to gamers for that same masochistic reason we’ll never quit a multiplayer game on a loss; we keep going back for more pain. Wait… safe words, masochism… this entry is spiralling out of control… Ahem. Moving on.