How The 90s Platformer Could Dominate Gaming All Over Again
2. Reinvention And Reboot
Crash Team Racing was an awesome kart racer (better than Mario Kart too. Fight me), but after that, no one’s really clamouring for more Crash remasters. Ditto Spyro, post-Reignited.
Other 90s games seem to split off in two directions: Either they were made by Nintendo (more on them in a second) or they evolved.
Platformers continued past the 90s with Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Banjo-Kazooie and Sly Cooper but they never really captured the public the way Crash & Spyro had. Meanwhile, Tomb Raider has received a hugely successful reboot culminating in this year’s brilliant Shadow, but its influence can be felt in Uncharted and Horizon: Zero Dawn as well, two exclusives at least partly responsible for Sony’s dominance over Microsoft this gen.
A lot of basic platform mechanics like, well, jumping from platform to platform implemented in newer sandbox franchises like Assassin’s Creed or Saint’s Row. But even then, they’re seeped in a level of violence that traditional platformers have often shied away from. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it does seem leave a sizeable gap to be filled.