Pitfall!, Prince of Persia, and Tomb Raider.
I recently revisited Prince of Persia for the SNES, a game
that I had sworn off forever due to what I felt at the time was a ridiculous
control scheme and an unwinnable timing mechanic. I am glad that I came back to it, however, as
it has proven to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding games I have played
in a long time. It also got me to
thinking about the nature of the game and platforming games like it in general.
It was whilst playing an evening’s worth of Prince of Persia
that it occurred to me that what I was playing on my SNES was not so very different
from other games I enjoyed a tremendous amount throughout the long and storied
history of video games. I realized that Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, and
Pitfall! were in reality pretty much exactly the same game. The same game, allowing of course for the
evolution of video games in general and taking into the account some of the
advancements in programming and graphics, but at heart, the same game.
While this
may look dramatically different from
this,
what these two characters do and how they do it are essentially
the same. All three games, Prince of
Persia, Pitfall!, and Tomb Raider are platforming games and platforming games
all share some key, fundamental characteristics.
Tedious Jumping
Puzzles
Nothing defines a platforming game more than boasting a
hearty hoard of tedious jumping puzzles.
In case you are new to all of this, a tedious jumping puzzle is one that
requires the player to execute a series of jumps that must be timed and spaced
exactly right or doom is guaranteed. Often these puzzles require such jumps to
be made in succession while avoiding obstacles or the on-coming assaults of
numerous assailants. Pitfall! is almost entirely tedious jumping
puzzles. Sure you occasionally have the
opportunity to climb a ladder or swing from a vine (that you must jump to...), but the rest of the time you are timing jumps
across crocodile heads or calculating the precise moment to jump the double
rolling logs to avoid losing points.
David Crane could have easily named this game “Tedious Jumping Puzzle,”
but “Pitfall!” sums that up pretty nicely as well.
Likewise, the most challenging parts of
Prince of Persia require you to execute nearly pixel perfect jumping routines
to leap across successive gaps all while avoiding collapsing floors, spikes,
and the occasional guillotine. There are
levels in the game that require multiple trial and error deaths in order to
learn the precise moments to press the jump button or when to execute a
standing jump instead of a running jump.
I have often postulated that Prince of Persia (at least the jumping
parts) is actually a puzzle game that requires you to execute exactly the right
moves at exactly the right time in order to clear the puzzle. If you knew exactly what those moves were you wouldn't even have to see the TV screen to play. It may not be that dramatic, but PoP does
feature many hair-pulling moments of frustration due to ill-timed leap.
Then again, so does Tomb Raider. While later games in the series would expand
a bit upon the theme and introduce variations in the game play, the original
game was absolutely riddled with tedious jumping puzzles. Many of these also required throwing switches
or opening doors, and some even culminated in combat, but the vast majority of
them just asked you to make a leap of faith with the hopes that the gap was
narrow enough for Lara to get a finger hold on the edge of a ledge or just
enough room to land without overshooting the target and landing in a trap. Tomb
Raider is particularly evil about requiring a series of perfectly timed jumps,
many of them blind, in order to complete a level. I am reminded particularly of the final
levels where jumps to small, craggy rocks over molten lava are required. Just plain mean.
The very best platformers are those that feature tedious
jumping puzzles that are plenty challenging, but not so demanding that the
frustration outweighs the fun. I think
the three games featured in this missive exemplify the kind of balance a great
platformer must possess.
Limited Offensive
Capabilities
Good platformers also keep you on the run. The goal of a platforming game is to reach
the end of the level, literally. Most
traditional platformers are linear in that they have a starting point and an
ending point and the goal of the game is to move from Start to Finish, not to collect items or squash
enemies, but to advance through the level.
Those other things can happen and are often necessary to the overall
goal, but the primary goal is to move from Start to Finish. This is why so many great platformers give
the player few, if any, offensive capabilities.
Most great platformers ask you to overcome obstacles not destroy them.
Pitfall! is a perfect example. In
Pitfall! you have no offensive capabilities
and Harry is beset by instantly lethal obstacles. From crocodile pits to scorpions and snakes,
Harry must simply avoid everything in his path as he desperately tries to clear
as many of the 255 game screens as possible in 20 minutes.
You cannot shoot, stomp, or slice anything,
you can only jump. You can’t even duck.
Prince of Persia does give you a sword to use
against your enemies, but once you get the combat system down, death due to
combat isn’t terribly common unless you are careless. The vast majority of the game is spent avoiding perils and pitfalls and making incredible jumps. You cannot hack your way through a three
story drop or a bed of spikes.
Tomb
Raider is a bit different since Lara has her inexhaustible pistols that shoot
anything that gets in her way, but in the first game there isn’t all that much
to shoot. And like
PoP, you cannot shoot
a tight jump or a pool of lava.
Limited offensive capabilities dramatically increase the
challenge of a platformer. It is all too
easy to find an invincible star and run rampant over your foes, even to the
point of being able to literally by-pass all of the challenge and simply charge
from Start to Finish. A great platformer
keeps your attack power low and your deft maneuvering at an all time high.
Doing the Same Thing
in Many Different Ways
Great platformers keep things simple, but they find new and
inventive ways to use the same basic devices over and over. Tomb Raider is, oddly enough, the best
example of this. In the PSX Tomb Raider
games you can always visit Lara’s posh mansion and tackle her personal obstacle
course under the guise of a tutorial.
Everything you need to be able to play the game and succeed is shown to
you during that obstacle course.
Everything. Every kind of jump,
grab, roll, what have you, is put before you in a consequence-free practice
environment. The main game takes those
basic building blocks and finds myriad ways of implementing those elements into
15 extremely challenging levels. You
will still need to jump and grab a ledge in level 14 as you did in level 4, but
the circumstances are likely to be rather different and what came before and
what comes next are most likely going to be radically different.
Prince of Persia is founded on this principle
as well. There are two basic kinds of
jumps you execute, but where and how you execute them is constantly being
re-invented during the game. Some levels
are a series of rapid running jumps while others require a standing jump
followed by a running jump, then a climb or drop. Even Pitfall!, while rudimentary by
comparison, is not without variation.
You may only be able to run and jump, but not every screen presents the
same jumping scenario and some do not require a jump at all (if you time it
right). You cannot simply run forward at
full steam and leap over every campfire and log in front of you.
By taking simple game play elements and obstacles and
inventing new and interesting ways to blend them together in level designs,
great platformers construct entire games out of very small parts. The best platformers are constantly finding
new and challenging ways to look at fundamental aspects of game play.
Do It Again
It is rare that you are going to plug in a game like
Prince
of Persia for the first time, sit down and run through it in a single sitting
with only one life. I suppose it is
possible, but I have yet to see anyone accomplish such a feat. Great platformers require lots of practice
and nearly endless bouts of trial and error.
The best platformers are also learning experiences that teach you how to
succeed at the game as you go along. My
initial experience with
Prince of Persia is a perfect example of this. The game
seemed so difficult that I walked away from it because I didn't have the time
or inclination to learn how to play the game.
I can easily recall my first 5 minutes playing the game were spent
running off of ledges and falling into spike pits over and over and over. Figuring out when to use a standing jump
versus a running jump took time.
Learning how to ease my way up to a ledge and then turn around and lower
myself to the next platform required lots of practice. Heck, figuring out when to press the jump
button to properly execute a running jump was still not a guarantee when I was
on level 13! (SNES remember...)
As mentioned in the section above, tedious jumping puzzles
are only overcome by trial and error.
Tomb Raider requires may leaps of faith to far away ledges or even just
out into the open. Chances are good you
are not going to make the right jump every time just on instinct and luck
alone. And even when you do get lucky,
you often find yourself just as dead on the next obstacle and starting the
level over again. Many times I have
cheered as Lara completed a tricky jump only to watch her turn a corner and be
crushed by a boulder. Do it again, this
time avoid the boulder. Pitfall! is a
bit less forgiving. Unlike in PoP or
Tomb Raider, Pitfall Harry only has two lives.
If thrice you succumb to any of the various hazards on Harry’s journey,
you’ll be starting over from the very beginning. On the upside the game cannot last more than
20 minutes, so at the very most you are only 19:59 away from the starting point
should you lose all of your lives.
 |
| Go ahead, jump! |
It is the trial and error nature of great platformers that
make them so rewarding. It is also this
feature that creates the learning experience mentioned in the section
above. By repeating jumps and other
obstacles over and over you become more adept at overcoming them and better
prepared for new and more difficult challenges ahead. You also get really good at the early parts
of games! The best platformers avoid
having the player repeat extremely long sequences of the game due to trial and
error and reward doing something repeatedly with new challenges and more
importantly, in-game check points!
Conclusions
Therefore I maintain that Pitfall!, Prince of Persia, and
Tomb Raider represent a snapshot of the evolution of the platformer genre of
video games. Stripped of their fancy
trappings, these three games are, at their core, the same basic game: Move from
Start to Finish avoiding the majority of the obstacles in your path and
executing tedious jumping puzzles by process of repeated trial and error across
a diverse body of game levels. By this
logic, if you enjoy the game play of Tomb Raider, you should be right at home
with Pitfall!. For me, I find this to be
quite true as the elements that they share appeal to me as a player and I find
them all enjoyable for pretty much the same reasons. (well, and Lara’s ample if somewhat pixilated
physique)
And what of the present day?
I’m not sure. I've not seen too
many modern games that exemplify the essence of a classic platformer. I am sure they are out there. Games like Lost in Shadow and Kirby’s Epic
Yarn give me hope, but I've not found many games past the PS2 era that scratch
my platforming itch the way these three games do. If you have any recommendations, I’d love to
hear them.
“What About Me? Mario?”
Yes, yes, we all love you Mario (at least those of us who
still have a sense of wonder and whimsy in our lives), but you've strayed a bit
too far from the beaten path and you break one of the most important rules of
platforming: you have too many offensive capabilities! It seems like you gain three or four new ones
every time you release a game. Don’t you
turn into a bee now or something kind of goofy?
Super Mario Bros. (and the newly revisited games of the same concept) is
about the closest the Mario franchise comes to being a pure platformer of the
type I describe above. Mario simply has
too much firepower (some of it literal) at his disposal. He can stomp on most things and those that he
cannot, he simply blasts with a fireball or knocks off with a koopa shell. Mario games are all about getting from Start
to Finish by taking out bad guys not avoiding obstacles. And then there are the invincibility
stars. While a platforming game might
have a power-up like this, Mario damned near banks on their existence to get
through some levels and many can be cleared by running straight from Start to
Finish while under the influence of the penta-pointed opium. After
SMB3 when you could start stockpiling
power-ups, Mario transitioned from a pure platformer to something else. The franchise literally transcended the
genre. Mario games are something alright,
and there are plenty of clones out there that try to capture that same magic
(looking at you
Sonic,
Crash Bandicoot and
Spyro), but they have moved beyond
the simple pleasures of the pure platformer.
I have created this sister page for DragonVale to keep it separate from the original review page for the game app. I will keep the fresh information at the top and bump older data down the page. This page is not intended to be a Breeding Guide. That job has been more than tackled by Macenstein over at his page. I strongly encourage you to check it out; he usually has the combos for new dragons within 12 hours of them being released. This record will be a log to track new dragons as they come out, but it is primarily here to track the game updates and any new game play innovations that come with it. Think of it like a fan/information page with lots of commentary. Enjoy!
Ok, so why did I drag everyone through 21 days of drudgery? Who cares about me leveling up my River Dragon? Any good DragonVale player should, because what I have attempted to demonstrate with this project is just how difficult it is to get your dragon to Level 20. With a head start that equaled about 1 day's worth of work, it took me a total of 22 days to generate enough food to elevate my River Dragon from LV1 to LV20. 22 days. Three weeks. That is insane.
