Electronic Platform Game

electronic platform game, electronic game genre characterized by maneuvering a character from platform to platform by jumping, climbing, and swinging in order to reach some final destination. The first genuine platform game was Nintendo Company Ltd.’s Donkey Kong (1981), an arcade game in which Jumpman climbed up and down ladders and jumped from platform to platform while eluding a giant ape (Donkey Kong) on his way to rescuing a woman. Jumpman, now renamed Mario and joined by his brother Luigi, returned as the star of Mario Bros. (1983), a two-player cooperative arcade game that was subsequently released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES; 1983) home video console. A vastly improved version for the NES, Super Mario Bros. (1985), sold more than 40 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It also was the first video game to be made into a movie, Super Mario Bros. (1993) starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper.

By the time the next generation of 16-bit video consoles arrived, particularly the Sega Genesis (1988) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES; 1990), platform games were essential for the success of any new system. Nintendo continued with its official mascot, Mario, in Super Mario World (1990). Sega had less success with platform games before Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), which featured the company’s new mascot, a hedgehog with “attitude” that helped to establish the console with a slightly older audience.

Platform games, with their typical two-dimensional play, declined in their overall popularity as more powerful 32-bit consoles, such as the Sega Saturn (1994), Sony Corporation’s PlayStation (1994), and the Nintendo 64 (1995), made three-dimensional games possible. Nevertheless, they continue to be popular among younger players, and some three-dimensional platform games have been released. Some examples include Super Mario Galaxy (2007) for the Nintendo Wii (2006), Sony’s LittleBigPlanet (2008) for the PlayStation 3 (2006), and Electronic Arts’ Mirror’s Edge (2008) for the PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Corporation’s Xbox 360 (2005).