Platform games for kids...

[susanmiller]

My sister seems to want to play the PS2 like 4 years after I gave up on it.

So got her Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of the Cortex
and she is loving it. Any similar platform games for kids?

Thanks

 

[BigFoot]

How about all the Ratchet & Clank games?

 

[Canadave]

The N64 had a few fantastic platform games. Specifically I'm thinking of the two Banjo-Kazooies and Donkey Kong 64.

 

[Yoda]

PS2 is a tough sell for platformers for me. For my money if I want to jump on things' heads, I'll go with the plumber. The Wii's got Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Brothers, a bunch of classic Mario platformers on the virtual console... backwards compatibility for the Gamecube platformers. The Donkey Kong Country games weren't half bad in the SNES days either.

Yeah, I know you said PS2, but Nintendo has all the platformers I'd ever need.

 

[darthraidr]

Ratchet and Clank (already mentioned above)
Jak and Daxter
Sly Cooper

 

[Rii]

Are there any platformers that aren't suitable for kids?

That's not a knock on the genre, btw. Unless you're 16 and still impressed by hookers in GTA.

 

[Davros]

Atari Arcade Classics.

 

[Rii]

The N64 had a few fantastic platform games. Specifically I'm thinking of the two Banjo-Kazooies and Donkey Kong 64.

Ahem.

 

[Yoda]

Are there any platformers that aren't suitable for kids?

That's not a knock on the genre, btw. Unless you're 16 and still impressed by hookers in GTA.

I just got the impression that we were talking about a fairly young kid, and to keep it more on the E for Everyone level.

I guess it depends on how broadly you define the genre. I could consider Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to be a platformer for instance... Not that its unsuitable for kids, but I think the sequels got edgier and they were all ESRBed in the Teen to Mature range... Braid is an awesome puzzle platformer that I wouldn't recommend for decently young kids...

Then again I was playing Doom at 11 when it came out and somehow didn't Columbine the school.

 

[Rii]

I guess it depends on how broadly you define the genre. I could consider Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to be a platformer for instance... Not that its unsuitable for kids, but I think the sequels got edgier and they were all ESRBed in the Teen to Mature range..

I like how Yahtzee put it: that for Warrior Within the Ubisoft execs went around the office and fired everyone who was smiling.

 

[FordSVT]

The Rayman games are brilliant, especially the original 2D version. The first 1st person Rayman was good as well, but they got a bit derivative after that.

 

[Canadave]

Rii: While Mario 64 was a fantastic first attempt at a 3D platformer, I think it does suffer from being that first attempt. It's pretty rough around the edges, and lacks much of the polish that Rare brought to its N64 platformers. Hence why I picked them over it.

 

[Rii]

Rii: While Mario 64 was a fantastic first attempt at a 3D platformer, I think it does suffer from being that first attempt. It's pretty rough around the edges, and lacks much of the polish that Rare brought to its N64 platformers. Hence why I picked them over it.

Sir, for your heresy you shall burn in the very fires of hell.

Incidentally, I was reading Sirlin's piece on Donkey Kong Country 2 recently and it reminded me why I disliked Donkey Kong 64, that horrific rap song aside:

Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong64 both posited that if finding 40 DK coins and around 100 bonus rooms was fun, maybe finding four times that much stuff is four times the fun! It’s not. It’s tedious is what it is.

 

[Canadave]

Rii: While Mario 64 was a fantastic first attempt at a 3D platformer, I think it does suffer from being that first attempt. It's pretty rough around the edges, and lacks much of the polish that Rare brought to its N64 platformers. Hence why I picked them over it.

Sir, for your heresy you shall burn in the very fires of hell.

Incidentally, I was reading Sirlin's piece on Donkey Kong Country 2 recently and it reminded me why I disliked Donkey Kong 64, that horrific rap song aside:

Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong64 both posited that if finding 40 DK coins and around 100 bonus rooms was fun, maybe finding four times that much stuff is four times the fun! It’s not. It’s tedious is what it is.

See, it's not that I dislike Mario 64 (it's a genuinely fantastic game), I just find that when I dig out my N64, I don't tend to go back to it as much as DK64 and especially not as much as Banjo-Kazooie. For my money, the latter is the greatest 3D platformer ever: wonderfully varied levels, tonnes of different, unique ways to get puzzle pieces, and perhaps my favourite soundtrack from that era of gaming.

Oh, and while I agree that DK64 took the collecting too far, I think B-K had it about right. The only things you really had to collect were the music notes to open doors in the overworld, and six Jingos in each level for a puzzle piece. Certainly no worse than Mario's stars for collecting 100 coins or 8 red coins, IMO.

 

[Kelthaz]

^ No way, you two are both wrong. Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 are both great games, but they're definitely not the best. That honour goes to the Spyro: The Dragon trilogy on the PSX. Fantastic fast-paced gameplay, amazing level design, and a wide selection of well-designed mini-games that kept you from getting bored. A bit on the easy side perhaps, but those games were damn near perfect. They also knew how to strike the perfect balance between collecting stuff and having fun.

 

[Rii]

^ Pretty sure Spyro for PSX wasn't on N64.

This thread makes me want to play a platformer. In the absence of a Wii, maybe I'll finish up Trine on PC...

 

[D Man]

Banjo-Kazooie is great, but for my money, Banjo-Tooie is probably the best 3D platformer out there, or at least it was until Mario Galaxy came along. It fixed all the little things about BK that bugged me, and created an impressively massive game with unique challenges that were actually...challenging. You really had to pay attention and remember where the millions of different doors and passages went, and what abilities did what, and where those split-up pads were, and so on. Plus it had some sweet boss battles, even if the FPS sections were basically Goldeneye ripoffs. Makes sense, given that Rare made both games. In any case, I think the Gruntilda Industries area or whatever it was called is basically a masterpiece of level design.

 

[Canadave]

^ So, in short, I think we can all agree on the fact that it's impossible to agree on the best 3D platformer of all time.