Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 58)

Trigger Happy
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from a number of other game types. The first Tomb
Raider game, for example, was clearly a development
of ideas in the classic 2D platformer Prince of Persia
(the first game in which a character could grab on to
ledges and pull himself up), yet it is also a
threedimensional block-moving puzzle game with
added combat elements. And Crash Bandicoot 3 is not
really a platform game at all, even though it requires
you very traditionally to jump on enemies’ heads and
collect fruit. Apart from in the two-dimensional bonus
levels, there are very few platforms. Its major influence
is in fact the racing game with a dynamic obstacle
course: rather than figure out complicated routes in a
vertically oriented environment, you must run full tilt
“into” (or sometimes “out of”) the depth of the screen.
It qualifies partly as an “exploration game” because of
the player’s simple desire to see what surreal beauties
the designers have hidden around the next corner.
The old “platform game” is no longer a discrete
game type in itself, but denotes an aspect of gameplay
that may occur in many different genres. Even
firstperson shooters like Turok (1997) cravenly require
the player to negotiate platform elements, even though
current 3D engines make such a task infuriatingly