22 items
Virgin Games didn't just make a movie tie-in — they got actual Disney animators to draw the game, so Aladdin ran, leapt, and sword-swung across your Genesis with real film-grade animation. Four million copies later, it was one of the best-selling Genesis games ever, and one half of an eternal playground debate with the totally different SNES version.
A bear with a bird living in his backpack collecting jiggies across Gruntilda's lair: the 3D collect-a-thon platformer perfected. Rare's masterpiece paired note-perfect googly-eyed humor with Grant Kirkhope's unforgettable score on the Nintendo 64.
Accolade's answer to Sonic: an orange bobcat in a shirt with an exclamation point, a glide, a catchphrase ("What could possibly go wrong?") and, per Electronic Gaming Monthly, the most hype of any character of 1993. The first game reviewed fine. Bubsy 3D did not, and the bobcat became gaming's favorite punchline.
![Video thumbnail — Commander Keen 1 (1991, MS-DOS) - Marooned on Mars (Full Longplay)[720p60]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YUyQSfKRU1w/maxresdefault.jpg)
Billy Blaze, age eight, in a football helmet and red sneakers, pogo-sticking across Mars in the 1990 shareware platformer that gave the PC the smooth, console-style scrolling it had never managed. The team that made it at night on borrowed Softdisk computers used the royalty checks to found id Software.
The red dot from the 7 Up logo, in sunglasses, flicking soda bubbles at whatever crawled toward him. It should have been a cereal-box throwaway. Instead David Perry's team made one of the best-looking platformers on the Genesis, and it sold about a million copies.
The spinning, crate-smashing marsupial who became the PlayStation's unofficial mascot and Mario's cheeky rival. Naughty Dog's 1996 platformer sent Crash bouncing through jungle levels and dodging boulders — and defined a generation's PS1 afternoons.
The SNES game whose pre-rendered graphics looked so impossibly '3D' that kids begged for a turn just to see it. Donkey Kong and Diddy rolled through mine carts and jungle levels in a technical showcase that felt like the future.
An ordinary earthworm in a robotic super-suit, here to save the world with run-and-gun style and pure, unapologetic weirdness. Earthworm Jim arrived in October 1994 as a 16-bit fever dream — fluid animation and gross-out humor that felt almost illegal on a Genesis. It was goofy, it was gross, and your parents didn't get it. That was the whole point.
The wisecracking, TV-obsessed gecko who cracked one-liners while wall-crawling through the 'Media Dimension.' In the era of mascot wars — Mario, Sonic, Crash — Gex was the snarky one, voiced by an actual stand-up comedian. It's tail time.
Naughty Dog's PS2 platformer arrived in December 2001 with no loading screens and no seams — just one continuous world for a silent hero and his motor-mouthed otter-weasel sidekick. Critics adored it, and with Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper it formed the PS2's beloved platformer trinity.
The Game Boy game that introduced Kirby in the summer of 1992: inhale an enemy, swallow it or spit it back out as a star, and float over anything you can't beat. He was pink in Japan and white on the American box, and sold more than five million copies either way.
Capcom's 1993 reboot of Mega Man for the Super NES: a new hero, X, a century after the NES games, with a dash, a wall-jump, armor upgrades hidden in Dr. Light's capsules, and Sigma, a villain who used to be one of the good guys. Some players reportedly thought the X was the Roman numeral 10.
Abe, a stitch-mouthed floor waxer at the RuptureFarms meat plant, overhears that his people are the next product and runs, chanting, possessing guards and leading 99 fellow Mudokons to safety. The PlayStation puzzle-platformer of 1997 that let you talk to the level, and killed you constantly.
The buddy-platformer that paired Ratchet, a wrench-swinging lombax mechanic, with Clank, a small defective robot — and armed them with the most gleefully over-the-top arsenal on the PlayStation 2. Blowing up enemies with a Suck Cannon or a flamethrower was the whole point.
A raccoon master thief, a turtle who does the planning, a hippo who drives the van, and a stolen book of family heist techniques to get back. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (September 2002) landed between Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank to form the PlayStation 2's cartoon-platformer trinity, and did it in cel-shaded noir with a stealth rule of its own: one hit and you're out.
Sega's lightning-fast answer to Mario arrived in 1991 as the face of the Genesis console war. Speed was the point—looping green hills, golden rings scattering on impact, and an attitude that made the 16-bit rivalry feel personal.
A cocky little purple dragon gliding and flame-breathing through bright pastel worlds with his dragonfly sidekick Sparx. Spyro was the PlayStation's other mascot platformer alongside Crash — collect gems, free trapped dragons, charge headfirst into everything.
The game that showed the world what 3D could be. Super Mario 64 launched the Nintendo 64 by dropping Mario into an open, explorable castle, and its analog-stick control and swooping camera quietly wrote the rulebook every 3D platformer would follow.
A tropical vacation goes hilariously wrong when Mario arrives on Isle Delfino and is immediately framed for vandalism. Armed with a talking water-cannon backpack and a court order to clean the island, you chased 120 Shine Sprites across a bizarre, sun-soaked adventure. Divisive at launch — no castles, just a goofy water gun and a wrongfully convicted plumber — it's aged into a GameCube classic.
The SNES launch title that introduced Yoshi and redefined what a platformer could be. Mario's dinosaur companion, cape-feather flight, and the hunt for all 96 exit-goals kept millions of players glued to their TVs throughout the decade.
The late-Genesis showpiece: a run-and-gun platformer starring a robot built from articulated green orbs, with pre-rendered graphics meant to prove the aging console could still hang with the SNES. It also came with a genuinely wild promotion — a hidden $25,000 prize.
The N64 platformer that looked like a pop-up storybook—levels stitched from cloth, cardboard, and pastel construction paper, starring baby Yoshis who squeal, flutter-jump, and eat 30 fruit per page. Critics shrugged; kids never forgot it.