It’s easy to assume Tim Schafer misses the adventure genre. The man established his name a billion years ago at Lucasfilm Games, at a time when the adventure game was king and Lucas better than the rest. But even after having a hand in stellar adventure titles like Grim Fandango, Secret of Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle, Schafer finds himself missing the platform genre the most.
“You know what I miss more than adventure games,” Schafer asks Eurogamer in a recent interview. “Platform games. I was really sad that by the time Psychonauts came out it was illegal to make a platform game. I like a happy, brightly colored platform game -- now everything has to be dark and gritty, and have a lot of shooting in it.”
“People bemoan the loss of adventure games, but no one wants to be sad about platform games,” he continued. “I think that's a big loss ... younger kids want to act like older kids, wanting to have guns, shoot things and be violent. A lot of them would like a fun, happy platform game.”
Earlier in the interview, Schafer says he didn’t leave the adventure genre because someone told him it was time. Rather, it was because he became interested in other types of games. “I could have kept working on them,” he said. “I just got excited about directly controlling a character …”
Will Double Fine and Schafer do another platformer? We don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like Schafer is too opposed to the idea. We’ll have to see what tickles his fancy in the future.
[via GoNintendo]
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Contest:
4:20 PM on 10.13.2009
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It's quiet in here.
Once I finish with my 360 backlog I'm really considering buying the Jak games from PS2. Or maybe Klonoa for Wii, that game is sick too.
Everyone's playing Uncharted and Brutal Legend.
Platformer games are still going strong, heck, Mario is still on top of 2D platformers and things like Prince of Persia are colourful, 3D and don't have guns, and you have other ones like Splosion Man.
Maybe the market is saturated with shooting games, but I think Schafer is looking in the wrong places.
When was the last decent adventure game? Someone tell me.
Nonetheless, I completely agree with him.
If people were smart they'd be playing Demon's Souls, and next week they'll rent Brutal Legend and Uncharted, and then go back to Demon's Souls
I really really really really love platformer games, they give characters a whole vision of their concept that surrounds them.
Anyway, my favorite genre is platformers, and it really is a dying breed. And if they do make one, it's a platformer/shooter hybrid (Ratchet, Shadow Complex), or some other lame gimmick (Banjo Nuts & Bolts, LittleBigPlanet). There are so few straight platformers coming out, aside from Mario. Braid was good, but I want more.
YOU HOLD YOUR TONGUE Croc was awesome!
Of course, I might just be saying that because my childhood was console-deprived and Croc was the only major platformer to come to the PC (to my knowledge at least).
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's plenty more.
Same for me! It was my first video game, so it's always going to have a special place in my heart. No matter how saturated it made things.
I know there are plenty, but there should be more focus on them.
Now if he's talking about pure platformers, they are far and few inbetween, but it doesn't mean there isn't many action games with a big focus on platforming. Parkour in a way is becoming the new platformer since it's in games like Prototype (if you count running up buildings as Parkour), Infamous, and even Mirror's Edge that has a huge focus on it. Sure Parkour may be a realistic form of platforming and not the fantasy platform games like Mario and Sonic, but jumping around in games is far from dead.
Oh how I remember the floor of mascot platformers back in the early 90s and early PSOne days.
3d platformers were all about exploring the vast and varied worlds, which is the kind of game tim seems to miss most (games like spyro, crash, sm64, jak&daxter)
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