(originally published August 30, 2006)

Run right. Jump. Slide. Climb. Shoot. Stomp. Score. Win. Repeat.

If this sounds familiar to you, then chances are you grew up playing video games in the golden age of the Side Scroller. This was back before Real Time Strategy games became huge and when 3D gaming involved wearing ridiculous glasses and playing Rad Racer until you got a headache. From the early 80’s until the mid 90’s, the Side Scroller was truly king of all video game genres. And I say that it is time to bring them back.

While certainly there were many variations, the basic setup of the classic Side Scroller was simple: you start the game with some sort of avatar on the left side of the screen and then move towards a goal on the right. Along the way you may encounter any number of different enemies blocking your path, from the living (turtles) to the almost living (robots) to the undead (zombies). And if this isn’t enough to keep your hero from achieving the greatness that awaits him (or her) on the right side of the world, there are also environmental obstacles with which you must contend. There are bottomless pits, fireballs, crushing weights and pointy metal things, all of which could lead to instant death for your intrepid adventurer. The key, of course, was to use your hero’s special talents to maneuver through his linear world, always pressing forward, forever moving to the right.

The best examples of classic Side Scrollers also seem to be some of the very best games of their era: Super Mario Bros., Contra, Castlevania, Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog and Bonk’s Adventure. These games all managed to work within the general constraints of the genre, while each adding something unique. Super Mario Bros. represented a quantum leap over anything that had been seen on a home system before. Sonic amazed us with speed and graphics that showed just what the new class of consoles could do. And Bonk’s Adventure gave us some sort of caveman.

For years the Side Scrollers ruled the video game landscape. As with nearly every gaming genre, however, this time on the top was not going to last forever. Role Playing Games had always been popular among hardcore gamers, and with hit series like Final Fantasy, they were starting to gain an audience among casual gamers as well. PC gaming was being dominated by RTS games like WarCraft and adventure games like Myst and The 7th Guest. First Person Shooters were also starting to make a mark for themselves with hits like Doom and Duke Nukem.

Despite the rise in new genres, Side Scrollers still clung to relevancy. The death knell for Side Scrollers, though, was to be announced with three words from the same mustachioed plumber who helped usher in the era: “It’sa me, Mario.” And things would never be the same again.

In 1996, the N64 hit the store shelves, and it was the first Nintendo console to not have a Side Scroller available at launch (because remember, the Virtual Boy never happened, ok?). Suddenly Mario was ripped from his 2D, straight-lined world and thrust into a new world of 3D and endless possibilities. Not only could you jump over your enemies, but now you could go around them as well. Your world just got a lot bigger, and a lot more complicated.

Mario 64 became a huge hit with critics and consumers alike, and a new genre was born: the 3D Platformer. Soon if a game wasn’t in 3D, then it seemed like a relic from the past. New, more powerful, hardware was allowing games to go where they had not gone before. Moving from one side of the screen to the other no longer seemed like enough. Linear game play, in the most literal sense of the term, was dying. Gamers wanted to explore worlds far more vast than the ones they been seeing for years. It wasn’t long before the Side Scroller was but a distant memory. 3D Platformers, First Person Shooters and the occasional Adventure game became the mainstays of the home console.

Then a funny thing happened. Us old gamers began to feel a hint of nostalgia for the games of our youth. We realized that rich, 3D environments were not what made a game great. It was about game play and fun. Combine this with the fact that old games are now easily accessible to anyone who wants them, and you have the beginning of a retro-gaming revolution. And of course many of the games that were given new life in this revolution were the classic Side Scrollers.

Then another funny thing happened. On the heels of the retro-gaming revolution, new Side Scrollers began to show up. In 2003, Viewtiful Joe was released and became a smash hit. Combining new advancements in graphics and game play, with the classic format of a Side Scroller, Viewtiful Joe proved that the genre once thought dead, was still alive and kicking.

And things didn’t stop there. Portable systems, less powerful than their home console cousins, also found Side Scrollers to be a perfect fit. New Super Mario Bros., only recently released for the Nintendo DS, has been flying off store shelves. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is another example of a Side Scroller receiving a facelift and then proving to be as much fun as any 3D game on the market. And as if all of this didn’t prove that there is still life left in the genre, Nintendo is developing the promising title Super Paper Mario as a final hurrah for the Gamecube.

We stand on the cusp of a new era in gaming. While the next generation of consoles is arriving, old games are being rediscovered. While gaming technology is becoming even more advanced, old ideas about game play are being resurrected. The genres that have been popular for the past five years are starting to grow stale. The landscape suggests that it is time for a change.

As we look for the next big thing, we can look to the past, to the Side Scroller, for inspiration. The simple elegance in game play, of taking control of our avatar and thrusting him heedlessly towards the right side of the screen, of running and jumping and shooting and stomping our way to our goal. This is the beauty of the genre. Many gamers say they are looking for something new. What they may not know, however, is that they are really looking for something old.

(originally published July 17, 2009)

With the recent release of Punch Out!! for the Wii, I became nostalgic and, after blowing off the dust, I popped in my old Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! cartridge.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! was probably the fourth Nintendo game I ever played, after Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros. and Contra. It was one of the games that all the kids had back then. That was kind of the beauty of owning a NES around 1988. There were only so many games to be had. Every once in a while you’d run into the kid whose parents would buy him a new game every weekend, but mostly everybody had the same core collection. It was a great way to bond with other 8 year olds. You could just say “You got Contra?” and a lifelong friendship was born. Gaming is so fractured today that this is unlikely to be the case any longer.

There are two things that I remember very clearly about Punch Out!! The first is how excited I was when I finally figured out how to beat King Hippo. This was a pretty monumental triumph for me. I was in our living room one summer afternoon and lunch was ready. I begged my mom to let me play just a few minutes longer. Then, somehow, I solved the puzzle. It was so easy. I played until I beat King Hippo and then I ate my grilled cheese.

The second thing I remember about the game is the code to get to Mike Tyson. I think everybody who owned this game probably still knows the code. Sometimes I wish it could be my phone number. When I was a kid, I was never able to get to Mike Tyson on my own, much less defeat him using the code. It took me until after I graduated from college to finally take down Tyson. By that time the feat left me feeling satisfied but a little sad that I had no real reason to pick up the game again.

Until this week. The game is as good as I remember it being and it has held up very well to the test of time (the same can’t be said about Ring King). I started to wonder why this game was so good. Part of it is the graphics, yes. But a bigger part is that, despite the outward appearance, it is not really a game about boxing.

Sports games are notoriously difficult to get right. There’s a careful balance that must be struck between realism and what will actually be fun to play. The problem is that, as gamers, we all want different things. Some of us would forgo all realism to make what we feel is a game that is more fun (Baseball Simulator 1000, for example). On the other hand, some people find that realism is the fun. This is less of a problem in other genres such as First Person Shooters. The truth can be stretched a little more here because few gamers have actually fought in WWII. But with sports games, there’s a good chance the player has, in fact, picked up a bat and glove.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! cleverly avoids this problem by only pretending to be a boxing game. In reality, it’s better to compare Punch Out!! to Guitar Hero than to Ring King. Punch Out!! is all about reflexes and reacting to stimuli. There is little strategy involved beyond learning what signal your opponent is going to give you, then knowing the one absolute right move to execute. In the Madden games (or for an earlier comparison, Tecmo Bowl), what strategy you choose is very important, but how you execute is just as critical. Multiple strategies can lead to victory, and each one requires different degrees of executional perfection (meaning that there are certainly better strategies, but in the end a well-executed bad strategy can still win the day if the level of execution is high enough). In Punch Out!! there is no room to choose a strategy. In most cases, there is one right way to go about fighting your opponent, and the entire outcome is determined by the execution of this strategy.

For a specific example of this, look at Tecmo Bowl. If you are the Raiders, giving the ball to Bo Jackson to run is the best play. You can still win by passing, but why would you want to? Even though passing is an option, the easiest way to win is to have Bo rush the ball every play. Punch Out!! rarely gives you such a choice. There are not two ways to beat King Hippo, there is only one. Your success or failure is determined by how well you execute this single, inflexible strategy.

So all of this being said, why is this game so good? For me, part of it is the big, bright characters. But mostly it is what a tense, nerve-wracking game it can be. You have to carefully look for signals of what is about to happen and reflexively, with perfect timing, react. Beating Mike Tyson is not really about figuring out where his weaknesses lie, or being smarter, or your hand eye coordination. It’s all about reaction. It’s easy to know that you have to get out of the way, and it’s easy to see the punches coming, but it’s hard to actually hit that left button, followed by up and B. It’s very much like Guitar Hero.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! was destined to go down as one of those games that became part of the shared heritage of males born between 1977 and 1982. We can spout the code. We still know the moves. Now, with its release on the Wii, I hope a whole new generation will get the chance to know the joy of finally knocking down King Hippo, then eating a grilled cheese sandwich.