Game analysis: Index

I´ll be reviewing some good 2D platformers, as a way to find what makes them great and try to use those concepts in Kitsune. 

Learn from these:

• 1001 Spikes
• Ape Scape
• Angry Video Game Nerd games: They actually have pretty interesting level designs (skewed towards almost unfair challenge in 1, and slightly easy in 2)
• Braid: Focus on puzzles
• Castlevania 1: Levels and enemy patterns designed around the subweapons and player jump arcs
• Castlevania 3: Branching paths and level design
• Castlevania 4: Camera control, player movement and vast design differences from 1-3
• Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: Nice level design, melee combat
• Cave Story: Pay special attention to the camera
• Contra 3/4: Study how respawning enemies are an integral part of the level design and the movement palette is still built around that
• Donkey Kong '94 (Gameboy): Triple jump mechanic+backflip, level designs... most of it
• Donkey Kong Country 2
• Donkey Kong Country Returns
• Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: Good boss fights
• Duck Tales Remastered
• Freedom Planet: Modern Sonic done right
• Guacamelee: Cohesive graphical style, soundtrack and responsive controls. Great mix of action, platforming and exploration.
• Gunvolt: MMZ style bossfights
• I wanna be the Guy: Absurdly ultra difficult, etc, to check out how they handle difficulty and player anticipation/bait and switch (watch normal/blind playthrough and speedrun playthroughs, interesting stuff to see there regarding player movement, how to lead the player, etc)
• Leap Day (Android): Awesome way to make a responsive platformer for mobile. Great level design, very good challenges for double jumping and wall jumping.
• Mega Man 2
• Mega Man 3
• Megaman 3 (Gameboy): Level design and camera. Screen space is a LOT more limited than on NES
• Megaman 5 (Gameboy): Level design and camera. Screen space is a LOT more limited than on NES
• Mega Man 9
• Mega Man 10
• Megaman X for its everything (it does teaching the mechanics through its introduction stages/menu better than Super Metroid - honest!)
• Megaman Xtreme
• Mega Man Zero 1: Focus on boss fights
• Mega Man Zero 2: Focus on boss fights, excellent level design
• Mega Man Zero 3: Focus on boss fights, excellent level design
• Mega Man Zero 4: Focus on boss fights
• Metroid Zero Mission: Overall movement palette, and level design alternative paths for speedrunning
• New Super Mario Bros U: Best level design in Mario games?
• New Super Luigi U: Small tweak of mechanics to spice things up. Play immediately after Super Mario Bros U.
• Ori and the Blind Forest: Tight controls, original game mechanics, exploration
• Rayman Jungle Run
• Rayman Legends
• Shantae Risky´s Revenge: Polished up version of the original with similar level design considerations and a very interesting take on enemy patterns where they usually throw you off rythm compared to what you´re usually used to. Most enemies will either anticipate or wait a second more than you´d think, making most battles require a slightly different rythm than in similar games.
• Shantae the Pirate´s Curse: More varied traversal palette. more linear LD, but more open ended.
• Shovel Knight: Level design, development of mechanics, alternate paths looping back
• Sonic The Hedgehog (Master System)
• Sonic 1 Genesys: Original platforms & exploration
• Sonic & Knuckles
• Splatoon: Best holystic mechanics since Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario World : THE GAME
• Super Mario Bros 2: Unconventional jump arcs (play anyone but Mario and relearn everything you think you know about platformers) and linear-yet-exploration-driven LD
• Super Mario Bros 3: Experimental
• Super Meat Boy: Focus on skill, challenge design & difficulty, tight controls
• Steamworld Dig: "Create your own level design" aspect and overall movement feel, one of the better ones in recent memory
• The Smurf's Nightmare (Gameboy): Triple jump mechanic
• The Wonderful 101: Game systems.
• Wario Land 3 (great exploration mechanics)
• Wario Land 4: Tighter Wario Land 3

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What NOT to do

• Mutant Mudds/Xeodrifter are pretty "by the numbers", but it's interesting to see what that means exactly in their respective subgenres :-D
• Mercenary Kings: Mainly for their delayed jump, to study how terrible it feels (at least, I think it pretty much kills the game)
• Tintin, Spirou and Indiana Jones on Gameboy/SNES to see and understand how and why collision can go horribly wrong :-D (and that's in addition to poor level design and other fun stuff).
• Shantae (original): It´s LD is hampered by its camera (way too close, leading to a LOT of blind/faith jumps).