Trigger Happy
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
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