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Thought it would be interesting to see what you guys think. I'm sure we can all agree some platformers from the PSX/N64 era have maybe aged well... or very bad. It's interesting and fun to look back on some and see how they handled meshing 2D textures or sprites in with 3D, how the camera worked in some, etc, for better or worse.

I still think Mario 64 is fantastic. Same for the Banjo N64 games.

Crash is also actually still very cool because it had fixed camera angles, interestingly enough it feels like Mario 3D World is quite comparable to this sort of style and I'd love to play more like this. I think this type of style would work well for Sonic if they could somehow pull that off.

Spyro was always a favorite, but do they hold up? The Croc games look similar and still might be solid.

For some that look pretty... rough to say the least, the Gex games come to mind.

I've only played the original Crash, but that's one that I disagree on for one big aspect - the hit detection felt really off in the chase levels to me. There were a couple of times in the regular levels that I felt like I shouldn't have been hit, but that boulder seems to hit me before it should. Maybe I'm just being nit-picky, but that always really bugged me.

One that I think aged exceptionally well, however, is Clockwork Knight. It feels a bit slow for my taste, and while I don't have the game and haven't beaten the few times I've played it, but I always enjoyed it and think that, overall, it's aged pretty well.

I don't know if it has actually aged well, but I loved the heck out of Ape Escape back in the day.

Apparently some folks thought the OG Rayman held up, since they decided to switch the series back to that format.

So I'm thinking PS1 and N64 here.

PS1; I was never a fan of Crash Bandicoot, not even during his day. But Ape Escape aged well, so has Klonoa. The Adventures of Lomax and Adventure of Little Ralph are both still solid. Strider 2 and SkullMonkeys... both Tomba! games, all good. (I haven't played the three Jumping Flash! games, and I keep meaning to do that.) Umihara Kawase Shun: Second Edition is super rad, I beat it last year, totally holds up.

N64; Yes Mario 64 is still enjoyable. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, Mischief Makers, both the Goemon games, quite decent. Yoshi's Story is at least better than Yoshi's Island DS.

But gentlemen, seriously, we all know what the very best fifth generation platformer is:

Oh, yeah. Instant classic.

No one has mentioned Symphony of the Night yet. Aged like a fine wine it has. I also second the notion that Klonoa and Kirby 64 have held up well. I still play the Spyro games from time to time too.

Symphony of the Night is so good that it transcends the 32/64-bit platformer label.

TSTR wrote:Apparently some folks thought the OG Rayman held up, since they decided to switch the series back to that format.

2D games in general still really hold up, along with half a dozen 3D games (especially racers).

o.pwuaioc wrote:

TSTR wrote:Apparently some folks thought the OG Rayman held up, since they decided to switch the series back to that format.

2D games in general still really hold up, along with half a dozen 3D games (especially racers).

Ironically, I'd argue that Rayman is a game that really dsoesn't hold up. Its obscene difficulty, blind jumps, forced 100% to see the ending and odd life system make for a game that is just frustrating to play now that the novelty of its pretty graphics have worn off.