When Super Mario Bros. exploded out of the gates on the NES, it practically codified the new scrolling platformer genre overnight. You walk (mostly from left to right), you jump over obstacles and onto platforms. You face wandering enemies, most of which can be quickly dispatched with a stomp to the head or a projectile weapon.
You occasionally fight bosses, which can be defeated with multiple hits or my some ad-hoc special method. You collect treasures which restore your health, increase your abilities, or just run up your score. Over the ensuing years, scores of games ranging from aggressively mediocre shovel-ware to well-honed masterpieces stuck to this basic formula.
Several years later, though, many of the more ambitious developers decided it was high time to add some spice to that recipe; prominent among them was a company destined to become one of the masters of the 8-bit platformer: Capcom. Building on the success of Bionic Commando, which replaced the usual jumping mechanic with a unique grappling technique, and the early games of the Mega Man franchise, which decked out the player in all manner of unique weaponry, Capcom sought to apply ingenuity in platforming to an array of licensed properties throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s. Not coincidentally, many of these games shared staff members, notably producer Tokuro Fujiwara.
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