what was the first platformer?

i need to draw upon the experience of gamers older than myself to understand the origins of the platformer. i know mario probably wasn't the first.

also, any other little bits of info on the significant early evolution of the genre would be nice. ;-)

i mostly only played nintendo when i was younger (hence mario pushing out the existence of anything else).

Pitfall?

Frogs? Jungle King?

Yeah, Pitfall was the grandfather of the platform genre.

Smurfs on the Colecovision was pretty importantzh666

Space Panic on the Colecovision also. :)

Well the it depends on your defintion of platformer but the first game that scrolls with a jumping character is Frogs which is an arcade game released in 1978. But Donkey Kong is considered to be the very first platformer by most people because it fits the modern definition of it. The first pc platfomer was Commander Keen which was actually made by reverse enginering Super Mario Bros. 3 on to the PC by John Carmack. Its from that game John Cramack and John Romero got there startup money to form id softwareVideogamefan123

personally i think that pitfall would fit better the definition of "first platformer" mostly because you are not stuck to in a single screen like donkey kong

i need to draw upon the experience of gamers older than myself to understand the origins of the platformer. i know mario probably wasn't the first.

also, any other little bits of info on the significant early evolution of the genre would be nice. ;-)

i mostly only played nintendo when i was younger (hence mario pushing out the existence of anything else).

just_nonplussed

Well the it depends on your defintion of platformer but the first game that scrolls with a jumping character is Frogs which is an arcade game released in 1978. But Donkey Kong is considered to be the very first platformer by most people because it fits the modern definition of it. The first pc platfomer was Commander Keen which was actually made by reverse enginering Super Mario Bros. 3 on to the PC by John Carmack. Its from that game John Cramack and John Romero got there startup money to form id softwareVideogamefan123

i looked up on youtube. all of the platformers listed on the thread are slightly different types...

Space Panic - 1980 - one screen (with sucessive stages is assume). looks like you can move up and down and dig holes...

Donkey Kong - 1981 - one screen with sucessive stages. jump, move up and down, bash hammer

Smurfs - 1982 - screens connected together with different backdrops that scroll when in between them

Jungle King - 1982 - i'd say this was 'true scrolling', but has sucessive stages like DK and space panic

Frogs and Flies - 1982 - one screen. hop on the lily pads!

Pitfall - 1982 - proper scrolling, timed jumps, layered environment

seems like 1982 gave birth to an interesting variety of scrolling and non-scrolling platform-type games. although i'm sure back then they weren't like, "i know, let's make a platformer!". i'm sure they were merely exploring gaming territory at that point. so they like come up with an idea (e.g. tarzan-type game where you swing from tree to tree), and it simply ends up being similar to a bunch of other games at the same time? or perhaps that's all they could really do with the tech back then.

sorry for using the word 'like' in my sentences. i thought it would make the paragraph flow better, but..it doesn't.

sorry for using the word 'like' in my sentences. i thought it would make the paragraph flow better, but..it doesn't.

just_nonplussed

Don't worry about it, I do that all the time (sometimes I type things exactly the way I would say them). There's always the edit button if you want to take them out though...