Platformer Video Games Bucket List

Collect Power Moons across kingdoms

Complete the puzzle-platform video game Braid, known for its time manipulation mechanics and artistic design.

Complete the critically acclaimed puzzle-platform video game Limbo, known for its atmospheric black-and-white visuals and challenging physics-based puzzles.

Complete the INSIDE video game, a critically acclaimed atmospheric puzzle-platformer.

The 1989 Game Boy launch platformer: twelve levels, two shoot-em-up stages and a princess who is not Peach.

Epic MegaGames answer Sonic with a rabbit, a gun and parallax scrolling nobody thought a PC could do.

The first 3D Mario built around linear levels and a goal pole, in stereoscopic depth on the 3DS.

Rotoscoped animation, a rifle and a memory-wiped agent on Titan; the French answer to Another World.

A metroidvania one man drew, coded and scored over five years and then gave away; the game that made indie mean something.

A ninja with too much momentum, ninety seconds a level, and physics that make every death your own fault.

Build the levels instead: five art styles, a story mode of a hundred courses and endless uploads from everyone else.

The real Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2: the same engine, poison mushrooms and wind, and far harder.

The 2006 DS game that brought back 2D Mario after fifteen years, and sold thirty million copies doing it.

Crash and Cortex forced to work together across one continuous world, with an a cappella soundtrack sung by the composers.

The last Insomniac Spyro: Sparx levels, four playable friends and a hundred and fifty dragon eggs.

Time travel through four versions of every zone, and two soundtracks depending on where you bought it.

The whip finally aims in eight directions; the 1991 remake of the first game and its high point on the SNES.

The dark sequel: the Dahaka hunting the Prince through a time-split island fortress, with a nu-metal soundtrack.

Soma Cruz absorbing the souls of everything he kills, and the best of the DS trilogy.

The first Crash after Naughty Dog left, on the PlayStation 2: the same five-element structure, longer loading screens.

The cel-shaded reboot with Elika beside you, in which you cannot die and the land is healed area by area.

The Mega Drive entry: 1917 Europe, two playable hunters and a stage that walks up the leaning tower of Pisa.

The first handheld Metroidvania of the run, with a card system that stacks two decks of magic.

Two campaigns, the Chao garden, and City Escape - the last Sonic game Sega made for its own console.

An alien amusement park in orbit and the Wisp powers; the game that pulled the series out of its worst decade.