Greatest Non-Mario Platformer

[MJMaranan]

Pretty damn hard to narrow it down to one game or series but here are some decent contenders:

BUBBLE BOBBLE!

The early Oddworld games were pretty good.

While some might consider the Techmo's original Ninja Gaiden series beat'em ups or something, I consider them platformers. I mean... come on. With exception to bosses, every enemy dies in one hit and a LOT of the gameplay is executing perfect jumps on platforms.

Mega Man!

Something more contemporary like Super Meat Boy maybe? I haven't played Shovel Knight yet so I guess we'll have to see.

The original Prince of Persia was definitely ahead of its time.

good call on oddworld.

When I was reading through the article, I instantly thought Oddworld: Abe's Odyssee.  Nice!

Some of the stages on the LittleBigPlanet series can be considered pure-platformer.

[turf]

I guess I need to try Little Big Planet out.   I have it, but never fired it up.

[dashv]

I guess I need to try Little Big Planet out.   I have it, but never fired it up.

My son is obsessed with this game.

Builds his own levels.

We made a level together called "Back to the Mooo-chure". You drive a Delorean through a field of cows and they explode on impact. At the end you've left a long fire trail and a Doc Exclaim's "What did I tell you!? 88 cows an acre!"

...

What can I say. We were bored.

As far as new school platformers go Little Big Planet isn't bad. And the game is narrated by the guy that does the narration for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. He even maintains the same "attitude" the guide had.

[abe]

Little Big Planet is awesome, but unfortunately Little Big Planet 2 didn't have the same impact on me as the first. I feel like not too much will change in Little Big Planet 3, even with the addition of the new characters.
I wonder if the new characters in 3 will have their own costumes separate from sackboy's, or if they'll use the same stuff but wear them in a different way.

[gartcat]

Bonk's Revenge for the TG16 was the really good one, definitely better than any other Bonk they made for any system imo.  I do quite enjoy the combo Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3 because you can pick whatever level you want to play, it was ahead of its time in that regard. Kirby's DL 2 on Gameboy is up there.  Rescue Rangers on NES was fun, and I did like Donald Duck in Deep Duck Trouble on Game Gear.  Mickey's Dangerous Chase was a favorite of mine because of its similarity to RR.   A lot of people like the Castle of Illusion, Alex Kidd, I think Aladdin on Genesis would count too. 

[turf]

Rescue Rangers on NES was fun, and I did like Donald Duck in Deep Duck Trouble on Game Gear.  Mickey's Dangerous Chase was a favorite of mine because of its similarity to RR.   A lot of people like the Castle of Illusion, Alex Kidd, I think Aladdin on Genesis would count too.

How did I forget all those awesome 8-bit and 16-bit Disney games?  There was some really fun stuff there. 

[gartcat]

Rescue Rangers on NES was fun, and I did like Donald Duck in Deep Duck Trouble on Game Gear.  Mickey's Dangerous Chase was a favorite of mine because of its similarity to RR.   A lot of people like the Castle of Illusion, Alex Kidd, I think Aladdin on Genesis would count too.

How did I forget all those awesome 8-bit and 16-bit Disney games?  There was some really fun stuff there.

There were all those other ones too, Mr. Nutz, Aero the Acro-bat, Bubsy, and Rocky the Rodent lol.  I've never heard anyone refer to those as great though.  But yeah there were some good Disney ones all across the different systems.  Quackshot, Magical Quest, The Lucky Dime Caper, and probably some others that I can't recall that were real high quality games, mostly by Capcom or Sega but Virgin had some good stuff too.  I never really got into those Lion King/Jungle Book games though. 

[gartcat]

Does Rocket Knight Adventures count?  I have that in my Genesis right now, but it kind of blurs the line between what some are referring to as a "platformer", you collect fruit and stuff but you have a sword so.....some others like that might be the wonderful Wonder Boy in Monster Land series.

[burningdoom]

Does Rocket Knight Adventures count?  I have that in my Genesis right now, but it kind of blurs the line between what some are referring to as a "platformer", you collect fruit and stuff but you have a sword so.....some others like that might be the wonderful Wonder Boy in Monster Land series.

Definitely. It's a platformer. It just uses the rocket-pack to try and put a fresh-spin on what was already a tired genre by that time. (And it does a great job!)

[betelgeuse]

I'm going with the 2D Rayman games.
The original Gex and Donkey Kong Country were great too.

[burningdoom]

I'm going with the 2D Rayman games.
The original Gex and Donkey Kong Country were great too.

All great choices!

[pordox]

In the times of (very late) NES and SNES I played a lot more action-platformers other than the classic Jump'n Run stuff. Like the glorious Batmans, Megamans, Contras and Castlevanias. The only "traditional" platformer that I loved was Super Mario World (for me the very best in the series).

But before that time, I remember playing two of my all-time favorites in the platforming genre
Prince of Persia (the first one on GameBoy was amazing) and
Nebulus on the Atari 1040ST (was, and still is, a beautiful and extremely challenging game)

[sin2beta]

Sonic 2. It's close to my favorite game.