9 Best Platformers Forgotten by Time

1 hour ago 1

Published Jan 28, 2026, 2:28 PM EST

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

Platformers are one of the oldest genres of video games, with examples appearing as early as the second console generation with titles like Pitfall. Since the genre’s been around for a long time, hopping back and forth between 2D and 3D, it goes without saying that there have been a lot of platformers coming and going over the years, and more than a few of them have been carried away by the proverbial current.

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It’s a shame, because it means that games that were otherwise well-liked in their time were muscled out by the bigger, more popular titles and series. Such is the beastly nature of a crowded genre, unfortunately. Still, if there’s one thing I’m always stressing about gaming as a hobby and pastime, it’s the importance of knowing your roots, paying respects to the titles that did something cool and maybe didn’t get enough renown for it. You may not be able to play most of these games anymore, but they still live on in a precious few hearts.

9 Prince of Persia (1989)

It Hurt You, and You Liked It

When you think of Prince of Persia, you probably think of a handsome dude with a goatee slinging around a dagger that controls time. Or, well, maybe you don’t think of anything, since we haven’t even seen that particular prince in ages, Ubisoft. But for those of you who do recall, maybe you’ll also remember that particular prince’s original incarnation, all the way back in 1989.

The original Prince of Persia was a sidescrolling platformer well known for its fluid, rotoscoped sprites, as well as its notoriously unforgiving gameplay. As the titular prince, you have exactly 60 minutes (give or take depending on the platform you’re playing on) to escape the palace dungeons and rescue the princess. Doing so requires some seriously snappy platforming skills, as you’ll need to jump over and duck under spikes, guillotines, and pit traps, not to mention fight off armed guards.

Just beating this game was quite a commitment, especially since dying didn’t reset the timer. It didn’t sell super great in its age, but those who could master it found the closest thing to a proper swashbuckling adventure that gaming could manage at the time.

8 Mr. Bones

Just Strange Enough to Work

I love unapologetically strange games. The kind of games that aren’t just weird and random because some rando thought it’d be marketable, but because a creative had a wholly unique, wholly untamed vision they wanted to share with the world. One of my favorite weird games of yesteryear was the 1996 Sega Saturn-exclusive, Mr. Bones, a game that’s primarily a platformer, as well as several other genres simultaneously.

Mr. Bones follows an unfortunate chap who’s roused from the dead by an evil alchemist looking to amass a skeletal army with his hypnotic drumming. Our hero’s pure heart preserves his free will, and as the only one poised to help, he takes it upon himself to battle the bad guy and liberate his skeletal brethren. Fun fact, the game’s soundtrack was composed and performed by legendary guitarist Ronnie Montrose, and it certainly shows.

Mr. Bones is mostly an action platformer, where you bounce around on 2D stages and try not to let all of your limbs fly off. Nearly every level has some manner of additional wrinkle or mini-game, though; sometimes you play a breakout puzzle game, sometimes you jam out in a rhythm mini-game, and sometimes you defeat monsters by telling jokes. It’s bizarre, but that very particular kind of bizarre that makes you want to keep seeing what it’ll do next.

7 Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers

Fun with Physics

Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers

Not every game on this list is a deep cut from the 90s and 2000s. As I said, platformers are one of the predominant genres, and remain such to this day. Unfortunately, this means even relatively newer platformers are being lost to the wind. One platformer I was always surprised not to see more people talking about was a little PC title from 2012 called Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers.

Tiny and Big is a physics puzzle-platformer, in which the titular Tiny is an inventive kid traversing a desert with his pack of gadgets. His most prized possession, a pair of underwear from his grandpa, is stolen by his rival, Big, and he races off in pursuit to reclaim them. Odd premise, but the characters are funny and likeable, so who’s complaining.

The game’s main hook is that Tiny can use his various gadgets to dice up and manipulate the rocky desert environment. You can pull a big rock down with a grappling hook, slice it in half with a laser, then tie a rocket to it and ride it like a flying sled. It’s a very open-ended game, with as many potential solutions as the physics engine will permit (which are quite a few).

6 Skullmonkeys

It’s a Clay-Ful World

1996’s The Neverhood was a point-and-click adventure game, noteworthy for being rendered entirely in claymation. It was a delightfully strange game, certainly not the kind of thing you would expect to get a sequel, but get a sequel it did. Not only that, but said sequel, Skullmonkeys, was a completely different genre of game, ditching the point-and-click stylings and becoming a more traditional platformer.

Skullmonkeys is a direct follow-up to The Neverhood, in which the first game’s villain, Klogg, has become leader of another planet and conscripted its residents, the Skullmonkeys, to destroy the Neverhood. As the resident hero, Klaymen once again steps up to the plate to put a stop to this nonsense. The game is once again rendered entirely in clay, complete with the same emphasis on weirdly groovy, catchy music. Seriously, look up the bonus level theme on YouTube, it’ll get stuck in your head forever.

Skullmonkeys is a fairly straightforward platformer; you run, you jump, you bounce on enemies to defeat them, and you pick up the occasional item that yields helpful effects like extra lives or projectile attacks. The presentation carries most of the experience, and if you’re one of the rare few who liked The Neverhood, you’d probably like Skullmonkeys as well.

5 Muppet Monster Adventure

Better Than Most Licensed Games

For a large portion of gaming history, one of the golden rules has been “licensed games are never good.” This rule has loosened a bit in recent years, but back in the 90s and 2000s, exceptions were rare. One of those few exceptions was released for the PlayStation back in 2000, and from a source that definitely didn’t have much in the way of good games, The Muppets.

Muppet Monster Adventure is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer wherein our favorite wiggly puppet people visit a spooky castle for the reading of Dr. Honeydew’s uncle’s will. However, the castle’s evil mojo ensnares the lot of them, transforming them into creepy, yet comical monsters. The only one left is Kermit’s nephew, Robin, who uses Dr. Honeydew’s tech to purge the evil and rescue everyone.

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Gameplay-wise, it’s very similar to the original Spyro games, placing you in large sandbox levels with all kinds of odds and ends to collect and abilities to unlock. While it wasn’t a groundbreaking game, it was pretty fun and creative for what it was, and those who played it still have fond memories. Plus, hey, who doesn’t like The Muppets?

4 Rocket: Robot on Wheels

Sucker Punch’s Silly Days

Game developers can go through a lot of different phases and changes to their overall design ethos. For example, if I asked you to describe the kind of games Sucker Punch Productions makes, you’d probably think of something serious and cinematic like Ghost of Tsushima. In actuality, Sucker Punch got its start working on much more cartoony games like 1999’s Rocket: Robot on Wheels.

One of my favorite N64 exclusives, Rocket: Robot on Wheels is a 3D puzzle-platformer where the titular robot needs to navigate a futuristic theme park that’s been taken over by one of its disgruntled mascots. Rocket’s primary ability is a head-mounted tractor beam, which he can use to pick up and throw small objects. This factors into the game’s rudimentary physics engine and puzzle design, having you do stuff like throw metal boxes at magnetized walls to make footholds or chuck skeeballs in a boardwalk game.

Admittedly, this wasn’t exactly the height of reality-accurate physics, but for its time, it was quite novel. It was a game with a wholly-unique identity from its more traditional platformer contemporaries on the N64 like Super Mario 64 or Rayman 2, and while I have no beef with Ghost of Tsushima, I do miss that era of Sucker Punch’s works.

3 Chameleon Twist

Weaponized Tongue

Speaking of off-beat N64 games, I once found quite possibly one of the strangest platformers I ever played while traipsing through the N64 rentals at my local Blockbuster Video. That platformer was Chameleon Twist, a game that to this day, I have yet to personally meet anyone else who ever played it.

Chameleon Twist doesn’t have much in the way of an overarching plot; you are a chameleon who follows a white rabbit down a weird hole, and ends up in a magical land and transformed into a vaguely humanoid form. As a sorta-chameleon, your weapon of choice is your stretchy tongue, which can be deployed, extended, and controlled to capture small enemies, attach to grapple points, and even sling yourself upward like a vaulting pole.

It’s a short, straightforward game, but its colorful, novel design and solid core gameplay loop make it entertaining enough to warrant voyaging through to the end. In fact, it was one of the first games I ever successfully beat, and as someone who was really bad at games as a child, that’s not a small achievement.

2 Mega Man & Bass

The Forgotten Middle Child of the Series

You might think it strange to see a game from a noteworthy IP like Mega Man on a list like this, but the truth is that the Blue Bomber has had some major ups and downs over the course of his career. Remember, there was a decade-long interval between Mega Man 8 and 9, and a cavalcade of scattershot spin-offs in-between with varying levels of success. One of those spin-offs that often goes by the wayside is 1998’s Mega Man & Bass, originally released exclusively in Japan before getting a western GBA port in 2003.

Mega Man & Bass is a fairly traditional sidescrolling Mega Man game, with our mechanical hero waging war against an evil robot mastermind named King, jumping and shooting his way through the lairs of some new Robot Masters. The twist is that the game has two separate campaigns, one for Mega Man and one for his rival Bass, in his first major playable appearance. Bass plays much differently from Mega Man, with a buster that can fire rapidly in eight directions and the ability to double jump.

The game was received decently well, though it’s also notorious for a mildly mean difficulty curve. If I had to guess why it’s gone largely ignored, I’d say being a GBA exclusive probably didn’t help, especially when it was sandwiched between more novel spin-offs like Mega Man Zero and Battle Network.

1 Mischief Makers

The Ol’ Shimmy n’ Shake

I think every gaming platform has at least a handful of games that are well-known and well-liked specifically amongst players, but go largely unrecognized by developers and publishers. It’s a rather paradoxical existence, though I guess, in fairness, game preservation has only really become a major focus in recent years. One of these paradoxical games is 1997’s Mischief Makers for the N64.

A classic work from legendary developer Treasure, Mischief Makers is a side-scrolling platformer where you play as the robotic Marina Liteyears as she tries to rescue her creator from an evil space emperor. The game has a vibe heavily reminiscent of 90s-era anime, with recurring characters and antagonists and lots of silly sight gags.

Marina’s primary ability is that she can grab, shake, and throw just about anything, from bombs to blocks to enemies. This creates a blend of action and puzzle platforming gameplay that constantly mixes things up on you, compounded by Treasure’s clever usage of cool visual effects like scaling and sprite rotation. Ah, Treasure; nobody knew how to make a weird monster sprite look cool by stretching it all over the place like you guys.