The Return of The Side Scroller

The post title might make you think of Star Wars. Well it should. It's been decades since a serious attempt at main stream side scrolling gameplay has been handed to the masses of patiently waiting gamers who can remember the simplicity of two dimensional games and just how much fun can be had in that fantastically flat environment. Certain games have been let loose that have side scroller parts, but nothing like the games of old where the entire content was a maze of two dimensional goodness... Until recently. I knew this would happen. You can only suppress the genre of Mario Brothers and Metroid for so long. And now we do have another Mario Brothers game that is said to be everything it's ancient predecessors once were, and finally we get simultaneous multiplayer. I can't wait until Christmas. There's a remake of a Boy and His Blob now which I have little experience with, but that was a very popular game in its day and I have heard that the gameplay is just as good now as it was before. We are still waiting for Metroid: Other M to be released, and I have heard good things about it as well. There's a reason why these games are all successful. The side scroller genre has something that cannot be duplicated, simlutated, emulated, or otherwise recreated in a 3D environment. It's like the porridge that's just right. You can add a 3rd dimention to Mario's adventures, but does it actually make the game more fun? Not necessarily! I have played some of the 3D renditions of that famous family of games, and I can confidently say that the 3D aspect detracted from the fun, and there was no number of shaders, polygons or crazy 3D puzzles that were going to make up for it. Get ready for a wave of big name side scrollers and top down scrollers. The 2nd dimension has come back for its throne.