About

Welcome to Run and Jump, a blog about playing platform games: Super Mario Bros., Super Meat Boy, Ori and the Blind Forest, Mega Man, and similar titles. My name is David L. Craddock. I'm an author, and write lots of articles and books about the videogame industry, such as the Stay Awhile and Listen series chronicling the history of Diablo 1 and 2 developer Blizzard North, and WarCraft/StarCraft creator Blizzard Entertainment. I also write fiction and short stories, such as my Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels aimed at young adults. (You can find out more about my books on my Amazon page, my website, and on Twitter @davidlcraddock.)

Although I play lots of different games, platformers have been my favorites since the first time I picked up an NES controller and promptly guided Mario into a bottomless pit. They demand timing, strategy, quick thinking and quicker reflexes, and offer exploration and a style of mobility that defined the early days of video games as a hobby. While platform games are one of the earliest types of video games, they're still relevant and influential today—more than ever, some would argue.

I read as much about video games as I write, and one blog I'm very influenced by is Chester Bolinbroke's The CRPG Addict, in which Chester sets out to play and document his thoughts on every computer roleplaying game ever made, in chronological order of their release. I love the idea of zeroing in on a specific type of game to study its evolution and contributions to game design and development. Chester loves RPGs and writing. I love platformers and writing. It was meant to be.

Platformers deserve even more examination than the considerable amount they receive. No matter how sophisticated technology becomes, developers and consumers return to the tried-and-true formula of platforming—running and jumping over enemies, pits, and other obstacles in pursuit of a goal, be it saving a princess in a faraway castle, setting world records for clearing a game, or cooperating with friends to conquer a game.

That's the gist of Run and Jump. To discuss specifics, I've taken a Q-and-A approach.

Apparently this is a popular platforming game? I've never heard of it.

How do you define "platform game," or "platformer?"

This is tricky. The popular definition is any game that centers on running and jumping over platforms. Those platforms tend to be littered with obstacles such as pits, spikes, and enemies, all of which perform different functions to encourage players to use their limited toolset (running and jumping) in unique ways. Two of the earliest examples of platformers, however, didn't involve jumping at all.

Platformers started off rather easy to track, only to explode in popularity with the advent of Donkey Kong and, especially, Super Mario Bros. Attempting to follow their evolution is like rambling along a narrow dirt road that suddenly becomes a 1200-lane superhighway with each lane leading to a snarl of off ramps.

While I will be paying careful attention to the sub-types of platform games as they spring up, I don't want to get too hung up on genre. You'll notice, for example, that the first platformer I review is Space Panic. Platforms? Check. Obstacles? Check. Jumping? Nope. Does that make it a platform game? Of course! It's just that the genre had yet to be clearly defined.

Even contemporary platformers are mishmashes of gameplay systems. Trine is a platformer with physics-based puzzles. Rogue Legacy is a platformer-roguelite, meaning it rolls in elements of "roguelike" RPGs such as permanent death and procedural (or randomized) level generation. Even Nintendo, the company responsible for hammering out the popular definition of the genre, refers to its flagship Super Mario games as "action games." It, too, doesn't want to quibble over definitions. Plus, "action game" is an easier concept to convey than "platformer."

Variations and connotative vs. denotative definitions of platformer are important, and we're going to talk about them. We're just not going to sweat them overly much.

How will you decide which platform games to play?

I will do my best to play platformers in the order in which they were released. This will be difficult in the beginning. Before the early '90s, most publishers didn't think about release dates. When a game was finished, they mass-produced floppy disks or cartridges, stuffed them into Ziploc baggies or colorful boxes, and shipped them. Game X's release date was whatever day it happened to appear at your local electronics store.

For that reason, I will play each platformer on the platform, or system, on which it originated. As examples, I'll be playing Donkey Kong's arcade version, Super Mario Bros. on NES, and so on. Ports of games may be mentioned, but will not receive comprehensive articles unless they differ substantively from their original versions.

How often will you post a review?

My goal is to post a blog every Friday.

Do you receive compensation for this blog?

Well, that's kind of up to you. You can support me by chipping in $1 or $3 per article (no more than four articles per month) on Patreon. One dollar per article earns you my eternal gratitude; $3 per article gets you early access to articles before they're posted here on the blog, as well as two to three ebooks per year that round up articles in a handy format that's easy to read on tablets, computers, smartphones, and other e-reading devices.

Of course, contributing is not mandatory. Feel free to hang out, read, and discuss games.

Do you review games?

Yes and no. I do offer a score at the end of articles based on factors such as graphics, sound, and gameplay. That's all subjective, of course. I'm not dogmatic about these scores. I supply them because it makes me think critically about the games I'm playing, and because some people like numbers. I'm much more interested in playing and analyzing games, though, so let's not get fired up about scores. Pretty please.

Anything else?

If you have a question I didn't answer, feel free to leave a comment on this post, or send an email to runandjumpgames81@gmail.com. If all this interests you, let's-a go!