Cinematic platformer
You guide a character with realistic, weighty movement who jumps like a real person and dies from a single hit or fall, so you advance screen by screen through trial and error until you work out how to get past each obstacle.
Also known as: cinematic platform game
This is a basic entry: it has the definition and the classification. Full entries add history, games and a demo.
History
- 1989OriginPrince of Persia
Prince of Persia was the first and perhaps the most influential; its animation, rotoscoped from footage of a real actor, set the style. Impossible Mission had already anticipated several of its traits.
Platformer: Cinematic platformer (Wikipedia) - 1991
Éric Chahi's Another World (Out of This World in North America) tells its story with almost no text or interface, using cinematic scenes.
Another World (video game) (Wikipedia) - 1992
Delphine Software's Flashback takes up the formula of Prince of Persia and Another World, with fixed multi-level screens you climb up and drop down through.
Flashback (1992 video game) (Wikipedia)
Reference games
1989
Prince of Persia
You have 60 minutes to escape the dungeons, avoiding spikes, pits and guillotines and fighting with a sword. Its rotoscoped animation makes every jump feel weighty and real, and forces you to judge your run-up carefully.