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[Afro Republican]

1998 is often considered the year f the platformer. While there have always been top platform games every year this was the first time we got multiple quality entries of a wide variety across a single year. From cartoonish to more realistic, from vibrant to dark, from hand animated, painted, or 3D modeled, this was the most variety we've ever gotten.

It's also when a lot of the common mechanics that are in platformers 2D, especially 3D ones, were finally fine-tuned. Some of the top 3D and 2D platformers all in one year.

This will be a hard decision, but if you had to pick your favorite platformer game from 1998 what would it be?

There are many many quality platforming games games during this time, there may be some that from this year I never even played (mention it in a post below and I'll add it to the second list), let's go over a few of the more popular games:

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

Spyro the Dragon

Banjo-Kazooie

Sonic Adventure

Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus

Gex: Enter the Gecko

Bomberman Hero

Tomba!

Jazz Jack Rabbit 2

Other notable games:

• Skullmonkeys
• MegaMan & Bass
• Glover
• Heart of Darkness
• Wario Land II
• Goemon's Great Adventure
• Montezuma's Return
• Space Station Silicon Valley
• Jersey Devil
• PitFall 3D
• Wild 9

 

[JohnnyFootball]

 

[Raph64]

Stop trying, Paul.

 

[Belmonte]

1998 wasn't the year of platformers. It was the year of almost every kind of game. Lots of classics in many genres.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Crash 3 was my jam but I can't vote because Neo member.

You do seem to like Polls though.

First Post made me chuckle a lot as I was expecting it somehow.

 

[Chozofication_]

1. Banjo kazooie
2. Spyro

 

[KonradLaw]

Heart of Darkness all the way

 

[LostDonkey]

Afro Repoleblican

 

[Mr Hyde]

Xenogears. Babel Tower. Oh yeah baby.

 

[The_Mike]

Heart of Darkness all the way

I remember trying a demo which contained the map showed in the first gif. God damn that game was hard.

 

[Space Runaway]

Hmm...I don't think I like a single platformer that came out that year.

Xenogears. Babel Tower. Oh yeah baby.

Oh dear lord. Jank platforming with a high random battle encounter rate and if you got into a random battle while standing on a ledge you'd suddenly be falling once the battle ended...Ugnn...

 

[petran79]

Jump'n Bump

 

[base]

Captain Claw?

 

[Mr Nash]

I was playing basically anything but platformers in 1998. MGS, Xenogears, Saga Frontier, Parasite Eve, Einhander, StarCraft, Half-Life, and so on were what I was playing that year.

 

[ROMhack]

Mein favourite was Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Xenogears. Babel Tower. Oh yeah baby.

You're a monster.

 

[Spukc]

golden eye

 

[Xenon]

Without a Mario game this just seems invalid.

 

[Ryu Hayabusa]

Sonic Adventure for me

 

[Terenty]

The year of platformers was actually 1996. Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64, enough said

 

[Yoshi]

This is not a hard one. Quite a few quality choices, but Banjo-Kazooie is the only all-time great in this list.

 

[Jigsaah]

*sigh* Ok this actually a decent poll. Your opinions are not infused in the choices. So I suppose this is a half step in the right direction. However it should be pointed out that you are literally asking folks to think back more than 20 years. I still have pole fatigue of the greatest magnitude.

Edit:
Frickin' Banjo...i don't know man.