If you take a quick look back at last year’s video game releases, you noticed a huge slew of shooters and sandbox games. Games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and Assassin’s Creed are the highlights of our current gaming generation, which is all fine and dandy.

But if you looked even further back, you’ll notice that one genre has disappeared from the headlines, one that gamers all around the world still remember fondly. They were the games of (most of) our childhoods, the games that developers looked up to and players loved. Even uttering a single word can bring nostalgic memories to anyone who grew up with them. That word? Platformers.

Platformers gave rise to gaming icons as we know it; Mario wouldn’t be Mario if it wasn’t a platformer, despite its numerous spinoffs. If Sonic was a shooter instead of a platformer… wait, never mind.

Sonic? In a shooter? Preposterous. Let’s put Shadow in one instead.

When the 3D platformers like Super Mario 64 began to emerge, the genre had been changed dynamically as well as how they were played. Platformers in 3D were a huge challenge that Shigeru Miyamoto took on and completed successfully, revolutionizing the use of camera controls and the implementation of analog controls while keeping the feel of the original Super Mario games. It was a huge part of our gaming history, and without Miyamoto’s work, 3D games probably never would have gained as much popularity as they had.

So this game breaking design slowly ebbed away as games like Goldeneye 007, and later Halo, made the mark for the potential first-person shooters to be included on home consoles - where they had normally been PC exclusives.

This trend did not go away, as we suddenly embraced the idea of FPS on our home consoles and dismissed the idea of more platform games. Years passed and now we come across Big Guns with Chest High Walls 4, reminiscing those olden days of carefully timing our jumps to avoid certain death in Mega Man.

The only kind of chest high walls here are the kind you jump over.

At least many indie game developers have heard our whimsical sighs of nostalgia, as we see a huge resurgence of platformers.  We see games like Limbo, Braid, Trine, and Rayman Origins becoming huge hits on the market, keeping the genre alive and letting us enjoy a few new additions as well. At the rate platformers are becoming big hits, I can safely say that the genre will not be going away any time soon.