Indie Game Developers Revive Platformers  I used to fear that
the side-scrolling platformer was dead. It was in a bad way for
over a decade, but it's coming back thanks to independent game
developers.  2D platformers were the definitive video game genre
since the 8-bit era, immortalizing Mario, Mega Man (or least
giving the poor dead robot a legacy), and countless sprite-based
warriors as the building blocks of modern video games.  That
changed in the mid-90's with the advent of 3D graphics and the
Nintendo 64, which heralded Mario's own jump to 3D and
demonstrated that the 3D exploring platform game could be deeper
and more complex than side-scrolling games. Since then, nearly
every game series that was once 2D has moved on to 3D, with
bigger levels, different controls, and a lot less simplicity.
Mega Man eventually became 3D with the later Mega Man X games.
Metroid became 3D with Metroid Prime and the abominable Metroid:
Other M. Castlevania tried to jump to 3D again and again before
nominally succeeding wi