Of all the genres I miss rather sorely in the years since 3D gaming’s advent pretty much rendered 2D sidescrollers obsolete in the habits of most of the mainstream public, I think I might be most nostalgic and genuinely wistful for the Cinematic Platformer, that particular little mechanical meme which brought us such classics as the original Prince of Persia and the early Oddworld games. One game I used to rent for the SNES, but never get very far in, was the 1991 French game Another World (Or, as it was released here, Out of this World) created by Eric Chahi. Mixing many of the same mechanics that Jordan Mechner used in his pioneering PoP, though in a science-fiction setting, Chahi created one of the most visually arresting and mechanically impressive games of the early 90’s, and it’s a shame that it’s more or less dropped out of sight since then. A while back I posted a link to Chahi’s website, where he made a new updated version of the game available for a relatively inexpensive download, and all this time I’ve been planning to do a write-up once I’d finally finished it. I haven’t quite done that yet, but I have made it considerably further than I used to when I rented it in my elementary school days. One thing I’ll say about this game, in relation to God of War— both have a lot of traps the player can fall into, but in the case of Another World, none of them seem cheap.

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