In Big Hops, you play as a frog named Hop. Early on, Hop is taken away from his home, and he works to get back by collecting airship parts from a few different areas, each with its own cute animal characters and storylines. Because he's a frog, the primary way you interact with things is by slinging his tongue. You can use it to grab pots to toss and break them for coins, as a grappling hook to reach new areas,
There, developer Luckshot Games showed off a clearly Super Mario 64-influenced platformer starring an adorable frog who uses his tongue like a grappling hook to zip around levels. On top of a suite of expected platforming maneuvers like crouch-jumps, slides, and wall-runs, it also displayed a unique system that lets players use items to make their own paths through environments, setting Big Hops apart from every other platformer out there.
Wario is the perfect platonic example of an antithesis character, the result of flipping an 'M' upside down and the pure evil that results. Yes, I have enormous love for Waluigi, but Wario is the OG. And let's be honest, "Waluigi" is a semantic stretch. "Wario" is so clever not just because it invokes a Mario from the Upside Down, but because warui (悪い) literally means "bad." No notes.
These days, you probably know the name Insomniac Games for superhero epics like Marvel's Spider-Man and the upcoming Wolverine - or even for a furry feline named Ratchet. But before all that, Insomniac was responsible for crafting one of the most definitive mascot platformer series around, featuring an adorable, diminutive dragon named Spyro. While Spyro might have faded from the cultural zeitgeist, two decades later, the dragon can still lay claim to one of the most definitive platforming experiences ever made.
