Side scrollers

Mario when played on a mirror.

I can't think of a single one, mostly because we read from left to right and game devs feel that movement is most natural. If right to left reading were the norm, I'm sure we'd see the opposite.

 

The only one I can think of is Balloon Kid for the Game Boy. It sort of has the same feel as the underwater parts of Super Mario Bros. except that it is right to left and the screen scrolls automatically.

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Other than that I can't think of any that are purely right-to-left scrollers. There's Kung Fu for the NES that alternates both ways and there are plenty of others that go in both directions.

 

I think psychologically we map left-to-right to forward. I wonder what people from the Arab world would think of that.. interesting

But why do you ask?

And no, I don't know of any such game, sorry.

 

Here's a golden oldie. Jungle Hunt! I just happened to be scanning some boxes and happened to notice that the screen shots showed the character going towards the left. I really have no idea when the last time I played it but I'll have to hook up the VCS one day and fire it up.



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The goal of the game is to rescue your ladyfriend from a bunch of canibals. There are four screens that are all traversed right to left. Jumping from vine to vine, swimming with the crocdiles, dodging the boulders, and jumping over the canibals. There is a time limit that keeps you moving and every time you pass all four screens you start from the beginning and the levels get more difficult.

I have the Atari 2600/VCS version and the 5200 version and while the 5200 looks much better and supports two players (alternating turns), the crappy 5200 joystick makes it really frustrating to play. If you had a third party controller that can centre itself properly it would be excellent. I only have the regular 5200 joysticks therefore I prefer the 2600 version. I haven't played the arcade or tried it in MAME.

 

Well, they just look like little guys with spears in the 2600 version and the girl is just standing there by herself when you get past the guys with spears. In the 5200 version she's tied up and hanging over a pot or a cauldron.

One of the neat things about older games is they were often very primitive looking and had a supplementary story written up in the instruction booklet or even a comic book and you had to put the two together and use your imagination. Sometimes, depending on the game, the story can be a little zany.

Here's a link to a scan of the story from Jungle Hunt.
AtariAge - Atari 2600 Manuals - Jungle Hunt (Atari)

I like the part where it says the soup du jour is Englishwoman Broth.

It also occured to me that I have no idea how to spell "cannibal." :bang:

 

Another thing that could possibly be to blame for them almost always being left-to-right:

The coordinate system used almost always has the left-hand side start at x=0, and increase as it goes right. So it's most logical for the programmers to have the character start at 0 and increase as they move through the level, rather than start at something like x=2000 and decrease down to x=0 as they progress.

 

The coordinate system will always be the same since it describes the drawable screen. You just map different parts of the level to that same screen. The level itself can be built upon negative internal coordinates, it doesn't matter. Anyway, since games usually allow you to go back, programmers have to make it possible either way. And if it's possible, it's the same.
It's a design decision, I believe.

Dude, that warning is months old. Click the X!

 

That's what I meant: the untransformed display coordinates will almost always have the horizontal axis positive as it moves right. Changing it will require extra effort by the programmer, so most of the time it's kept as-is, and human's like the association of increasing numbers = progress, so you end up starting at the left (x=0) and moving to the right (x increasing). To have it the other way just creates a logical obstacle for the programmer - it isn't any more difficult to program, it just makes it (slightly) more difficult to conceptualise.

 

Thanks! I didn't notice the X. I just assumed it was just EC's way of reminding everyone that you shouldn't link to outside personal accounts and that they'd annoy me with a big red and yellow banner at the top of each page. I never even considered that there would be a way to turn it off.

Thanks:icon_bigg

 

Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the best video games in the side scrolling genre. Ther are others too. Like the castlevania games, Super Metroid, etc.