I’m mostly thinking about 8 bit games, and NES in particular, but it was a thing that continued at least into the 16-bit consoles. There were a lot of games that come to mind that did the perspective shift, sometimes blending genres in the process. Stuff like:
- Guardian Legend (sh’mup with 3rd person action)
- Blaster Master (mix of side scrolling and top down)
- Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (top down, but sidescrolling battles and dungeons)
- Contra and Super C (change in perspective from side scrolling to top-down / 3rd person)
- Actraiser (sidescroller + god game)
- Battle Golfer Yui (adventure/golf game mashup)
I’m sure there’s plenty of others I’m not thinking of. It just feels creative, like even if in some cases a title might not be a “good” game, stuff like this just feels interesting, and there was a lot of experimentation with genre mashups and perspective changes like this in the 8 and 16-bit era.
The Nier games are really good for this, I love when it goes from over the shoulder character action game to isometric dungeon crawler and then to bullet hell shooter. I love the Nier games so much. ❤️
Loved Automata. Maybe my favorite soundtrack. I’d hack just to hear the music change.
In one of the latest Mario game for Switch (Odyssey?) Mario switches from 3D world to 2D platformer puzzles quite often.
Battle Toads had that one fight that was in 2nd person. I can’t think of many games at all that used 2nd person.
I remember the first time i saw the Contra switch from side-scrolling to “first person” and being totally blown away by it.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy went from beat-em-up, to shooter with the zapper, and then to driving. Wild game.
If I remember correctly, didn’t Contra also have first person views for some boss fights? I kind of remember that making an impression on me.
It absolutely did! When you’d get into the “rooms” with the gray walls and the electric-y fencehy thing Infront of you, you’d have to dodge left and right while holding the gun in front of you in first person view. That game was so fucking hard…
I loved that game! My parents never let me buy it but I rented it sooooo many times.
I don’t have quite the experience with 16 but era but you still found this in 3D games. I was quite surprised and also quite enjoyed when Spyro 3 had top down shoot em up sections with sparx. And the first person shooter section too along with all the weird and wacky things they tried to spice up the gameplay from 2 (skateboarding dragons? more likely then you would think).
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy was pretty cool too. Sad we never got a sequel for that one. Not that you really played it for the story but there is always something a little sad about a cliff hanger that never gets resolved.
My copy was bugged and just froze about half way through. Finally had to bite the bullet on that one and find a GameCube ROM to finish it.
The original three Ultima games had a tile-based overworld but switched into a 3D first-person (extremely primitive) view when you went into dungeons.
Sonic 2 had the half-pipe which was really cool at the time. Games journalist groupthink tells me all Sonic games are bad though, so, I must be wrong about that.
Does the switch between side-scrolling run-and-jump platformer and side-scrolling shmup shooter in Super Mario Land for the Game Boy?
The DOS Dune game by Cryo. Part first-person point-and-click adventure, part top-down real-time-strategy game. Still one of my favourite games of all time.
Me too! It’s a shame how unknown this game is.
ActRaiser blew my mind the first time I played it. Having the chance to descend into your creation for some sidescrolling action was absolutely a surprise.
My favorite example of “weird camera” is Journey to the Planets. It’s an Atari 800 game with graphics that are more 2600-esque. It’s mostly side view, but the proportions are abstract, like a child’s drawing: the spaceship is about 1/3rd the size of the player sprite, but then as you lift off it shows zoomed out terrain and the sprite is the same size. The game is based around solving adventure game puzzles with objects that are mostly just glowing rectangles, but your way of interacting with the puzzles involves a lot of shooting. Even though there’s so little detail, every room feels “hand-crafted”.
I’m pretty sure the game permanently altered my sense of aesthetics.
Space Rangers 2! Had loads. Top down turn based space rpg shooter, 3rd person mario kart style arcade shooter, RTS/3rd person shooter, text based adventure, I’m probably forgetting some.
Has no one mentioned Vice Project Doom yet? Side scrolling action game that makes me think of Ninja Gaiden with guns mixed with Operation Wolf style shooting sections and Spy Hunter like driving sections. One of the best games on the NES.
