Pandemonium! (1996)

I played the Japanese release of this one on the Sega Saturn -- in Japan it was gloriously titled Magical Hoppers, and featured goofy anime characters instead of CG cartoon ReBoot rejects Court Jester and Punk Girl. Otherwise the game's the same.

In Magical Hoppers your goal in life is to hop, hop, hop, hop, hop all day. It's what we in the biz call a 2.5D platformer, meaning it's a 2D platformer that uses 3D graphics. And though you're always pressing left and right for basic movement, the character on-screen may at times move up and down paths in different 3D directions. I think this is fine -- Magical Hoppers' shortcomings lie in its bland presentation, slippery controls, and poor level design. You move about surprisingly fast in this game, but you also die in just two hits -- and the game is lenient for the enemies, not for you. Plenty of times where I jump on an enemy, but it's not quite at the exact spot you need to land on an enemy to kill it -- and so I get hurt (and die). The floaty physics and the difficulty of judging platform jumping challenges with 3D models for this game actually reminds me a lot of Donkey Kong Country, so maybe fans of that will dig Pandemonium more than me.

As luck would have it, this is an old game, and so there are cheat codes you can use to make things easier. But even with some of the game's frustrations dampened, I didn't find much to enjoy. There were only a couple levels I found interesting (the lumber mill was admittedly pretty cool), animal transformation segments are underwhelming, and the music--I hate to say it--is rather grating for the most part. It's rare for me to hate on a game's music, but there are some obnoxious tunes in this one.

I should mention there are two characters you can play as, and you can choose either at the start of any level (or use a cheat to switch whenever you want -- this is the way to go). The boy has a Donkey Kong somersault attack. Meanwhile the girl can double-jump, but in a Genesis Shinobi way (meaning you have to time it right at the top of your arc). Both of these special abilities are kind of half-assed though, neither of them ever feeling all that reliable to me.

Bottom line: just play Klonoa - Door to Phantomile (PS1) instead! Probably the best game to play for this sort of 2.5D platforming, with a more memorable protagonist and more engaging gameplay mechanics.