For every Mega Man, there's a few Chubby Cherubs. For every Turrican, a few Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures. As some have argued, mayhap with prejudice, ignorance and sometimes factual errors, both Japanese and Western 2D platformers from back in the day tend to be so-so games or worse. While there are certainly standout titles from each region, and quite a few at that, it is nonetheless true that the majority contain issues that make the games more frustrating than fun. Issues that lead to negative stereotypes about each region, and derogative terms being thrown about like an unwanted sports game cartridge at a garage sale. However, for each stereotype associated with one region, it's worth noting that there are usually various examples of the same thing in the other region. Let's have a look at some of the more pervasive ones.
Starting with western ones also found in Japanese platformers, there are Japanese examples of collectathons such as Flicky, The Goonies (NES), Rainbow Islands and, arguably, Yoshi's Island, Wario Land and the Great Cave Offensive mode in Kirby Super Star where it's not mandatory but heavily encouraged. Some of these are among the most beloved JP platformers.
There are sprawling and maze-like JP platformers such as New Zealand Story, Cosmo Police Galivan (NES), GG Shinobi II, Bio Senshi Dan, Metroid, Castlevania II, Milon's Secret Castle, Magical Pop'n, Hyper Iria, Cyborg Hunter, Bonanza Bros, Moonwalker (MD) and the aforementioned Great Cave Offensive mode. These cover the spectrum from level-based and linear games with such levels, ones with a hub map and a more open-ended structure and some ability gating, to full on platform adventure/metroidvania games which is the most well known form nowadays.
Japanese platformers with fluid and/or detailed animation taking priority over the controls/hit detection, or the game just having kind of sloppy hit detection in general are also a thing. See Astal, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose and Whirlo for the former, and Ghosts 'n Goblins, Strider NES, TMNT NES, Super Genjin 2, Two Crude Dudes, Decap Attack/Magical Hat, Rent a Hero, and sometimes Whirlo again for the latter.
When it comes to "unnecessary realistic features like fall damage", there are Japanese examples in Blaster Master, Donkey Kong, Spelunker, Legacy of the Wizard, most Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Castlevania games (no mid-air control) and some games they influenced like Black Tiger, 8 Eyes, Kenseiden and Actraiser (very limited unless jumping from a stand still, in which case you can't jump as far). Interestingly, Nintendo reintroduced fall damage to Mario games with Mario 64, but has been inconsistent about including it later on.
As for "copious amounts of 'tude or gross-out humor", or edginess - Various classic Japanese platformers feature these aesthetics or themes as well, such as Splatterhouse 1-2, Castlevania, Contra, Sonic, Mystic Defender, Friday the 13th, Fist of the North Star/Hokuto no Ken/Last Battle, Joe & Mac, Rocky Rodent, Assault Suits, X-Kaliber 2097, Nosferatu, Demon's Crest and JJ & Jeff.
JP platformers generally having more clear/functional visuals is something I tend to agree with, though there are exceptions here as well such as Castlevania IV, parts of Super Metroid, Actraiser 2, parts of Pulseman where the backgrounds get extra trippy and distracting, and Alisia Dragoon.
Going back to mechanics or "impact", the origin of not having knockback when taking a hit is probably Super Mario Bros, while some games like Psychic World, Ys III, Strider NES, ESWAT ARC & MD, Zeliard, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Toki (after respawning) and El Viento have very short or no invincibility time after taking a hit, and a few games like Wonder Boy 3-4 and Son Son II bounce the player all over the place at times.
And vice versa for western platformers including stereotypically Japanese features. Many classic western platformers are of course punishingly difficult with a lot of memorization required (Japanese ones tend to top google lists though). Various games require precise jumps, such as Monty on the Run, Impossible Mission, Prince of Persia, Spelunker and parts of Turrican 1-2.
When it comes to visual aesthetics, let's not forget that Donkey Kong, the origin of Mario, was originally based on Popeye, or that Shigeru Miyamoto has expressed admiration for Disney and that he wants Mario to be as iconic and universally recognizable as Mickey Mouse. Or the fact that tons of those colorful and cutesy Japanese platformers from back then are using western cartoon and comic licenses like Ducktales, Mickey Mouse, TMNT, Felix the Cat, Aladdin, Looney Tunes, Flintstones and so on and so forth. Western platformers themselves were often based on cartoons or comics, or had colorful and/or cutesy original designs such as in Flink, Rayman, Marko's Magic Football, Mr. Nutz, Incantation, James Pond, Toejam & Earl 2, Chuck Rock 2, Plok, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Pagemaster and Bubba 'n Stix.
On the subject of cultural appropriation or twisting one's own culture to confirm biases, I would say first off that this was almost a necessity for JP developers back in the 1980s especially, with more genuinely Japanese feeling games (that hadn't been filtered through western media yet) being considered weird, stupid, silly and/or ugly. This only started changing for real in the mid '90s thanks to Pokemon, FF7, Tamagotchi and a few other games. Western games, including platformers are of course full of this stuff and from all over the world, from TMNT, First/Second Samurai and Colonization, to Shadow Warrior (1997), Carmen Sandiego and Mortal Kombat, and there are also some examples of games mimicking anime/manga aesthetics such as the intros to Turrican 2-3 or the character portraits in One Must Fall 2097.
Musically, while it's true that Japanese composers for platform games tended to mostly stick with ~30-60 second loops and pop song structure for a good long while, western developers usually did the same for platformers, and the arpeggio-heavy sound design in many of the earlier European tracks is a bit divisive. There is a technical limitations aspect to some of these differences in the 8-bit era, but Japanese exceptions also exist such as the Temple theme from Zelda II, the Title theme from Metroid, Pyramid from Actraiser, Crimson Castle from Violinist of Hameln and Windy Cliffs from Do-Re-Mi Fantasy. Some would also argue that longer, more ambient and/or less straightforward tracks don't really belong in most platformers. On the Mega Drive/Genesis specifically, western platformer OSTs have a reputation for generally having lacklustre sound design, although various exceptions exist here such as Wolfchild, Earthworm Jim 1-2, Alien 3, The Adventures of Batman & Robin, Puggsy, Mortal Kombat, Mega Turrican and Toejam & Earl 1-2, while there are various Japanese MD games with rather grating OSTs as well such as Turbo OutRun, Megapanel, X Dazedly Ray, New Zealand Story, Doki Doki Penguin Land MD, Atomic Robo-Kid, most of Tommy Lasorda Baseball and parts of Truxton.
So now that I've talked about all the (supposedly) bad stuff, and hopefully helped shatter some misconceptions about both Japanese and Western platformers, let's talk about which region had the larger share of GOOD platformers and why. The general consensus (at least on North American sites) seems to be that there are more good platformers that came from Japan in the '80s-'90s than there are from the west. Probably more good console games in general? As some wise people have previously pointed out in these discussions, this was due to a number of factors: One is that a good deal of the really bad Japanese games were never localized, while the western ones were more readily available if not directly, then through friends and relatives or demos in stores. Another is that western developers simply made fewer platformers, which has cultural and technological reasons - in the UK and several European countries, computers were more popular than the consoles throughout the '80s and up until the early '90s, and these weren't specifically designed for platformers or even arcade action games, nor did a majority of their audiences prefer arcade action which is reflected in the top lists on fan sites of the Amiga and C64 today. When western developers did make platformers, they tended to have different goals, focusing more on collectathon gameplay (probably inspired by Pac-Man but maybe also earlier RPGs where loot is a focus), exploration and in some cases more realistic movement. I've read that fans of the Turrican series actually criticized the more linear and somewhat more forgiving third game for being "dumbed down" at the time. Finally, various earlier Japanese platformers were made by relatively large companies like Nintendo, Konami, Sega and Capcom. They had experienced developers by the time the NES became popular in the west, and as an aside, Japan was at its economic peak of the 1900s in the 1980s. Western platformers of the '80s, on the other hand, were often games made by teenagers in their bedrooms who made games for the Amiga, C64, Spectrum, etc. I initially thought this might explain the lack of scrolling in western platformers until after Super Mario Bros became a hit in the west (which seems to get its scrolling from Excitebike, Kung Fu Master and Pac-Land, but also because it was easy to do well on the NES - at least horizontally). However, in yet another example of a typical feature for one region appearing in the other, the games Snokie (C64, 1983) and Horace & the Spiders (Spectrum, 1983) are sidescrolling platformers from two years before SMB1. But as we all know, they and other early attempts didn't catch on.
I think it's also pretty safe to say that JP platformers and their traits, whatever you think of them are what come to mind for most people when the subject of classic 2D platformers comes up, and that they've been more influential overall on later retro revival platformers. The western legacy tends to be more vague, such as the dynamic and natural level geometry of Aladdin and Earthworm Jim, more of an acquired taste such as cinematic platformers/Prince of Persia-likes, or forgotten to time such as with the 2D origins of collectathons (Montezuma's Revenge, Monty on the Run, Wizards & Warriors) or the western origins of platform adventure/metroidvania games (Below the Root, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Hero of the Golden Talisman).
In conclusion, while the aforementioned negative stereotypes exist, they don't define the entire landscape of retro platformers and they don't necessarily define either region for those who are familiar enough with their games. In some cases, they are even considered a good thing by fans of that region's games. Both regions produced standout titles that defied expectations and offered memorable and fun experiences. Western developers made us move from left to right, swinging on vines over pits and leaping over rolling logs to get to the shinies in Pitfall. They created their own subgenre of Prince of Persia-likes, leading to 3D interpretations like Tomb Raider and inspiring the creators of Ico and Metal Gear Solid. Some developers continued experimentation with maze- and collectathon level design eventually led to games like Banjo-Kazooie while Rare specifically also did great at a more JP approach with their DKC games. Likewise, Japanese developers crafted the seminal Super Mario series, providing a foundation for both 2D and 3D platformers to come and introducing momentum-based physics to the genre. They created the adventures of the blue blur AND the blue bomber, the metroid who can't crawl but rolls instead, as well as a variety of classic action platformers. Their dedication to tight controls, imaginative level design and mechanics, and charming aesthetics were foundational to the genre's mainstream success.
By acknowledging the differences, strengths and weaknesses of both Japanese and Western platformers, we as players can appreciate the diverse contributions each region has made to the genre. If you were surprised by some of what I've written here, then I'd say take the time to try a different flavor of platforming goodness. Let's continue to explore, discover new favorites, and share our love for retro gaming, creating new memories for generations to come!
Thank you.
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