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Another World (or Out of This World as I'm more familiar with it because that's how it was released in the US) is probably in my top five favorite games. I thin

Another World (or Out of This World as I'm more familiar with it because that's how it was released in the US) is probably in my top five favorite games. I think it is nearly perfect and beautiful, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. All that said, I can't really blame someone for saying it's a PoP ripoff, particularly the creator of PoP. It still has the kind of stiff controls, the platforming is extremely deliberate, and it's generally speaking more cinematic than something like, for example, Mario. PoP was somewhat novel and unique for inventing this kind of gameplay, Another World more or less lifted the same style of gameplay. Being a "ripoff" isn't necessarily bad; Flashback and Oddworld also "rip off" the PoP design but they're both awesome games. My point is that I do sort of empathize with Jordan if he feels like Another World took his idea and achieved similar levels of success (at the time).

megameter 5y ago
I suspect that it's not really the case that Another World set out to emulate PoP given that the development of Another World started before PoP's Apple II release(which, if you have read Mechner's writings, was not a huge success until ports came out the next year with a little marketing push). The games that Another World is drawing on are actually the European action-adventures of the later 80's - the run of games Psygnosis had with Brataccas, Shadow of the Beast and Barbarian were very influential and suggested various ways of thinking about side-view platforming that would influence a "cinematic" approach - Barbarian, for example, really pushes on the idea of having every screen be a self-contained puzzle with major scripted elements. The concept was never entirely new, so much as it was elaborated on from classic arcade game "stages" and transposed from text adventures into graphical ones, at first in a crude sense with lock-and-key puzzles and then gradually with more emphasis on bespoke interactions, animations and environments as the platforms and game engines became more capable. Another World simply took the time to give everything some direction and continuity instead of accepting the status quo on the Amiga of "screenshot games" that looked good on the box but used janky control schemes and filler content. Mechner, in contrast, was going off the influence of games from his immediate peers like Lode Runner and flirted with the idea of making it more of a construction-kit experience several times through development, before finally settling on a series of set-piece levels. This really shows up in the extremely modular nature of the level design: there are only a few one-off scripted elements, the bulk of the experience is rearrangements of platforms, gate-and-switch puzzles, traps and guards. While his implementation still pushed the limits of the Apple II, this was mostly because it attempted large sprites with detailed animation and minimal pausing for disk loads. A version of PoP with Lode Runner spritework is both easy to imagine and to make fit comfortably on 8-but hardware.

megameter 5y ago

I suspect that it's not really the case that Another World set out to emulate PoP given that the development of Another World started before PoP's Apple II release(which, if you have read Mechner's writings, was not a huge success until ports came out the next year with a little marketing push). The games that Another World is drawing on are actually the European action-adventures of the later 80's - the run of games Psygnosis had with Brataccas, Shadow of the Beast and Barbarian were very influential and suggested various ways of thinking about side-view platforming that would influence a "cinematic" approach - Barbarian, for example, really pushes on the idea of having every screen be a self-contained puzzle with major scripted elements. The concept was never entirely new, so much as it was elaborated on from classic arcade game "stages" and transposed from text adventures into graphical ones, at first in a crude sense with lock-and-key puzzles and then gradually with more emphasis on bespoke interactions, animations and environments as the platforms and game engines became more capable. Another World simply took the time to give everything some direction and continuity instead of accepting the status quo on the Amiga of "screenshot games" that looked good on the box but used janky control schemes and filler content. Mechner, in contrast, was going off the influence of games from his immediate peers like Lode Runner and flirted with the idea of making it more of a construction-kit experience several times through development, before finally settling on a series of set-piece levels. This really shows up in the extremely modular nature of the level design: there are only a few one-off scripted elements, the bulk of the experience is rearrangements of platforms, gate-and-switch puzzles, traps and guards. While his implementation still pushed the limits of the Apple II, this was mostly because it attempted large sprites with detailed animation and minimal pausing for disk loads. A version of PoP with Lode Runner spritework is both easy to imagine and to make fit comfortably on 8-but hardware.