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.
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.
Access software made several games for the C64 that had multiple perspectives.
Beach head and Raid Over Moscow both had multiple stages that were each really separate mini games.
And does crash bandicoot count with the switch from trailing camera to side camera for the ? Levels and the reverse direction leading camera for the crash bash levels?
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.
I think Captain Skyhawk had two perspectives: top-down for the shooter parts and then a behind-the-plane view for flying into the gates at the end of each level. Can’t recall if that view was used for anything else.
The Guardian Legend
Also had an amazing soundtrack!
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.
Two more
- Life Force (horizontal to vertical shooter)
- Legend Wings (horizontal shmup to horizontal dude with gun shooter)
Does the switch between side-scrolling run-and-jump platformer and side-scrolling shmup shooter in Super Mario Land for the Game Boy?
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.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy went from beat-em-up, to shooter with the zapper, and then to driving. Wild game.
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.
