COLUMN: 'Jumping Really, Really High': There's Only One Way to Go: Up!

['Jumping Really, Really High' is a semi-annual column by professional jumping enthusiast The Dude From the Legend of Kage - pronounced "KAH-GAY" - the protagonist in Taito's seminal arcade and NES title Legend of Kage. In this installment, Dude From Kage comments on the recent innovations in super huge jumping on display at E3 and dispenses some advice for newcomers to the genre.]

The humble jump is a most basic action to perform in a videogame. For many players of games, older ones in particular, jumping is the action performed more often than any other, if we were to add every single jump ever attempted together. That is to say, you've jumped over more things than you have shot with guns, ducked under, punched, hit with sword, and so on in your gaming career.

There is a sensible reason for this. In 2D space, which I have spent my entire career occupying, the jump is the most elegant solution to many design problems creators and players face. Although you in the 3D space may not spend your days jumping constantly to avoid obstacles, you have a major ability unavailable to me - lateral movement. When confronted with a pit in real life, you can just step around it or find an alternate path to your destination. Ninjas and wizards are more difficult to circumvent, but if you attack the problem with patience and dedication, there is nothing those fiends can do to you. I envy this.

What works in real life does not always translate well to your 3D games, of course. The potential for getting lost is a real worry in 3D, and the confusing wireframe maps and tiresome need to control the camera must make finding destinations difficult! I am lucky insofar as my destination is always hundreds of feet to my left or thousands of feet above that river in the second stage. Those ninjas must have taken my gal in one of those two directions; there's no other place for me to go.

In addition, your 3D games are dauntingly complicated. Your playstation or Xbox controller has 8-16 buttons (depending on how the D-pad is utilized) and two analog sticks. Many contemporary games require you to use all of these buttons to do anything neat. Two buttons for my throwing star and sword attacks and a working d-pad to jump 90 feet into the air -- that was all The Legend of Kage needed to be fun. Okay, it could have used tighter controls. Any level design wouldn't have hurt. Otherwise, though -- perfect.

However, videogames are in three dimensions today, with obvious and awesome exceptions like The Legend of Kage 2 - coming to America soon on your DS! This shift briefly put a damper on the jump, because in realistic 3D space, one in which objects appear to have depth and weight, things could look very silly and cheap if no laws of physics get obeyed.

As the main hero in the Legend of Kage, however, the humble jump was merely a starting point. After all, I could uncontrollably leap like 90 feet into the air, throwing ninja stars in 8 directions, limbs akimbo. Indeed, my jumping was truly a marvelous thing to behold.

I am ashamed to admit that I grew cocky in the past 15 years, certain that my record for "most ridiculous jump height" was safe forever. Until 2007, my closest competition was Mighty Bomb Jack, but his crippling addiction to eating things he found on the floor of a castle shattered his hops, his health, and his dreams.

However, in the wake of Crackdown's massive success, a whole slew of 3D superhero games is 'acoming this way: Prototype; Infamous; Spiderman Friend or Foe; Mirror's Edge (sorta) and I'm sure a lot of other dumb games I haven't heard of yet -- games with big jumps.

As an expert in the field of jumping, I have some advice for the developers of these types of games:

• IMPRECISE CONTROL TO ENHANCE VERISIMILITUDE - So you know when you jump off, like, a tree branch forty feet up in the air in The Legend of Kage you have absolutely no way to gauge your landing spot? Definitely keep that mechanic in your 3D games. That's what makes it cool.
  
• DESIGN LARGE, ARBITRARY ENVIRONMENTS TO TRAVERSE - Don't worry if the layouts don't make any sense -- force players to move in unintuitive ways. They'll love you for it!
  
• WORTHLESS SWORDS - What kind of jumping game would empower the player with something like a useful melee attack? A jumping game with no balls, that's what.
  
• EPIC CINEMAS - The Legend of Kage was one of the first Nintendo games to open with a cinema. In it, my girlfriend or mother or sister or whatever gets kidnapped by an evil blue ninja. There's no dialog. There doesn't need to be. Remember: whoever plays your games is going to want motivation and production values.
  
• PUT SOME AWESOME KABUKI WIZARDS SOMEWHERE - Those things were awesome.

Listen to my advice and you're game will be remembered 23 years later. It may not be remembered fondly, but it'll be remembered.