Gex

Gex is a platformer in which a gecko obsessed with television gets pulled into a world of TV channels controlled by an evil broadcaster. The core mechanic is his sticky tongue and tail: Gex can climb walls and ceilings, cling to surfaces, and take out enemies with a tail whip or by swallowing them with his tongue. The individual levels are styled after TV genres — a horror stage with a graveyard and a haunted mansion, a cartoon world, a kung-fu setting, and a sci-fi space station — and the player travels between them via a kind of remote control. Remotes and flies are collected as both energy and keys to further channels, giving the player good reason to explore the levels far more thoroughly than simply reaching the exit would require.

On the 3DO, this was the console's flagship platformer, and it looked excellent for its time: large hand-drawn backgrounds, smoothly animated main character, and a color palette that allowed far more shades than was common for 2D games on cartridge consoles. What set it apart was the wisecracking main character, who commented on the action with TV and pop-culture references — the very thing that built his later reputation. The music adapted to each level's theme, shifting from eerie organ pieces to faster rhythmic motifs, so every channel had its own mood.

At the time, Gex was seen as an attempt by 3DO to get its own mascot character at a time when every manufacturer had its own hedgehog or plumber, and the reception was largely positive — reviewers praised the graphics and atmosphere, with criticism aimed at difficulty and level length. The character stuck around and moved into full 3D in later entries, making it one of the few 3DO franchises with a long life. Today the game holds up as a well-tuned classic platformer with its own sense of humor, though the jumping demands patience and the maps are often bigger than a modern player might expect.