Manic Miner (Bug-Byte & Software Projects) , Jet Set Willy (Software Projects) and Henry´s Hoard (Alternative Software Systems) are fine examples of platformgames. A very big problem for me is when people say that Monty Mole (Gremlin Graphics), Turmoil (Bug-Byte) and Miner 2049er (Reston Software) are platformgames. For me they belong to the catagory "climbing-games" because of the ability to climb up n´down ladders. In a platform game you use only the direction keys plus the jump key and therefore I mean that if you also can climb ladders up n´down you must count them as a climbing game.
I will always stand for that a platformgame is a game there you use the keys, left, right and jump.

Almost in every platform and climbing game you are collecting a certain numbers of gleaming objects and enter an exit. Some games don´t have any exits when you have taken all objects. Instead you finish the game automatic when you take the last object. Many of the these games have also some kind of limits you must check out. Some games have a usual time which count down and when it reach zero you are dead. Manic Miner uses a bar with the text AIR on it so there is a lot of different styles on that. Other games have no time limit at all like Henry´s Hoard and ends instead when you have taken all the objects.

For me it´s obvious Bug-Byte´s Manic Miner but if you count Miner 2049er as a platformer we have another game which is made in the same year (both 1983). Maybe there is a platform game on a system not so fameous as the wonderful Speccy which is older than Manic Miner. If you know a platform game which is older than Manic Miner, please email me.

In the wonderful platform world you are confronted with a lot crazy but also some natural dangers. Some games use some really weird monsters (sprites) who have nothing in common to either the games story or the actual name of the screen and some games vice versa.
As a good example you got the screen "The Security Guard" in Jet Set Willy. Here the author Matthew Smith used some guards who was moving up ´n down and guarded the path. In the same game you can come up on a screen with a razorblade, a devil, a saw and a green spinning thing which absolute have nothing in common so it can be really mixed.
All things that are dangerous in this world don´t move. The bushes and the icicles are also some fatal things which you must avoid and there is also a third sort of danger, the long fall. Just as the real life you can´t fall from a to high fall without dying so check out the height before you jump.

For an example to come to the other side of a platform you must jump. A jump is like jumping in the real life but in the world of Willy there are a lot more of weird hazards to jump over.
There is a number of different jumps. You got the running jump, standing jump and the safety jump. Of course it exist more kind of jumps but those I mention are the most common. Sometimes you also must time in some monsters (sprites) and jump at the same time so it´s better to know how, when and that kind of jump you should use. Therefore I have made a little guide below to show you how you can make this jumps.