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.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy went from beat-em-up, to shooter with the zapper, and then to driving. Wild game.
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 Guardian Legend
Also had an amazing soundtrack!
