Old games for your new consoles

So your family is about to get a shiny new video game console for Christmas—Playstation, Xbox, or Wii—and you need something to play besides glitzy murder simulators like Assassin’s Creed, Bayonetta, and Grand Theft Auto. The good news is that these new-school consoles offer lots of old-school, 2-D platforming goodness.

Rayman Legends (PS3/4, Xbox 360/One, Wii U, Vita) takes up the mantle set down by Sonic the Hedgehog in the 1990s. It’s fast, bright, and goofy, and the levels host a dizzying variety of tricks and themes. The difficulty can be dizzying, too, but that hasn’t stopped my 3-year-old from playing alongside me.

Little Big Planet 3 (PS4)is the newest of the bunch. Players control Sackboy (or Sackgirl), an anthropomorphic beanbag on a leisurely stroll through a world of everyday objects. The game is relentlessly upbeat and its levels burst with creativity and charm. They also burst with coding bugs, however—the game crashed on me repeatedly—so I can’t recommend it until the programmers stitch the glitches.

Spelunky (PS4, Xbox 360, Vita) is unforgiving in its brilliance. I have yet to beat it after a year of trying. There are no 1-Ups—you play, you perish in a spatter of red pixels, you restart from scratch. But the game is so skillfully designed, and the controls so sharp, that it keeps you coming back again and again.

Steamworld Dig (PS4, Wii U, Vita, 3DS) and Terraria (PS3/4, Xbox 360/One, Vita) are 2-D tunnelers like Spelunky—instead of running left to right, you grind downward—but with a more gracious difficulty curve. Steamworld is a compact adventure that can be completed in a few hours, while Terraria is a sprawling spin on the Minecraft model.

And sometimes old wine belongs in new wineskins: New Super Mario Bros. Uand New Super Luigi U (Wii U) update the classic Mario gameplay for Nintendo’s latest console. The Wii U has struggled to find its footing in the video game marketplace, but these two prove it’s not for lack of quality Mario titles.