Side View



Also known as Front View, this is a video game perspective in which all objects are viewed strictly from the side, with little or no amount of their tops or bottoms visible. This is the classic perspective for 2D Platform Games, Metroidvania games, Fighting Games and Horizontal Scrolling Shooters. This perspective has fallen out of favor with modern 3D games.

Depth Perplexion almost always comes with this view; for example note that in the picture to the right Mega Man and the turret enemies can shoot bullets "through" the walls.

See also Isometric Projection, Top Down View and Three Quarters View.

Platform / Metroidvania

 * Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel had certain sections in 2D.
 * Some parts of the daytime levels in Sonic Unleashed, as well as the levels in Sonic Colors and Modern Sonic's levels in Sonic Generations.
 * Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario played with this with sections in the former where you went from the 3D foreground to the 2D background, and in the latter with 2D to 3D flips.
 * Similarly, Crush was based around transitioning between 3D, 2D side-view, and 2D top-down-view.
 * Fez involves a 3D environment that gets flattened into a 2D plane for side-view platforming; the player can alter the level by switching the positions of the X- and Z-axis at will.
 * The Mega Man series—with the notable exception of 8, where the tops of platforms were visible.
 * Little Big Planet, though you could "jump" forward and backwards in depth in certain spots.

Shoot'Em Up

 * Salamander and its sequel alternates between this and a top-down view.

Eastern RPG

 * Interestingly, despite being 3D, Wild Arms 4 had areas that would switch to this perspective for platforming elements.
 * The Mario & Luigi games were usually Top Down View, but had a bunch of side-scrolling segments.

Action Adventure

 * Zelda II the Adventure of Link being the only game in the series to be side view in the action scenes (top down in the overworld), while the The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening, and The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games have side view areas.
 * The Splatterhouse reboot shifts into 2D sidescrolling mode during certain segments.

Shooter

 * The Contra series infamously uses alternative viewpoints (such as top-down and pseudo-3D) in some of its levels.

Other / unsorted

 * Spyro Year of the Dragon had side scrolling areas with secondary characters.
 * Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal had the Captain Qwark stages as side scrollers.

Other Media

 * Fantastic Mr. Fox has a few action scenes like this.