Banjo Kazooie :)

insomniac and naughty dog games :)

for some weird reason i just dont like mario platformers. im not bashing them cuz i can see they are good games, i just dont find them fun.

My favorite ever has to be Super Mario World. My favorite obscure (and possibly favorite 3-D) would be Psychonauts.

Still I feel there are a lot of other really good platformers out there that deserve some attention. Super Princess Peach was an amazing game that gets absolutely no attention for some reason. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow was really good as well except for the couple of heavily tacked on touch screen parts. Earthworm Jim was an amazing game that got run into the ground in almost record time sadly. I expect a 3-D revival of that game anyday now. The flash based platformer "The unfair game" was pretty well made also I think. It was tediously hard but that was the point, and it was just fun enough to keep you going through the buggy programming.

1. Super Mario World

2. Sly Games

@Gnizmo:

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on Super Princess Peach. Most of the level designs in that game were bland, bland, bland. There were some good ideas, and some of the late/secret levels were cool, but altogether the game felt more like a chore than like fun. Also, I wish they would've allowed you to earn the Endless Vibe ability before you had already done absolutely everything in the game; I didn't have the heart to go back and mess around with it much afterwards.

Psychonauts, though, 100% awesome.

Pretty much all Mario games, starting with Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64.

Galaxy would probably be near the bottom.

I don't really have a #1, but some of my favorites are:

Out of This World
Shinobi 3
N
Cave Story
(N)SMB (3)
Sonic CD
Crash: Warped
Castle of Illusion
Lion King (Genesis)
...

I give up...

Thanks to all who contributed. I posted the editorial today.

http://vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=858

Let me know what you think. I'm new at writing articles that long.

As in free roaming platformer. The first ever Jak game, and the Sly series.

If we can include more linear layout games, the first free Crash Bandicoot games.

Probably Mario galaxy