Is it? Really? I've been playing them for over two decades on PC that way, including the newer ones like Rayman Origins - one of the very few games ever I was driven to complete 100% - Spelunky, La Mulana, Limbo, etc. and I've yet to run into problems with any of them. In addition, I've been a laptop gamer since ~2001.

While some people such as yourself may prefer gamepads, they're most definitely not an absolute necessity.

My Ant will love this game sooo much! Thank you! See attached how happy she is!

Ah I see.

I just played DD2, and she'll definately love these - these are exactly the type of games she plays now.

Thanks Licurg!

If you don't mind going outside gog, how about getting that sega genesis classic pack for stuff like gunstar heroes and alien soldier and shinobi and what have you?

That's true for new (indie) platformers maybe, but from my experience many of the classic GOG platformers you listed are a bit challenging to get to work nicely on gamepads, especially newer XInput (XBox360) gamepads.

At least you need to reconfigure all the controls from the scratch for most of them (because _if_ they have PC gamepad support, they are expecting you to have a DirectInput gamepad where the button layout is a bit different etc.). And it might be D-Pad, which would be natural for most of older platformers, doesn't work either by default.

The Abe's Odyssey/Exoddus are specifically problematic. Unlike the Playstation version, the PC versions were clearly optimized for keyboard, e.g. putting all the different communications on separate function keys etc. I recall PC gamepads simply don't have enough buttons to include them all, especially newer XInput gamepad (because from classic game point of view, they lack two extra shoulder buttons that DirectInput gamepads have, as they see the trigger buttons only as an analog axis, not as two buttons).

But for newer platformers like e.g. Trine and Giana Sisters, Xbox360 gamepad should work great out of the box IIRC.

Or you use XBCD to separate the shoulder axis and remap all controller functions to pretty much any DirectInput function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBCD
http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html
http://vba-m.com/forum/Forum-xbcd

Thanks for having a sense of humor but I meant what I said about the original Duke games. If she loved those and hasn't played them in a while I assure you they never get old. I still love em and I'm not a big platformer fan.

I imagine she ain't the same spring chook she was back in the nineties and probably suffers from a lot less patience.

So in that case I would highly recommend the challenging, yet user friendly, Rayman Origins and Legends games that have come out recently.

Very polished, very fair and contain a lot of content and secrets.

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However, if she is still up for hurting herself with pattern memorization
You can't go wrong with the recent "Volgarr the Viking"

Remember to tell her that DD2 doesn't have a save-game function, so it'll take her 3-6 hours of uninterrupted play to finish it .

Certainly not a lot of patience, thats the main reason she didn't like the Oddworld ones, or any of the puzzle games I showed her. I actually have Rayman Forever right now, and I plan on picking up Origins sometime soon. Cheers

@Licurg - I didn't realise that it didnt have save, but I'll be sure to mention it, ty

@TinyE - I'm obviously not very good at the england this morning, as I meant I have already set them up for her - shes played through both at least twice now. :P

Jill of the Jungle is a solid DOS platformer series. Maybe you can find it.

Unepic here at GOG surprised me. It didn't seem like my sort of game, but I tried the demo on a whim, and bought the full game immediately afterwards. It's an excellent platformer with an RPG aspect. So consider checking out the demo, I guess:
http://www.unepicgame.com/en/downloads.html

Unepic is great :)

also, the author could try Monster Bash, I remember having tons of fun with that as a kid

Check the 3DRealms site, some of their old games are freeware now, including some platformers like Bio Menace: http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html