You know the drill.
Written by Jason Venter
Published Aug. 02, 2024
If you were a teen in the early 90s, as I was, you saw a lot of games you couldn’t afford to buy (or maybe even rent) that you wished you could take home. For me, one such game was Aero the Acro-Bat, which Nintendo Power made look pretty nifty. But I always had other priorities, and then there was always something else to play when I got a little older and started collecting retro stuff. I didn’t get around to playing the game until this very week, with the game’s release on current hardware.
Published by Ratalaika Games and ported with support from Shinyuden, Aero the Acro-Bat is a 16-bit platformer originally developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Sunsoft on classic hardware. Recently, the good people at Ratalaika Games have taken an interest in bringing the classics of yesteryear to current devices. I appreciate that focus, because easier access to old games is always good news.
In this case, there are also plans to release subsequent games in the series, throughout 2024’s remainder. That’s awesome, even though it turns out that—much to my surprise—I don’t actually like this series very much. At least, this first game didn’t delight me.
Aero the Acro-Bat casts players as a bat in the circus. He roams four themed worlds, starting with the big top and ending with some mysterious ruins. There are somewhere around 20 stages in all. Most of them are quite large and full of hazards. Enemies are less common, but still very present. Touching your adversaries inflicts damage, which is better than the many hazards such as spikes and lava that immediately cost a life. Aero survives thanks to his “drill” attacks. He leaps into the air and then launches a second jump that sends him spiraling toward foes. In this manner, he damages them without feeling the pain himself. He also can pick up throwing stars, then toss them from a safe distance. But mostly, he’ll rely on that more intimate drill move.
As I mentioned, stages are quite large in most cases. The bulk of them feature winding passages littered with secrets, to make the very most of the available space. You’ll roam through a lot of mazes, and your objectives will vary from one stage to the next. In one case, you might need to find and destroy platforms. Or, you might need to drop through magical rings, or turn off spotlights. The variety is nice, and there are indicators at the top of the screen to let you know what progress you’re making. However, it’s easy to miss an objective and not know it. You might pass near a ring without seeing it, and only find out you haven’t done what was required when you reach the end of the stage and there isn’t a star gate waiting to take you to the next area. Then you’ll have to backtrack. It can get tedious.
Some games have done well with the large environments. Sonic the Hedgehog titles come to mind. But in Aero’s case, many of those environments are both tedious and dangerous to explore. They seem to be designed to run out the timer. You can’t merrily hop and bop your way through them. Instead, you must scavenge every corner, at least until you have the layouts memorized. But the layouts aren’t especially memorable, so there’s little call to memorize them except as a survival mechanism.
I’m glad I didn’t buy Aero the Acro-Bat in my teens. I would have been bitterly disappointed, because while the game has its positive aspects (more on those in a minute), it is a chore to play. In the 90s, I suffered through some of the worst excesses in otherwise enjoyable fare such as Battletoads because new levels felt exhilarating. They genuinely rewarded my effort. The stages in Aero are merely adequate, despite being superior to Rare’s NES classic on a technical level.
Back in the day, Aero must have impressed players because its protagonist is fairly unique and also… edgy? At the time, attitude was a big deal, and Aero has plenty of it. The animations are great, ready to face off against Sega’s blue mascot or Accolade’s snarky bobcat. Aero moves around the environments with a sense of urgency, and the drill attack feels good when it lands. The circus environment is also used to full advantage, particularly in those early stages. There are trapeze artists, trampolines, bubble machines (work with me here), and plenty of clowns and other circus-themed fare. The amusement park stage is also a nice touch, but then the game just starts throwing random platform tropes at players.
Also, the game’s music is very good. There weren’t a lot of other soundtracks quite like it in that era. Yes, much of it sounds like something you would hear piping out the tent flap at a local circus, or from the direction of a barker and a monkey. But that’s appropriate enough, right? And there’s just so much energy about it. The title screen’s theme is especially infectious, but the selections throughout the campaign are uniformly great. I’m not even a big music guy and I still dug it.
In this particular port, there also are some neat touches to present the game to its greatest advantage. Ratalaika has included a Cheats menu that you can access from any time. You can enable cheats to make it more likely you’ll survive the rather lengthy campaign. There are save states if you want them, as well, and you can rewind the action quite a long way simply by touching and holding a button. Given the availability of infinite lives and invincibility (if you want them), there’s little reason to fear you won’t be able to reach the end of this surprisingly difficult and demanding platformer.
When Ratalaika released Over Horizon X Steel Empire recently, it didn’t include a lot of extras beyond what I’ve mentioned. That’s not true in this case, however. There’s a bounty of concept art, and you can even look through the game’s original manual for helpful tips and level objectives (in case you forget what you’re supposed to be doing). A lot of the artwork available is provided at a high enough resolution that you can zoom in to appreciate details. There also is a photo of a Sunsoft booth at a tradeshow, which took me right back to the 90s for one happy instant.
Aero the Acro-Bat is a game I always wanted to try, and now I have. I can’t say it lived up to my expectations, but that’s my problem. I’m still happy this port happened because it gives modern players convenient access to a piece of console gaming history that has also been made more accessible as part of the process. With the extras and convenience features, along with a price tag that’s lower than what the game last sold for digitally on the Virtual Console, I have no trouble recommending Aero the Acro-Bat to players who enjoyed it in the 90s and want to relive those glory days. If you’re a newer player looking for one of the best platformers ever made, though, you might have better luck elsewhere. Without nostalgia adding value, Aero’s first outing was by no means essential.
