Review: Aero the Acro-Bat

Big top platformer is big, top platformer

Yes! Yes!! Good old Aero the Acro-Bat is getting a moment in the sun, at last. Well, since it last got re-released on Evercade, I suppose. I guess you can still go and play it (and its sequels) there – and should! – but now the series has dropped (and is dropping) on Switch et cetera, it has never been easier to enjoy Aero’s circus of adventure. And don’t listen to what people on CERTAIN POPULAR INTERNET GAMING FORUMS who have played the rom for thirty seconds, lost one life, then settled their opinion of the game forever have to say about it. Or, for that matter, people who have watched YouTube videos by sex pests and made their decision that way. In fact these rules can be applied to every game, ever, but especially Aero the Acro-Bat.

Offered up here is the SNES version, which of the two original releases (other was Mega Drive, obviously) is the preferred choice due to its superior music, though without wanting to come out of the gate being negative it would have been nice to have the option of playing the Mega Drive game due to its unique bonus level in the first world – the SNES version has one of those scaling Mode 7 jobbies, but the Sega port has a traditional 2D stage instead. There isn’t much to it, but as an Aero obsessive it would have been nice to have the choice. To get complaints out of the way early, I’m also not wild about the presentation here. The game’s opening logos/copyyright have been removed in this re-release, and while I sort of understand why, it means the intro music has been somewhat gracelessly chopped opp. Rather than the usual fanfare that leads into the title screen tune, here you just get a rather abrupt cut into the sound which really doesn’t work.

Outside of this fairly trivial but somewhat confusing issue, what you’re getting here is what I’ve come to expect from Ratalaika’s reissues – a more than competent presentation of the original game with a handful of cheat modes, some screen/scanline options and the expected save states. There are some nice production materials in the gallery here, scanned at high resolution, which I appreciated as an Aero superfan. It’s a nice package that’s in line with the rest of their output, but with a game as underappreciated as Aero the Acro-Bat it’s very cool to see the effort made. It’s not offering anything to the same extent as their Turrican Anthology series but nonetheless, it’s nice.

The game itself remains a gentle pleasure. While on original hardware it was pretty frustrating not to have any means of saving your progress, that’s obviously not an issue anymore. Aero’s difficulty level is somewhat high – spiked objects are one-hit kills and the designers were far from shy about using them – but there are extra lives hidden all over the place which balances this out somewhat. In fact, there are secrets almost everywhere throughout the entire journey, which showcase attention to the level design which frankly dwarfs most other mascot games. Even Sonic the Hedgehog gives up on hiding anything meaningful after the Green Hill Zone, but Aero never steps layering secrets upon secrets, resulting in a game that’s satisfying and rewarding to explore.

Aero’s air drill attack is still fun, though it takes a few minutes to get used to the way it works – while traveling upward in a jump, Aero will drill towards the sky, but if he’s on the way down he’ll dive towards the floor. This can be overridden by holding the desired diagonal, but you’ll likely drop a few lives here or there to accidentally drilling in the wrong direction. Keeping variety up without sacrificing the core platforming, you’ll also be able to ride on gimmicks such as a roller coaster, a rotor, a bungee cord and – humorously – a unicyle on a tightrope. Hey, he’s a circus bat, after all. It’s a strong effort, packed with levels and items, with a really fantastic (and difficult) final boss to slug past if you get that far. The other two boss battles are something of a weak link, but they’re not difficult to beat and don’t outstay their welcome.

It’s difficult for me to wholeheartedly recommend Aero the Acro-Bat, primarily due to having some anxiety about appearing overly contrarian – it’s a game that has been paraded online, especially in video, as many negative things which in my experience it patently isn’t. I’ve seen it described as a collectathon – it’s not. You have to achieve objectives in certain stages that require exploration, but none of it is far off the beaten path and the levels aren’t especially big. In coming to review the game I had a look at some YouTube videos to see what the general consensus was, and was effectively presented with a tissue of mad lies masquerading as criticism. Somebody took the game to task for not having a double jump like the titular character in the later Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel spin-off. Of course Aero has a double jump! What do these people think the drill is? You see what I have to deal with?!

The point is – play it yourself. Don’t watch boring videos of people telling lies in monotone over footage of a the first level of a game they’ve clearly barely played, or at best, barely understood. Come to me instead, I’m incapable of intellectual dishonesty. Stupidity, yes. Arrogance, sure. But I would never lie about the content of a cartoon jumping man game. There’s just no point. I stand to gain nothing and doing so would only erode the play value of the type of video games I love. Aero the Acro-Bat is a video game I love. Please give it a try.