Tag: sega

Aero the Acro-Bat – Retro Review

Bother in the Big Top

This review was written for Issue 8 of the sadly now defunct Sega Mania Magazine, as such it is written from a ’90s perspective.

Does anyone actually like the circus? I mean, I’m sure they were great in the olden times, when the only other forms of entertainment were gathering around the wireless or playing with a hoop and a stick, but do we really need them here in the futuristic ’90s? We have television, spectator sports and video games, bars and nightclubs, Pogs and Slinkies. I for one think that it’s time for circuses to go. The animals don’t want to be there, I question the motives and mental capacity of anyone who chooses to be a clown, and acrobats can use their impressive suppleness and contortionist abilities elsewhere. Maybe they can perform elaborate robberies or something.

Aero the Acro-bat for the Mega Drive has an unavoidable big top vibe, with the titular Aero being the game’s protagonist and the star of the in-game show. A villainous industrialist named Edgar Ektor has sabotaged the World of Amusement Circus and Funpark, and has kidnapped all of its performers, replacing them with nefarious, evil clowns and other such appropriately-themed bad guys. It’s fallen upon Aero to use his high-flying skills and acrobatic feats to save the day, rescue his girlfriend Aeriel, and put a stop to Ektor’s machinations. This includes taking care of Ektor’s lead henchman, a certain Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.

Aero is contemplating the tiny, one-hit-kill spikes that infest every stage. Can you see it?

If you’ve seen Aero the Acro-bat before, you’ll know that he represents yet another developer having a dip into the “critters with ‘tude” well. This time it’s Sunsoft who have their straws out, attempting to slurp up some of Sonic’s lucrative success water. Have they backed a winner with this Chiropteran tumbler? I’m not so sure. The designers doubled down on the mean and cool attitude and forgot to add any charm or charisma. Also, he’s a circus performer, which means I immediately question his moral and social ideals.

Initial impressions paint Aero the Acro-bat as a fairly standard platformer, and it feels a little dated compared to some of the platformers that have appeared in recent years. Aero himself is somewhat stiff to control, and he commits that platformer hero sin of not being able to stop quickly, which can result in some aggravating slides into certain doom. The stages, while colourful, seem fairly lifeless, with levels that don’t evolve as you progress and forgettable enemy designs. There is some stage variety later on, with a few cool gimmicks that are mostly based on fairground rides, but nothing really stands out or sticks with you. Visually, this is closer to James Pond or Krusty’s Super Fun House than it is to Ristar or our iconic hedgehog pal.

A bat in a barrel, rolling past featureless trees and hills.

Mechanically, the level design philosophy seems frustratingly centred on catching the player out with traps that they could not have foreseen. The admittedly-large levels are littered with spikes, and said spikes are small and inconspicuous, and are often found in the most annoying of places. For example, some of the levels ask you to jump on certain platforms, which causes them to disintegrate, and you can be darned sure there are going to be spike pits underneath all of them. There’s a particular spiked pit during act two that you get dumped into immediately after a unicycle tightrope ride, the likes of which have thus far given you no reason to think they’re going to end in certain, spiky doom. This would all be fine if the spikes just made you lose some health, but these barbed bad boys are insta-death, baby.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, have oodles of time to spare, and enjoy memorising massive levels using a process of trial and error that involves lots and lots of dead bat, then you might get a lot of enjoyment out of Aero the Acro-bat, as there is satisfying gameplay to be found once you’ve mastered Aero’s initially-awkward dive attacks and formed your mental map of the levels. It’s a heck of a slog to get there though, and with its forgettable mascot, uninspiring visuals, small sprites and irritating, circus-themed music, you might not want to go through the trouble.

The rollercoaster section is just another memory test.

I can’t help but feel that the game doesn’t want you to have fun. Did you know that bats are the only mammal capable of true, full flight, and are even more nimble and agile when airborne than most birds? Not this one. He can hover for a bit, and can only fly temporarily after collecting a certain power-up. He’s also able to fire star projectiles, but they’re extremely limited, he starts with none, and the pick-ups are located in fiddly places to get to. Enemies are positioned specifically to catch you out, which you could say about your average Sonic the Hedgehog level, but Sonic’s zones are mostly focussed on fun, spectacle, exploration and a satisfying challenge, rather than just aggravating schmuck bait.

The Mega Drive is absolutely stuffed with top quality mascot platformers, and Aero, despite all of his impressive acro-bat-ics, struggles to even trouble the top 20. Perhaps he should go back to shooting soundwaves at unsuspecting moths or sucking blood out of horses. You know, all that bat stuff that real bats do.

I hope this was an enjoyable little extra for any Sega Mania fans out there. I wrote one more review for Issue 8 which I will be posting at a later date, and I may also be uploading some of my favourite reviews from throughout the mag’s seven issue run, so stay tuned! 

Vigilante – Retro Review

Green-Trousered Rogues

As a kid growing up in rural Somerset, I didn’t see much in the way of gang violence (although I’d argue that a group of shifty-looking cows can be just as intimidating as a gang of ruffians with flick-knives), and my only experience of that culture came through films and music videos. Loading up Double Dragon or Target Renegade on the C64 was my chance to live out that Los Locos scene in Short Circuit 2 or pretend I’m one of those cool and mean-looking dancers in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video.

Upon closer inspection, Vigilante for the Master System seems to have taken its cues from more adult-targeted media like 1979 film The Warriors, what with the antagonist gang being called the Rogues and all. No sign of David Patrick Kelly though. In fact, all the bosses of Vigilante’s Rogues are the “large and in charge” types, rather than diminutive, trouble-making rat-bastards.

The boss of the first level. Is it Bruiser Brody or Brian Blessed?

To me, Vigilante was the herald of the next generation of side-scrolling fighting games. After sampling the likes of Renegade and Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja on the C64 and Amstrad CPC, Vigilante was my first taste of streets-based violence on a console, and mighty impressed I was too. Bright colours, neat backgrounds and cool animations greeted my eager, innocent eyes, but what would my contemporary opinion be of this near-forgotten 8-bit beat-’em-up?

Well, it ain’t no Streets of Rage, that’s for sure. Released on the Master System in 1989, Vigilante is a port of a 1988 arcade game by Irem, and is apparently a spiritual successor to the 1984 arcade game Kung-Fu Master. An unnamed city has been overrun by crooks, thugs and ne’er-do-wells, and Maria, the protagonist’s girlfriend, has been unceremoniously chucked into the back of a van. It’s time for the titular vigilante to clean up the streets. The levels consist of a single, linear run towards a boss waiting at the end of the road. Contrary to what you might expect from the genre and the screenshots, there is no vertical movement, with our vigilante friend limited to a single, horizontal plane. Enemies will attack from either side, and you have punches, kicks and jumps at your disposal to fend them off.

As such, Vigilante plays less like a traditional scrolling beat-’em-up and more like some kind of violent rhythm game. This is because much of the game comes down to the timing of your button presses, especially when it comes to one particularly annoying thug-type whose modus operandi is to repeatedly rush in and attempt to grapple you. Seriously, these guys are the worst. Every other enemy will approach from either side of the screen, hold off for a bit as they get close, and then attempt to catch you out with an attack. The aforementioned grapplers, identified by their white vests and green trousers, will rush in at full speed, single-mindedly intent on locking you in an energy-sapping hold. Your only defence is to batter them before they get to you, but they come in so quickly that the timing is extremely precise. It’s difficult enough when just these green-trousered hooligans are rushing you from either side, but pair them up with other crooks and things can get immensely frustrating.

Look at him, coming in from behind while you’re occupied with t-shirt and jeans guy.

If you can survive this glut of grapple-happy nutters you’ll reach the boss at the end of the level. These guys are intimidating, but will soon fall once you figure out which of your attacks they’re particularly vulnerable to. Be careful not to let the boss push you too far back through the level though, as once you’ve defeated the stage’s head honcho you still have to walk to the end, and if you’ve gone too far back you can expect to be set upon by thugs and green-trousered grapple guys again.

I played the Master System version of Double Dragon so that I could compare the two, and there’s so much more to that than there is to Vigilante. The stages are larger, with vertical movement, pits and multiple height levels to traverse, you have more moves at your disposal, and Double Dragon has that all-important two-player mode. Vigilante looks nicer though, its alleyways, scrapyards and city skylines artfully delivering that retro urban vibe. Vigilante’s nameless city is a pretty cool place to be, it’s just a shame that I have to spend my entire time there desperately fending off infuriating bastards in fetching aquamarine slacks.

Played on Master System/Emulator