Bad Gaming : Aero The Acrobat
Sega Genesis,Super Nintendo
E for Everyone
Sunsoft
Iguana Entertainment
October 1993
Platformer
Rating: 1/5, Bad Controls, Boring but at least it looked cool
The console wars of the early 90′s had a couple of repercussions. It divided the gamer community causing the nerdiest civil war you can imagine and it gave us the Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega’s answer to Mario. Along with the creation of Sonic, there were the imitators, the forever cool mascots with ‘TUDE . Basic clones of Sonic that had a catchy tag line, cross console games and usually a planned cartoon in the works. Being the very impressionable panda cub that i was, the shiny graphics and rad commercial for Aero the Acrobat made me really stoked about this game. In retrospect, i am very lucky that all the copies were at the rental store i frequented were gone most of the time. Fast forward a couple of decades, I see this putrid game at the bottom of a yard sale bin. Only 50 cents, I couldn’t lose….right? RIGHT???
Aero the Acro-BAT (I see what you did there Sunsoft) is out to rescue the circus from the evil clutches of the evil clown Edgar Ektor. He must collect stuff and go from left to right till the evil clown is defeated. I can appreciate a short intro as much as the next guy, so I find this ridiculous story and the pretty graphics are the only enjoyable things in the entirety of this torturous game. Aero controls like he is made of jello and the physics of his jumps change at will , which normally i wouldn’t mind, i come from the days of the NES were this is to be expected. There is an attack but it can only performed while you are jumping and aside from it being very difficult to execute, it is also uncontrollable once performed, this leaves you vulnerable to even the weaker enemies. The levels are big and colorful but are very easy to get lost in and have a very weak sense of progress, this will have you second guessing the paths you choose throughout. When you combine shitty controls with odd level design and diabolically placed spikes of insta-death it makes the game broken, and it’s hard to find any kind of enjoyment. Which is sad because this little circus freak with attitude had some real potential to give Sonic a run for his money.Developers had some pretty cool ideas that were rarely seen in 2D platformers of the day such as key and item collecting. Game play like this allowed for big sprawling 2-D levels that had for room for exploration and fun times to be had. It seems developers rushed to put this game out before the mascot fad died out. Aero the Acrobat had a second installment and a spin-off game, which despite the bad taste this game left in my mouth, I would still want to check out, because there is plenty of room for Iguana Entertainment to improve this winning formula.
I’m hard pressed to actually call this article a review, because i refused to play more than 2 levels of the game. Soooooo, this my friends is a warning not to waste your money on this game. Unless you are a super lame nerd such as myself, even then this game should never find its way into your console. It should remain forgotten on your game shelf or hidden away like the arc of the covenant.
