Back in the heyday of the 16-bit consoles, following the release of Sonic the Hedgehog, animals/characters with ‘attitude’ were all the rage. Sunsoft decided to get in on the ‘act’ with their own mascot, Aero the Acro-bat. Aero is a literal bat that performs at a circus. The game tasks you with defending the circus from an evil clown (surprise, surprise) who wants to ruin the circus.
Gameplay consists of your traditional platforming elements but with a few twists. Rather than merely making it from point A to point B, you also have various objectives you have to complete before the portal at the end will appear. These tasks range from jumping on a set number of special platforms, making them disappear, to riding roller-coasters through the level. You also have to avoid insta-kill spikes and other evil clowns along the way. Aero can attack the clowns either by using an aerial ‘drill attack’ or by shooting stars he collects. The game plays fairly well, the biggest problem being Aero’s ‘double-jump’ or partial lack there-of. Instead of having a traditional ‘double-jump’ Aero can use his ‘screw attack’ to spiral himself upward after a jump, but at an angle. This is probably the single most difficult part of the game. Judging distances for jumps is a crucial skill in platformers and is often difficult in its own right. The added learning curve of adjusting your trajectory for an angled jump can make things unnecessarily hard.
Depending on which console you play Aero on, (SNES/Genesis) there will be slight differences in the game’s music, but its all pretty cliched circus-themed tunes and riffs with some circus-ized classical thrown in as well. (most old circus music is actually of ‘classical’ composition;)
The graphics are flashy and circus-y with lots of bright colors (some of which are oddly muted). It’s nothing too extraordinary for a 16-bit system, unlike the graphical wonders of Donkey Kong Country or Sonic.
All in all, Aero is a decent platformer just with a higher learning curve than is probably necessary. But if circus bats are your thing and you’re looking to give it a try, Nintendo has re-released the game (and its sequel) on the Virtual Console for $8.
I used to love this one. The high dive bonus level was particularly fun.