Developed and Published By: Ratalaika Games
Categories: Platformer, Retro
Release Date: 11.01.24
Price: $5.99

So this is supposed to be an enhanced port right? I’ve always enjoyed and even pushed for more 16bit games to get GBA ports back in the day. I live for handheld gaming. In a world where the Virtual Console didn’t exist yet, emulators were trapped on boxes hooked to the wall, re-releases and ports were the one way to play these games.

On first look, this isn’t much an improvement, if any of a step up at all. Blame this on the awful front end and the fact you’re always playing a very upscaled GBA game, but the pixelated menus and the comic book intro look terrible. But hey, it’s nice to have the story in game. A save feature now being included is a great addition too. As soon as you play the game proper, the dreaded GBA screencrunch and soundchip strike with such fury that I start to question if Nintendo’s own ports had an issue this bad. They didn’t.

Sprite wise, I have to give it to the game, they do look nice. On first inspection, it would be kind of hard to tell if they are new sprites, but they definitely are redrawn to look bigger and a bit more detailed. The added brightness of the port helps showcase this too, though everything else probably comes off as bit too bright. Cutscenes all look bad, but the actual game still looks nice all things considered.

Final Thoughts

I sit here thinking as to why this wasn’t just bundled with the first game at release. These ports aren’t at all expensive, but I see very little to absolutely zero reason to buy this by itself outside of nostalgia for the GBA port. It is good to have a modern home for all four Aero games, but I struggle to understand why this wasn’t a bundle outside of piece-mealing the games. A bundle for $20 with some marketing definitely seems like a more sound idea. Even get a limited print run company to release a physical release.

This didn’t feel different enough from the first game to really decide if I prefer this port or not to the original. At least I can’t tell if it’s really all that different, maybe an expert on these games would know better.