Antonblast is an out-of-control platformer with its heart in the ’90s

Antonblast is kind of like playing a zany Saturday morning cartoon. It’s brash, maximalist, and often, you’ll feel like you don’t actually understand what’s happening. Somehow, that chaos gels into something that actually makes sense — and, at times, is even calming.

Antonblast just launched in 2024, but it looks like a long-lost side-scrolling platformer from the 16-bit era of the SNES or Sega Genesis. That’s not just due to the fantastic pixel art. There are fun touches like delightfully ’90s-era character designs and Mode 7-like effects, such as your character splatting against the screen when you die, that really make it feel like a missing classic of the era.

Summitsphere, Antonblast’s developer, describes the game as a “fast-paced explosive action platformer,” and that’s a good way to summarize how it actually feels to play. It’s sort of what would happen if you put Wario, Sonic, Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rocko’s Modern Life into a blender.

As Anton or Annie, you’ll charge through various enemies and obstacles in your path, sometimes turning into a literal tornado of chaos, to retrieve Spirits (as in drinks) from a villainous Satan, who has stolen and scattered them throughout 12 different levels.

The levels usually have some kind of gimmick or theme that is explored with an almost Nintendo-like degree of precision. One level frequently turns your character into a pinball. Another features sections where you transform into a bouncing, explosive bomb. One of my favorites was a maze-like bathhouse that, compared to the rest of the game, was eerily quiet. And at the end of nearly every level, you’ll activate a switch that starts a timer and begins a frantic and thrilling run back to the entrance.

For the most part, Antonblast encourages you to build momentum, like a classic Sonic game. It’s easy to get into a flow state of surging forward, even when things can feel out of control because of how fast you’re going or the amount of stuff onscreen. As I got better at the game, I actually started to feel more chill when things got out of hand. The game was usually leading me in the right direction, and I learned to just accept that things were happening as they should.

Occasionally, the game would have some tough platforming or annoyingly placed checkpoints that could take me out of the flow state — also like Sonic. Some of the bosses, which were often epic, screen-filling spectacles, could be frustratingly difficult. Fortunately, though, reloads are quick, which makes those frustrations a bit easier to deal with. The final level and boss are particularly challenging, but if you do get that far, trust me when I tell you that the payoff for seeing them through is worth it.

Like the ’90s-era cartoons that are its obvious inspirations, Antonblast can be a little loud and immature. There’s literally a button you can press just to have your character scream. But like the best of those shows, its creators clearly had fun making an over-the-top world, and they made it damn fun to play — even when I didn’t know what was going on.

Antonblast is available now on Nintendo Switch and Steam.