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A few months ago, the Switch finally received Pizza Tower, an indie action platformer that’s gotten a lot of praise for how well it channels Nintendo’s long-dormant Wario Land series. Yet developer Tour de Pizza wasn’t the only team inspired by Wario. Summitsphere’s Antonblast is a wild and wonderful action platformer that feels like it could actually be the next Wario Land game if it came with a different coat of paint; its combination of speed, precision, and smart level design makes for a truly thrilling experience that’s only let down by its issues with stable performance.
Antonblast stars the titular Dynamite Anton, whose angry, red-skinned appearance leaves Satan feeling envious and insecure about his status as “the reddest being of them all.” So, in a petty act of retaliation, he sends his minions to Anton’s apartment to steal what he cherishes most: the Spirits that he kept around his living space. Enraged, Anton grabs his hammer and sets out on a quest to reclaim what was stolen and to give Satan a piece of his mind.
Play through any given level here and the inspiration it takes from Wario Land 4 is immediately clear. Anton (or his roommate, Annie, if you prefer) tears through levels like a virtually unstoppable force of nature, smashing boxes and blowing up enemies as he bounces around with his hammer and powers through obstacles with his ‘Clutch’ charge ability. There are plenty of side paths to explore and collectibles to snap up along the way, but the ultimate goal is to get to the bomb at the end of the level so you can start “Happy Hour.” Once triggered, a countdown clock begins, and you only have a few minutes to run all the way back through the level with the Spirit you collected. These mad dashes to safety are a real thrill, as you often are forced to take an alternate path back to the beginning and usually leave an enormous path of destruction in your wake on the trip back.
Simply beating a level isn’t enough to get the full experience, however, not even if you took your time to scrub it for all its collectibles. After beating each one, you unlock a time attack and combo chain mode for the level, and this is where the exceptional level design really comes into focus.
For Time Attack, each level gives you a tight par time to achieve that demands you master level layouts and understand the nuances of Anton’s moveset to optimise your attempts. Combo Chain works much the same, but here you’re tasked with maintaining an unbroken combo by strategically smashing boxes and blowing up enemies, all without any health pickups to help you out. We enjoyed what these two modes brought to the table, as they force you to engage with each level in a different way each time and add greater challenge and replayability to an already great platformer.
Even if you just stick to the minimum content to clear the base story, Antonblast displays a remarkable amount of variety across its relatively brief run. It should only take you about 10 hours to clear (maybe double that if you do everything), but it makes the most of that time by constantly introducing new ideas and level concepts along the way.
One level has a power-up that essentially turns you into Taz the Tasmanian Devil, utterly obliterating everything in your path as you turn into a chaotic whirlwind. Another stage introduces a blazing-fast animal buddy shark that Anton can ride on land or sea, giving new traversal options as he hangs on for dear life. This is the kind of game that keeps things moving, and its commitment to introducing new ideas and building levels around them keeps it feeling constantly fresh.
As for its visual presentation, Antonblast is clearly inspired by the likes of old Newgrounds-style Flash animations and ‘90s Nickelodeon shows. There’s a twisted and somewhat dreamlike quality to the colourful worlds you terrorise on your journey, and all the characters and animations have a very Looney Tunes-esque vibe with their exaggerated movements. At just about any moment on-screen, there’s something bound to be exploding, screaming, or collapsing, and with this underscored by the vibration feature of the Joy-Con it leads to a very lively visual experience. But it’s the attention to little details that really sells the art style, such as the long trail of ‘A’s that follows a terrified enemy you just sent careening into a brick wall.
The audio keeps up with the madness of the action with a pop and jazz-infused soundtrack that maintains a high energy level throughout. And we especially appreciate the frequent cartoonish sound effects to punctuate Anton’s destructive actions—things like the crashing plane sound used when Anton does a body slam from a high jump help to keep the goofy atmosphere front and centre.
One downside is that the performance nearly can’t keep up with the constant action. There are plenty of moments where the screen is positively soaked in explosions, poker chips, and screaming enemies, which leads to a noticeable drop in the frame rate. These drops don’t have a massive direct effect on your ability to control Anton, but they still certainly cheapen the experience enough to be disappointing. We’ve seen reports of crashing issues and some softlock bugs encountered by other players over the launch period, too. We’ve been assured by the developers that a performance improvement patch targeting these issues has already been submitted to Nintendo, but just be warned that the current version available at launch is rather rough around the edges—you may want to wait for the fixes.
Conclusion
Antonblast is a great tribute to Nintendo’s Wario Land series with its madcap action and focus on gameplay variety. The cartoonish visuals, high replayability, and overall spectacle of the experience make this one well worth a recommendation, though we’d temper this by saying that it really needs some work on its Switch performance. Whether on Switch or elsewhere, we’d suggest you pick this one up if you’re at all a fan of Nintendo’s other Italian mascot and are looking for a well-made and fast-paced new 2D platformer—Antonblast has got it where it counts and is well-deserving of a spot in your library.