Aero the Acro-Bat

1993 · Platform · SNES

About Aero the Acro-Bat

Aero the Acro-Bat (1993) is Iguana Entertainment's circus platformer starring a red bat who must rescue performers kidnapped by the vengeful industrialist Edgar Ektor.

Aero the Acro-Bat in Depth

As a spoiled rich kid, Edgar Ektor was banned from The World of Amusement Circus and Funpark after a prank nearly killed a lion. Twenty years later, now a powerful and evil industrialist, he sabotages the funpark with Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel and his Psycho Circus gang and kidnaps all the performers. Aero the Acro-Bat, the circus's greatest star, is the only hope of rescuing them, including his girlfriend Aeriel, and stopping Edgar.

In four worlds of five large levels each, Aero must complete tasks to reveal the exit warp, such as passing through hoops, stepping on platforms until they vanish and riding roller coasters, while avoiding awkwardly placed spikes that kill instantly. He attacks by throwing a limited supply of stars or with a diagonal aerial drill attack. Scoring enough points opens a bonus level in which Aero dives into a pool; on the Genesis this is a vertical platform level, while the SNES version uses Mode 7 for a dive above an overworld map. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the SNES version 8.3 and the Genesis version 7.6, missing the SNES's music but praising the large, challenging levels, and named Aero the Best New Character of 1993.

Making Aero the Acro-Bat

Siller had carried the idea for years; although early designs looked like a human acrobat, he always meant Aero to be a bat. After he joined Sunsoft of America, his son Justin Siller designed the final concept, drawing on mixed themes from the 1970s and 1980s, and much of the work took place in Orange County, California. Iguana Entertainment developed it and Sunsoft published it for the Super NES and Genesis in 1993. Reviews were mixed: GameFan's reviewers scored the Genesis version highly and VideoGames gave both versions eight out of ten, but Digital Press gave it three out of ten. It returned on the Virtual Console in 2010 and on modern consoles in 2024.

Aero the Acro-Bat Trivia

David Siller created Aero, first sketching him in 1992.
Its mechanics were partly based on Namco's Mappy.
An NES version was planned but cancelled as 16-bit consoles took over.
A Game Boy Advance version in 2002 added battery saves and mission objectives.
It was followed by Aero the Acro-Bat 2 and the spin-off Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.