You can’t help but feel a little sorry for ANTONBLAST. Here’s a game that looked to fill the massive hole left in the game industry by Wario Land 4 and Tour De Pizza shows up a year before and—pardon the expression—totally ate its lunch. That’s a joke of course since both games had pretty similar development times, but it’s definitely a comparison that’s going to get made.
I’d be lying if I didn’t make the same terrible joke to some degree, but in all honesty, I’m more than happy that more games are stepping up to fill the wonderfully weird Wario-shaped hole Nintendo left in their own library. I went into ANTONBLAST expecting a fairly decent Wario Land, but I was not fully prepared for the insane, chaotic and explosive fun the game has to offer.
The story of ANTONBLAST begins pretty hilariously when the devil himself asks his magic mirror who is the reddest in all the world—and/or under it. The mirror warns the devil that there may be another—a demolition worker named Dynamite Anton—who may challenge the devil’s redness. The devil flips out and orders his legions of demons to turn Anton’s life upside down.
The demons break into Anton’s apartment and steal his collection of Spirits—rare and precious demonic booze—so he picks up his mighty hammer to get back his drinks by force.
While it’s not particularly complex, it’s a silly, fun story that plays out a lot like an early 2000s CN show—the devil even kind of looks and sounds like the Red Guy from Cow and Chicken. It’s got a really tongue-in-cheek, almost juvenile sense of humour that, despite its more “adult” tone never really comes across as edgy or harsh.
Where ANTONBLAST really differentiates itself is in its gameplay. While one could glibly compare the game to Wario Land or even Pizza Tower—and Summitsphere said the game was inspired heavily by Wario Land—it feels so fundamentally different than either of those games. Where Wario Land was kind of defined by its weirdness and Pizza Tower was defined a bit more by its speed, ANTONBLAST is defined by CHAOS.
Don’t get me wrong, it still got incredibly tight level design, full of secrets and collectables but there’s a certain speed and madness to every level that turns it from something that needs a lot of precise timing into something that is insane, chaotic fun—assisted by the fact that almost everything explodes comically.
“Functionally, ANTONBLAST is a lot like Wario Land but stylistically ANTONBLAST is a lot more like Earthworm Jim.”
This can be seen in Anton’s two forms of movement/attack. While running, players can charge forward, smashing anything in their path but stopping after a certain point. However, if players time their charges—assisted by a small meter on the bottom right of the screen—they can continuously blast through stages and enemies.
Similarly, while jumping, players can bring their hammer down on enemies, smashing anything beneath them. If they hold the attack button down, Anton will bounce off the ground—getting higher than a normal jump and bouncing even higher off enemies. So while there is a certain degree of timing and attention that needs to be paid to stage layout, ANTONBLAST’s design encourages players to just blast through levels in the most fun way, and revisit each one to really explore it.
This is definitely helped by how almost every level has its own unique style and several levels have additional movement mechanics that shake up the gameplay in really fun ways—similar to Wario Land. And even these elements initially add a lot of chaotic fun to each level, while adding a lot of depth and complexity to additional playthroughs.
But where ANTONBLAST really stands out to me is its style. Like I said before, the comparison to Pizza Tower is definitely going to come up, but I don’t think it’s true. Functionally, ANTONBLAST is a lot like Wario Land but stylistically ANTONBLAST is a lot more like Earthworm Jim. I mentioned it a bit earlier, but the whole game has a really juvenile sense of humour that comes across in both the audio and visual design of the game.
There’s a silliness that persists throughout the entire experience. Anton’s design with the really buff and blocky top and funny little spindly legs really evokes classic cartoons—helped even more by so many of the classic explosion and splat sounds. The way he screams in pain or yells, “Not good” when taking damage adds a lot of disgruntled personality to him—he’s gruff but loveable. Even the way some of the dialogue has some pretty minor swears, it’s presented in a way that doesn’t really feel edgy or like it’s trying too hard.
Of course, ANTONBLAST’s visual style is a ton of fun, utilizing a 16-bit style that’s evocative of the Gameboy Advance and a really wild colour palette to make it feel truly distinct. The music bounces between funk, techno and rock for something as wild as the rest of the game. On top of that, all the in-game voice acting is superb feeling incredibly earnest and playful, the way a virtual cartoon should.
ANTONBLAST is a game that both embraces and exceeds its inspiration. If you were a fan of Wario Land or even Pizza Tower then you were probably already going to love this, but I can safely say I think you’re going to love it for reasons beyond the games it was inspired by. Its silly, chaotic style will be incredibly approachable for newcomers, and its plethora of extras and collectables will be catnip for fans of the genre. You might even say, ANTONBLAST is a one-Ton Blast!
