#macbat 64

Recently I found and played a number of games by a creator named Siactro. Super Kiwi 64, Macbat 64, Toree 3D, Toree 2, and Beeny. They're all lovingly well-crafted, and absolutely haunted.

Each one feels like an old school Rareware game, mostly N64 era, and they're absolutely the sort of thing that a creepypasta Let's Player would vanish while playing.

SGDQ 2022 - Macbat 64 Journey of a Nice Chap

Macbat 64 is a great little game that is heavily inspired by Banjo-Kazooie which I TOTALLY recommend, It’s on Itch.io, Steam and Switch for 1.99$!

I just played Macbat 64 on the Switch and with all honestly, it's very charming! It's $2 on the e-shop so it should be very affordable for how nice of an experience it is.

The titular Macbat is a delightful bat who you control through a selection of Nintendo 64-era throwback stages, ostensibly mirroring old rareware collectathon titles (though it often veers into other genres for a few stages or minigames) and it's a lot of fun.

It's a short game you'll beat in one sitting, including its bonus postgame content and the other game (Kiwi 64) that's secretly packed within it, but for the money you spent on it, it's honestly suuuuper worth it.

There is a very clear love for the genre packed in about every corner of this title, from the graphics, the sound track and sound design and the objectives, it's a nostalgiafest done right!

Today MacBat 64 - Journey of a Nice Chap, hit the Switch today, I was waiting for this one so I bought it immediately. It was only $2.00...  With a price like that, you do kinda get what you pay for... I completed it in just barely over an hour.

So normally it rubs me the wrong way when new 3D platformers use the whole nostalgia angle to market themselves, it just feels counter productive to the revival of a declined genre, and I want 3D platformers to go back to being top dog some day... buuuuut in the case of MacBat 64, I think the nostalgia angle is actually quite justified.

For one, this game took an actual low poly approach, trying it’s darndest to look like an N64 game, and it actually succeed very well. Only thing I will say is that there are one or two things that actually look worse than an N64 game, and a few things that aren’t quite as polished as N64, such as collectibles just kinda appearing with no fanfare, when even Mario 64 had the stars making big sparkly shows of themselves when they appeared.

The game presents itself as a platformer but it’s really not one... at least, it’s a platformer in the same way that Kirby is. Your character doesn’t jump, he flies... he has limited flying capability but it still gives you ample time to get any air time you need... and this game is EASY AS PIE.

Really, this is just a good nostalgia rush more than anything... that word is actually a bit of a dirty word to me when discussing games, but... it can be appropriate. This game is actually a short series of parodies actually. From what I can recognize, it parodies Banjo Kazooie, Mischief Makers, Donkey Kong 64, Kirby 64, Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Silent Hill, Castlevania, Super Metroid... and either Metal Gear Solid or Golden Eye, I can’t tell... Also it may parody Conker’s Bad Fur Day as well but that feels like a bit of a stretch to me.  There’s also a few secrets that I won’t spoil but they play homage to Banjo Kazooie’s stop-n-swop. As far as I can tell, they’re just easter eggs though.

The game is also a sequel to an even shorter game called Kiwi 64, which isn’t on the Switch as far as I know, but they apparantly added a new ending that teases a possible Kiwi 64 sequel? Not quite sure...