My first exposure to Astal was through the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic. He showed up a few times in the background of panels, just a weird lookin' fella with a design that really stood out, almost like he was from something.

Turns out the reason I didn't recognize him was because nobody owned a Sega Saturn.

I do now, though! And shortly after getting Pseudo Saturn Kai up and running and burning a mountain of ill-gotten games, Astal was one of the first I played. I went in with low expectations and almost zero notion of what it even was, and that was probably the best mindset to be in. If you're expecting anything other than a generic mid-90s platformer, you're probably going to be pretty disappointed.

Personally, I think Astal's simplicity is part of what makes it so enjoyable. It's not a demanding game, it lacks complex mechanics and takes almost no time to get acclimated to, which makes it perfect if you're looking for something you can jump right into and have a good time with for about an hour. My only real complaint is that the game ends so suddenly and with such an abrupt shift in scenery that it feels like a whole world got cut somewhere. Without a shred of hyperbole, I was trying to remember how much game I had left when Astal transitioned to the final boss.

The generic nature of its gameplay is made up for by strong presentation. Colors range from soft pastels to bright neons, and backgrounds have an almost air-brushed quality to them that, coupled with a gentle soundtrack, gives Astal this nostalgic, dream-like feeling. The prevailing aesthetics of the 90s were defined by how garish, aggressive, and full of put-on attitude they were, but it was a more stylistically rich era than that. Astal is none of those things yet quintessentially 90s, which helps it stir in me familiar feelings of waking up at the crack of dawn to play games, even if I didn't experience it that way back in the day.

Like Sonic Blast, I decided to look up coverage of Astal contemporary with its release, and I found that UK publications did a lot more to cover the game compared to their considerably less interested American counterparts. I'm sure this is partly due to Sega's market share being different between the two countries, but a quick read through Mega's August 95 cover feature - where Astal was dismissed as being overpriced and less fun than Sonic ("It doesn't have a fancy intro either. Ho hum. At least it's better than Daedalus...") - and GamePro's November 95 review highlights an almost comical gulf in terms writing quality. GamePro's Scary Larry does show a respectable amount of restraint in making only two puns about "Astal" sounding like "ass."

Meanwhile, Russian magazine Strana Igr said of Astal, "Это вообще ничего не значит." I don't really know what the hell that means. Maybe it says something about how Astal does a respectable job filling the void left by Sonic the Hedgehog on the Saturn, even if it may not be the most revolutionary platformer out there.

What caused Astal to have animosity towards
the bird so much at first☠️☠️ that bird is the MVP of the game! Gorgeous game for sure. The animation and art are top-notch and the overall color pallet is beautiful. The music is another huge highlight of the game. It feels so amazing to hear such Vibrant tracks as you go throughout the game. Everything blends together to give us this wonderful 2D platformer. Definitely a very special game within segas history. You can also never beat that angelic "Segaaaaaaa" during the intro credits of the game.

I’ve always had a love for games that proudly wear their tech demo moniker on their sleeve while also having simple yet incredibly well polished mechanics. Astal is one of those games. Astal being a marque title for the Saturn early in its life was met with derision by many, as 3D games were becoming more and more common, a 2D sprite based platformer was deemed a waste of resources and step backwards at the time. Of course this sentiment has faded by the wayside in the years since, and Astal deservedly holds a reputation as being one of the best games in the Saturn’s library.

Due to the bizarre game play changes in the international localization for North America and Brazil, I played the Japanese version for this review. The international versions made the game artificially harder, reducing your health from 5-3 hit points. And changing your continues from unlimited to 1. I highly recommend playing the Japanese version for the best game play experience, as well as not having to hear the horrendous English dub.

Astal’s story is brilliantly blended with the game play. Astal’s aggressive, determined and focused attitude is reflected in his animations and how he controls. His walking animation is long, strong strides, his running animation has just enough screen shake to convey his raw power. And his ground grabs and aerial overhead smash have the perfect amount of smear frames to make you feel incredibly powerful.

The environmental story telling is top notch, navigating a world that Astal is partially responsible for destroying in his recklessness is a great concept. You’ll be travelling through empty oceans, disease ridden swamps, and dark, and blown out caves. The lifelessness of the enemies until you get close hammering this home further, as their intentional stiffness vanishes into well animated attacks to kill you.

Geist is one of the best rivals I have seen in a video game. He is the perfect antithesis to Astal. He fights in the air instead of the ground, he is fast and lithe. he’s articulate and condescendingly polite, and he’s entirely loyal to his masters whims. Which makes the penultimate boss fight against him the best in the game.

Jerado is a great main antagonist, with no regard for his minions, he simply wants a world to conquer, and is perfectly content with using them, and Astal, to revive himself.

Every character in the game is a Shounen anime trope polished to a mirror sheen, combined with the aforementioned environmental story telling, it makes the solid game play all the better for it.

If you’ve played Mischief Makers or Klonoa, you should feel at home with Astal, as it does feature grabbing and throwing. Though in Astal’s case. It’s not used for platforming.

Astal isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel from a game play standpoint. It’s simple and very easy to grasp in a few minutes. The B button throws an enemy behind you, C jumps, and A has the bird that follows you perform an action you cycle through with the L and R buttons. The X, Y and Z buttons simply execute some bird actions, which are very useful in boss fights, should you wish to use them.

The throws on the ground are immensely satisfying to do. Unlike his contemporaries from Mischief Makers and Klonoa, Astal has no time for the fancy throwing to jump higher shenanigans. His chucking of enemies over his shoulder is both funny and raw as hell. It conveys to the player that Astal has no patience for wasting time to save his friend. The satisfying whoosh when they fly by the wayside make every throw (which you will be doing constantly) immensely cathartic.

Astal’s Aerial overhead smash is also very fun to use, nothing is better than laying down a literal smack down on flying enemies and bosses. It also becomes an essential platforming mechanic later, as it freezes Astal for a few seconds, allowing you to land on moving platforms if you over or under shoot your jumps, or avoid large boss projectiles by timing at just the right moment. A simple yet brilliant correction tool for player error that also isn’t an instant win option.

While the bird is integral to the story of the game and is very useful, I only bothered to use her to gather fruit to restore Astal’s health and the dash and screen nuke during boss fights. This is thankfully balanced very well, as the meter only fills with some enemies being crushed, and she only gathers fruit that the player can get in the stage rather than generating it. Bosses can also I-frame through the screen nuke, so timing is paramount in using it effectively. The dash can be quite useful in stopping boss projectiles, but so few of them have any that it’s better saved for the final boss, where it is much more useful than any other situation.

Astal’s level design is simple yet varied enough to never bore you.

While you will be simply going left to right, the platforming is very tough to master, as Astal is very heavy. Knowing exactly where to jump and dash jump is paramount to survival, as he drops like a rock and reckless jumps can make you over and under shoot platforms. Fully understanding the weight was empowering, and it hasn’t been since Rocket Robot on Wheels that I’ve seen a platformer nail weight this well.

Most levels do feature a gimmick of some sort, but they never interfere with the mechanics in any sort of way. From the cave having swarms of bats that you need to asses how hard and where to jump to avoid getting hit, to the volcano where you need to blow out fires and when to stop on a dime to avoid falling lava rocks. The game will always keep you on your toes.

I particularly liked the Crystal palace, as the higher, more difficult path had less enemies but much tougher platforming that required you to be pixel perfect due to the pillars constantly crashing to the right, As well as the swamp where you are riding a monster and need to ground pound and aerial smash at the right times to avoid spiky fruit. Both of these highlighted the creativity yet brilliant simplicity of the level design.

Astal’s boss fights are exceptional. Each boss has a clear weak point that isn’t pointed out to you, but instead plays on your assumptions, such as the Bat with its eye, the plant with its bulb, and the ram with his face. All of them give out bestial yelps when thrown or smacked, and the non intrusive crystal in the top right displaying their health adds to the cathartic nature of the fights, as they gradually shatter and become smaller and smaller, until the turn to dust.

The penultimate fight against Geist has to be one of my favourite rival fights in a video game. Geist’s lithe aerial attacks force you to pay attention, his hiding behind his projectiles while he is on the ground level and vulnerable shows his more tactical and calm nature compared to Astal’s recklessness. During the 2nd phase, his frustration boils over and he forgoes any tactics, he constantly dive bombs at Astal, leaving himself wide open. It’s an outstanding fight thematically and mechanically, one of the best I’ve ever experienced.

The final boss is also very good, though lacking the thematic flair of the Geist fight, it has equal thrills mechanically, almost all of his attacks can be countered, with the right timing and observations you can even no damage the fight. The culmination of all of your skills being viable in the games final hurdle is a testament to the fantastic game play.

Unfortunately there are two moments/ one mechanic in the game that are outright bad. There is one boss fight where Astal is imprisoned and you take control of the bird, this fight is very frustrating because the bird is very slow and dodging the bosses attacks are unfairly difficult, It’s guaranteed you will finish this fight with 1 hit point left, as the boss always seems to get in a free hit after the birds melee combo.

The last full level in the game has a novel idea for a set piece, with you needing to avoid stomping dinosaur legs, but the legs are spaced way to close together and you need to be on the exact pixel to avoid their just big enough hit boxes. The end of the level where you are chased by a Dino would be fine if that was the only danger, but you are also being pelted by Geist’s crystals and you need to jump over and over on enemies, It’s incredibly difficult to pass this section due to the enemy placement, which means you will most likely go into the Geist fight with low health, meaning you will have to self destruct in order to fill up your HP again.

Astal does feature a rather bare bones Co-op mechanic where player 2 controls the bird, but it’s mainly just being a support to Astal, which the AI does a fine job of already regardless. If you want the game to be artificially harder, then this is your mechanic to use I guess.

Astal’s music is striking, with heavy emphasis on string instruments and timpani’s to give the sound a quick tempo to match our main characters sheer determination. The use of electric guitars in stages like into the darkness, which much heavier focus on platforming, creates strong immersion and serenity.
Boss fights do not skimp on the cymbal crashes and woodwinds, making all of them feel incredibly tense.

Astal is one of the best looking 2D games of the 5th generation. All animations are hand drawn and have the perfect amount of smear frames to convey weight and impact. The parallax scrolling never becomes distracting, with the foreground and background objects appearing natural within the world. The back layers often having things like flowing water falls, an exploding volcano, and shimmering god rays. Astal and the bird’s colour pallet will change in certain stages that are extremely hot or extremely cold, which is a nice detail. The sprite scaling never blurs any thing to over pixelation either.

One detail I found very alluring was that many of the bosses are digitized 3D models converted to sprites. This is a brilliant way of telling the player these enemies are not like the average mooks and that you need to be on your game.

As expected, the game runs at a rock solid 60 fps, with no drops ever occurring. And considering the sheer massive scale of many of the boss fights, is very impressive optimization.

There is a lot to love about Astal, it’s polished Shounen archetypes are a joy to experience, it’s normal level game play is simple yet brilliant, with the perfect balance of empowerment and skill based weighty platforming, the mostly out standing boss fights are the perfect test of skill and pattern memorization. It’s soundtrack is serene and immersive, and its visuals are some of the best of that generation. With one terrible gimmick boss fight and set piece heavy final level aside, It’s one the best games not only on the Saturn, but one of the best Sega has ever made.

9/10.

Astal is a fascinating and charming relic that might have come from an alternate timeline where side scrolling action games remained popular into the 32-bit generation. At it's core, it's an hour long action game that scrolls left to right with a boss at the end of each level; from a game design standpoint, it's straight out of the 16-bit era.

But Astal takes that core and leverages the Saturn's considerable 2D prowess to create something both spectacular and special. There's an extended hand-drawn animated opening sequence along with narrated scenes between levels that do an enormous amount of world building. The soundtrack is a stunning redbook audio orchestral and guitar masterpiece. Levels constantly zoom in and out, scaling the entire stage and all the sprites in it seamlessly, when needed to expand the view. The animation on everything from Astal to the smallest enemy is detailed and fluid. The bosses are all unique and spectacular, once again leveraging the Saturn's 2D tech to create gorgeous, often stunning imagery.

There's a timeline where Astal was a smash hit and this kind of game was still popular into Saturn and Playstation's generation, and it's a wonderful one. Back in reality, Astal is a game that fell out of that timeline and left us with a glimpse of what could have been. This is a beautiful, odd gem of a game and a 2D showcase for the Saturn.

Japanese rayman is epic !

i bloody loved my time with astal, it was bealtiful, it was whimsical, simplistic story yet fairy tale-like, felt like an adventure through and through even if it got a big unfair at the end there, but i can forgive that because i emulate and also because you can suplex every enemy in the game, even the last boss, you can MGS raiden suplex the last boss punch !!
there is something about these fantastic worlds that get to me on a emotional level, i loved astal too much, the music is worth ripping out and listening to itself alone

its not without flaws however, movement feels a little floaty, there are about 5 frames of input delay in every emulator you try, but from hardware recording it seems the same on physical as well, and the game also uses limited continues, now i am fine with a life count but a limited continue that sends you straight to the main menu is just an excuse to pad short games. still i can't complain because its not that hard of a game (the game actually tries to make a narrative of how OP astal actually is, i definelly recomend for people who love bealtiful artsy games with a fairy tale style, it might sound childish but its adorable for me.

on another note : what in tarnation is this american box art ? they turned my cute smol boy into a beetle chimpanzee ? why do old american box arts used to butch japanese artstyles so harshly ?

Second GOTM finished for June 2023. Some neat ideas and interesting bosses and level designs saved this game from being an outright stinker. The floaty, janky movement exacerbated some of the issues with later levels, and the bird companion was a little difficult to figure out how and why to use. Felt like a tech demo at times that needed to be fleshed out more and needed the controls tightened up. The bosses were at least all unique, and the game looks incredible, but not something I'd come back to or recommend.