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ANTONBLAST

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  • Awesome Art: The sprite work is very nice looking. Having a very fluid and bouncy 32-bit art-style that is clearly influenced by Wario Land 4 with touches of Earthworm Jim, Ed, Edd n Eddy, as well as graffiti, but has its own vibe going on.
  • Best Boss Ever: While all eight bosses of the game are epic in one way or another, the main bosses definitely have an edge over the Bossbusters (the resident Quirky Miniboss Squad):
    • Jewel Ghoul is a towering mobster who comes at our protagonists with wind-up punches, a gigantic gun, playing cards, minecarts with jewels and even weaponised smoking. His second phase is a frantic Rush Boss in his insides against his heart, which smashes cigarette platforms beneath you while sending out his own anti-bodies. And when you beat that and get out, there's an extra quick-time event where you pull out a revolver of your own and shatter the Ghoul to tiny pieces with one shot.
    • Freako Dragon is fought on a xylophone overlooking a pachinko machine, with different tiles attributing notes to the boss theme when you step on them. The Dragon attacks by ramming you repeatedly, either with his flunkies or himself; he can also wreak havoc with the platforms and (like any good dragon) spew flames with impunity. The second phase is a Free-Fall Fight where you stomp on the Dragon's segments while dodging his fireballs. The third phase, meanwhile, is a Colossus Climb where you scale the gigantic body of the Dragon towards his head, smashing through each segment at the weak points for massive damage, all while dodging his flames again. And then you literally send the Dragon to Brazil.
    • Ring-A-Ding might seem strange for a penultimate boss, but he more than proves his worth. His first phase is somewhat easy, but can still be punishing if you make a wrong move against his slam attacks and bell flunkies. Then he gets fed up and just zaps Anton, but the demolitionist's spirit sticks around, which spooks the oversized bell into a chase into space, with Anton avoiding row upon row of bell laser firing squads and asteroids. One punch (and a fall back to Earth with a bump) later, and it seems like the bell is defeated. Except... not at freaking all. He emerges as an Angelic Abomination that proceeds to absolutely cover the screen with various attacks from its bell minions; to survive, you have to hit the Background Boss with his own blue bells. And in a last ditch effort to kill you, he hurls an actual Moon at your location, which you redirect back as if it were a simple baseball.
    • The Satan fight is a perfect capstone for the game. At first the devil fights like a Mirror Boss, with copies of your attacks, ground pounds with his own massive behind, and even nukes that he calls from above. Following that phase, we have two cinematic chase sequences where Anton goes after him, only for Satan to turn the tables, suck the demolitionist dry and punt him away. Which doesn't matter, because suddenly, Anton becomes a devil, and just flies back. Naturally, Satan is quite annoyed by this, and attempts to hurl a Boss Rush at you... It... doesn't work. The result? Satan spouts a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner, and grows to gigantic size just to crush Anton like an ant with his own fingers, giant scissors, Pentagram laser beams, and giant flunkies whom you punt into his face. This culminates with the devil deciding to stomp you fat, only for you to sweep each of his legs and play pinball with his ass! Then he brings you to his face and pelts you with even more laser attacks and fireballs, even trapping you with his own crown, only for Anton to break his nose, give him black eyes and then demolish the hat with enough force to blow him away. Finally, Anton flies up to a helpless and conked-out Satan in mid-air and absolutely wrecks him with his hammer, leaving the devil with nothing to do except fall over with a metal pipe sound. Truly a fight for the history books.
  • Best Level Ever: Following the tradition of final stages where the timer starts at the beginning, such as The Crumbling Tower of Pizza and Golden Passage, Hell Manor is a gauntlet of challenges that tests all of your skills so far, all under a time limit. The characters repeatedly taunt you as you smash your way through the stage. And even if you think that you've finally cleared the stage with 30 seconds remaining, it turns out that the elevator is a fake, with plenty more left to go. The kickass rock music that plays over the regular escape theme, the untold destruction you get to wreak upon Heck, the sheer rage you feel and the catharsis when clearing the stage— needless to say, you'll truly feel like Anton in this stage.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: During one pinball sequence in Pinball Mire, Anton moves through a hallway, which sends him into a grayscale room with a game of Classic Antonball playing in the background. This sequence only lasts for a few seconds and is never brought up again.
  • Catharsis Factor: The game is practically made of it, slowly ratcheting up its difficulty as the stage progresses, only to have the Happy Hour run back through it consist of tearing it and anything that gave you a rough time to shreds before blowing the entire level to smithereens, and bosses getting their own specialized finishers. But special mention goes to Satan himself, literally getting his ass kicked, getting his face smashed in, pulverized across the landscape of Heck by Devil Anton, and is only able to stir himself back to lucidity just in time to see the surly demolitionist catch up to him mid-flight and hit him over a hundred times before finally collapsing in a burgundy, black and blue heap on the ground as Anton poses triumphantly on his ass. It's worth every moment of the final level and boss fight he put you through.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Satan taking his loss so horribly that he blows up all of Hell with the resulting shockwave leveling Anton's hometown? Horrifying. Anton's house being untouched while he and Anne act like nothing happened complete with the two of them toasting their victory? Hysterical.
  • Crossover Ship:
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Go ahead and call this game a "Pizza Tower ripoff". Both games are actually based on Wario Land (specifically Wario Land 4). The two were also in development at largely the same time.
  • Fandom Rivalry: Bizarrely, while the majority of Pizza Tower fans either praise or otherwise don't mind Antonblast, there's a smaller but noticeably vocal part of the fanbase that dislike it vehemently due to claims of Antonblast ripping off Pizza Tower, despite both games being in development around the same time and playing fairly differently outside of the aforementioned Wario Land inspired elements. Similarly, a number of Antonblast fans are getting very tired of the game being compared to Pizza Tower, unfairly or not, rather than it being judged on its own merits.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • Unsurprisingly, given that it is heavily influenced by the Wario Land games (specifically Wario Land 4), the game has already been wholly embraced by the Wario fandom, finding it to be a good alternative to an official Wario Land game.
    • Given they're both 2D indie games heavily inspired by Wario Land, it should come to no surprise that fans of Pizza Tower have quickly embraced the game. It helps that the devs of Pizza Tower have endorsed the game and have encouraged their fans to support it.
    • After Sonic Origins Plus was announced, several people noted the apparent similarity of Amy Rose's new hammer bounce attack to Anton's.note  This led to a slew of fanart depicting the two as friends, or more popularly, Anton as Amy's father. Anton even claims as much in the "Life with Anton" trailer.
      Anton: You know, it's pretty hard being a single dad. You're raising a little pink hedgehog girl.
    • Has one with Annalynn due to Anton being a Guest Fighter in that game, as well as Annalynn's creator starting the Crossover Ship between Annie and Annalynn. Annalynn herself even cameos in ANTONBLAST proper, alongside various backers.
    • Due to two of the developers (JB Long and Tony Grayson) being high-profile members of Crash Bandicoot fandom and the game taking some inspiration from that series, the Crash fandom was similar to Wario Land's fandom in being quick to embrace the game.
  • Good Bad Bugs: In earlier versions of ANTONBLAST, Satan's expression upon seeing the Bossbuster Blimp crashing into the arena during his fight wouldn't play in its entirety. The animation was supposed to have two frames, but it only played the first. As a result, it gets stuck on a frame with Satan having bloodshot, bulging eyes while his lips look like they're on the verge of saying every curse word known to every man on and/or in the planet.
  • Memetic Mutation: The intro cutscene has become ripe for edits, mainly the scene where the Ballbusters steal Anton's spirits and the scene where Satan yells at them to do so beforehand.
  • Nintendo Hard: While not the most unforgiving platformer out there, the game does not hold your hand with long and treachorous level design, especially if one goes for secrets (which are well hidden, often in hazardous obstacle courses). And while normal play is generous with health and checkpoints, the Time Trial's demanding par times and Combo Chain severely handicapping your health can leave even seasonsed platformer veterans feeling Anton's unbridled rage and need for strong alcohol when going for full completion. This is leaving out the Cracked Combo Chains/boss fights, which are so hard that the game doesn't even track them.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The Deviled Gardens and the Final Boss both have unskippable dialogue/cutscenes that make Time Trials and Combo Chain for Deviled Gardens and Cracked ranking the Final Boss much more tedious. The latter has a nearly two minute sequence of cutscenes and heavily scripted gameplay sequences each time you attempt it, though the opening monologue is skipped as Annie. A post-launch patch made Moonits dialogue in Deviled Gardens and the Oni transformation cutscene during the Final Boss skippable (the par time for Deviled Gardens being lowered by 50 seconds to compensate).
    • At launch the game had an annoying quirk where the first frame of gameplay counts as being airborne. Not an issue during normal gameplay, but it could easily screw up the start of Time Trial/Combo Chain attempts with an unwanted hammer drop. The above mentioned patch fixed this as well.
    • Combo Chains restrict your health to three and remove all health pickups. With how long and difficult the game's stages are (particularly in the back half), and running out of combo damaging you, it makes Combo Chain that much more stressful.
  • Stress-Relieving Gameplay: This is a game where you spend every level dashing through and destroying everything in your path, causing a bountiful number of explosions and poker chips to rain in your wake. The game is made out of this trope.
  • Surprise Difficulty: Given that this game was openly inspired by the not-so-difficult Wario Land series, it's easy to think that this game will be easy. However, later levels especially contain deviously precise platforming, long timed sections without checkpoints, and collectibles hidden in obtuse places. Not to mention that Anton can only take 3-5 hits before dying, and a hard mode is scheduled to be added on top of that!
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • That One Attack: Ring-A-Ding's spinning bell laser attack in his final phase. It sweeps the entire arena and forces you to hammer bounce off of gray bell enemies to dodge it. However, this also kills them, and they are so close to each other that you'll very often kill multiple at once, leaving you open to getting hit. Not to mention that bouncing off the bells sends you flying offscreen, requiring you to accurately calculate where Anton's position is, lest you miss the bells and lose some of your precious Heartbeets. It's possible to jump through the spinning bells to easily avoid damage, at the cost of not dealing any damage to Ring-A-Ding that turn.
  • That One Boss:
    • Maulbuster can be frustrating (particularly when trying to get CRACKED; to the point that the number of phases needed to enrage her was reduced), thanks to the absolute barrage of speech bubbles she creates, in addition to dealing with rest of the enemies on the stage that get spawned in.
    • Ring-A-Ding can be a pain. Though the first phase isn't too difficult, the second phase is very long and requires you to dodge a very large amount of obstacles while floating to the top of the screen before finally reaching the giant bell creature and killing him. However, all that pales in comparison to the last phase, where he revives as a giant Angelic Abomination with a ton of health that can't be directly attacked. Instead, you have to knock his minions, who already shoot at you, back at him while dodging a ridiculous amount of lasers. When you hammer the moon into his face at the end of the fight, you've earnt it.
  • That One Level:
    • Pinball Mire quickly became infamous due to the pinball sections that make up half of the stage. Not only is the pinball somewhat finnicky, but the camera is too zoomed in for pinball, making the tables a pain to complete and progress. In particular the time trial is widely loathed and regarded as the hardest in the game due to the tight par time and the aforementioned pinball controls making clearing the tables fast a nightmare.
    • The Mysterious Glasshouse is a rough patch for many players, due to having a lot of fast-paced platforming in a game that hasn't demanded too much of it up to this point, especially anything involving the Man-Eating Plant platforms that either quickly close when landed on or open and close on a cycle. It's also very long even for a game with generally long levels; it's easy to assume the outdoors rail-grinding section is the climax, but it's only the two-thirds point. Finally, it has one of the trickier Happy Hours in the game, due to a section of outswimming Slackjaw through a narrow spikeball-filled tunnel followed by more plant platforming.
  • That One Sidequest:
    • Collecting the Spraypaint for Crimson Factory can be infuriating, it involves you racing a Ballbuster, which requires you to be in the background which can be a pain for some, but the main source of frustration is the section near the end where you roll past some pins, mainly the second part where you have to jump precisely otherwise you'll hit a wall and have to do it again, giving the Ballbuster ample time to win the race and make you do it all over again.
    • The Cassette in Hell Manor is much more difficult to obtain than previous cassettes or other collectibles of the level, requiring you to pass a platforming challenge involving a gauntlet of fragile crates... while the Happy Hour timer is still going.
    • Collecting Pauls. In each level resides a Paul you gotta collect to unlock a secret character and achievement. Many are in very well hidden areas and some require backtracking during the Happy Hour. The twelveth Paul is only available after other eleven are collected and is placed behind a penalizing obstacle course in Hell Manor.
    • Beating the Par Time for Pinball Mire (which is tracked for full completion) is nigh unanimously reviled for the very tight par time, the on-foot segments being very tricky to speed through, and the pinball segments where you need to clear the tables fast with little room for error. Given that this is pinball (and not a particularly well controlling one at that), this is way easier said than done. The fact that the pinball segments only start halfway through the stage just adds insult to injury.
  • Ugly Cute: Paul is a rather frumpy individual with a rather unsettling deadpan stare, but there's something endearing about his Stylistic Suck, such as his lack of sprites or hilariously out of place design in contrast to the rest of the cast that makes him perfect for a plush toy or sticker.
  • Unexpected Character:
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Before her bio was released on Kickstarter, Maulbuster was thought to be male due to her size, viking motif, and lack of any Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
  • Viewer Name Confusion: Moonits is often called "Mitch", including on this wiki for a while, due to him wearing a shirt with that on it. However, the credits list his name as Moonits.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The game is an unabashed love letter to 90s cartoons and videogames, aesthetically, so one could easily mistake it as being child-friendly. Even the first cutscene misleads you into thinking the worst insults that are thrown out are Gosh Dang It to Heck!. That goes immediately down the toilet not even 5 minutes later, when Anton's first interaction with Brulo immediately starts with him swearing like a sailor. At the very least, the majority of dialogue is still tame, with only occasional bouts of swearing by the Red Guy, himself, so it's still perfectly child-friendly if you don't mind a few naughty words.

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