In 1989, The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. This game was a puzzle platformer where gamers played as Bugs Bunny while navigating rooms and avoiding obstacles to open the exit. It was distinct from Super Mario Bros. for the player not being able to jump and had to rely on teleporters and elevators. These were inoffensive but ultimately tedious platformers that were more annoying than fun.
Crazy Castle became a franchise for the developer, Kemco and they would release four sequels. It was a formula that resonated with desperate children who got gifts from apathetic parents. Someone at Mega Cat Studios must have been one of the unfortunate kids who grew up with a Crazy Castle game because now they want to inflict their pain on everyone else.
Is The Meating more than a Crazy Castle with an original character? Is it possible to improve upon what Kemco established back in 89? Probably. It wouldn’t be too hard to outdo an NES game programmed in the 80s, but what if The Meating was designed to spec for actual NES hardware?
The Meating
Developer: Mega Cat Studios
Publisher: Mega Cat Studios
Platforms: Nintendo Entertainment System, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
Release Date: August 29, 2024
Price: $7.99
The Meating is a surreal NES game about a minotaur that gets killed and his spirit seeks revenge on the butchers that chopped him up. The story is played for laughs and features some moody-as-hell pixel art that goes heavy on black shadows that emulate the visuals from a real NES game. This is because The Meating is a real NES game made in 2024 that got ported to Nintendo Switch. It also has a GBA version.
The developers strived for authenticity while also ensuring that it would be free of the shortcomings common to NES games. Impressively, The Meating has no sprite flickering, no slow down, and collision is very tight. While it does not quite reach the impressive heights of Little Samson, the graphics are well-drawn and animated for the most part. The art captures the dankness of various aspects of the meat packing industry with lots of hanging gutted animal products and flowing blood.
The only visual that disappoints is Kon, the protagonist’s sprite. He is supposed to be a ghost bull of some kind, but all he gets is a head and a pathetic excuse for a body that resembles a slug. The character’s concept is too complex to realize with NES specs while keeping him scaled to fit the dimensions of a single tile. It feels more like playing as a logo than a character.
For an NES game made in the 2020s, The Meating looks as good as possible. The gameplay is structured like Crazy Castle games, where players will have to find a key and then get to the exit. Unlike Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker, Kon can jump and gain ghostly abilities. The abilities add some desperately needed variety since there aren’t too many ways to make a key unreachable and The Meating has over 60 levels; an amount that is unheard of for most NES games.
Ghost abilities like possession or telekinesis get a lot of mileage, while some of the others are too situational. As amusing as the ghost powers can be, Kon’s core movement and controls feel too floaty. While this does make sense because he is a ghost, it doesn’t feel good while playing. Controls feel a little delayed, especially Kon’s charging attack.
The Meating has a decent enemy variety, but you wouldn’t realize it at first. The game is so long and spread out that it takes a while before gamers will witness the other enemy types. Stages don’t take long to complete, but after a while, the game becomes white noise and every level begins to blur together.
The steps to accomplish the goal for every stage will vary, but the goal is always the same except for bosses. Each stage always has a couple of screens and the solutions are easy enough to figure out quickly. Most of the time games will have solved the stage in their heads and will have to go through the tedious process of playing it out slowly.
The Meating is a boring game that manages to be interesting due to its bizarre and dark visuals. Being an authentic NES game is only worthwhile if gamers seek out the NES cart and play it on original hardware.
Playing The Meating on a modern console strips it away from its only novelty. This is strictly for fans of Crazy Castle who wished the protagonist could jump and do other things. Everyone else will be bored to tears.
The Meating was reviewed on a Nintendo Switch using a code provided by Mega Cat Studios. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. The Meating is now available for Nintendo Entertainment System, Gameboy Advance, and Nintendo Switch.
