The levels are brief, forgiving, and flow well. Gliding into spinning dives, climbing sheer surfaces using your beak as a stake, and platforming all feel great.

Music is consistently good to great, there was a lot of love and attention paid to getting the visuals to feel authentic to what one may've seen on the Nintendo 64, and it even has silly cheat codes you can find in each of the game's levels.

Soulful little product with a humble price tag and no frustrating pain points in its design; just the odd minor bug. Easy to recommend picking up, and it can be 100% cleared within three hours.


That said, it has these strange, out-of-place horror motifs that appear from the third level on that invoke Ocarina of Time's various undead monsters with their models.

Desiccated mummies, skeletons, and even xenomorphs make appearances. Their inclusion in an otherwise cutesy game makes the whole thing feel a bit like someone rummaging through a bin of ideas and then gluing them together without adapting them to fit, so it clashes.

More thematic consistency would've helped things feel more cohesive, but again, it's cosmetic.

Story takes a bizarre turn in the free "Doomsday" content that was later added, with characters that I presume come from Siactro's previous games making appearances.

This plot has more time spent on exposition than the main game's story, but these characters and their relationships have zero introduction within Super Kiwi 64 and you're left with minimal context. The result feels like entering a story that was already halfway finished.

This content had more graphical bugs than the base game, and the levels weren't as thoroughly tested and refined, but I'm not going to look a chromed gift horse in the mouth. It's a nice gift to players all the same.

Side note: The game "Orbo's Odyssey" plays a lot like Super Kiwi 64, and this realization was interesting to me as someone who played the former first. It has a similar spinning dive mechanic that's applied to short levels that're built with time trials in mind.

I wonder if these design elements won't go on to define their own subgenre in 3D platforming?

1. The controls can be pretty buggy when you're starting a level, with inputs being dropped if you're holding them before the level starts.
   
   As you tackle the game's time trials, try not to hold the sprint button down or movement in any direction before the screen can fade in. This will help you to get more consistent starts.
   
   
2. In levels where holding the sprint button doesn't give you three turbines, don't spam your spinning dive.
   
   Running and flying with the sprint button held is actually just faster.
   
   
3. Use the spinning dive everywhere else.
   
   Absolutely spam this move, and try to minimize time spent in the air. This applies moreso in levels where sprinting grants you fewer than two turbines. Flying can still be the shortest path to objectives, so you should still use your head.
   
   
4. Water will not kill you, but be wary of pools of the pink slime present in crypts.
   
   
5. Technique is important for time trials, but routing is more important.
   
   The par times may seem strict at first, but they're all doable after a little bit of trial and error figuring out the best paths to take through the game's levels.
   
   
6. Try to land on the game's magenta buttons as close to their centers as possible.
   
   The hitboxes for these aren't all the same. Some are activated the second you touch their uppermost corners, while others allow you to complete a full landing animation without activating if you don't hit a point in their center.