Platforming like it is 1998... but with a reminder of why gaming has evolved
Regina & Mac comes with the subtitle – “Platforming like it is 1998.”, inviting us to experience old school 3D platforming in the style of Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, or even Crash Bandicoot. These games are some of the prototypes of modern platformers and laid the groundwork for what we take for granted today. The question is, does Regina & Mac succeed in this endeavor, or is it just a retro mock-up with less magic and more struggle?
Mac and Regina on the run
We take control of the dinosaur Mac, whose limbs float around his body in a Rayman style. Alongside him is the chatty, sarcastic companion Regina – a parrot who has more comments than functions. Together they try to escape from some strange research laboratory, and the only way is by collecting a sufficient number of floppy disks. I wonder if today’s generation even knows what a floppy disk is, or is it just a familiar icon for “save”?
The game takes us through a series of worlds accessed via portals – each world contains disks to collect, along with a few sarcastic remarks from Regina along the way. The atmosphere is deliberately unserious and sometimes brings a smile to your face, but that is not always enough to mask the underlying design and execution issues.
Main menu of the game with portals for profiles 1 and 2
Precision with frustration
Mac has classic platformer abilities: running, sliding, ground-pounding... and slowly unlocks new moves as you progress through the worlds. On paper, this sounds like a solid gradual gameplay progression, but in practice, problems begin with the basic controls.
In some levels, the colors are complementary and work well together
They are rigid, slow, sometimes imprecise, and require surgical precision. It is very easy to miss a jump while climbing some polygonal tree or platform and end up down below, forced to repeat everything from the beginning. When you finally reach the disk, the feeling of achievement is there, but more out of spite than due to good gameplay. Some platform sections are well executed, but a large part of them frustrates more than it should. The controls often feel like they are working against you.
Unlocking new worlds comes down to Picross-style puzzles, which is a nice addition that breaks the monotony between maps. They are not too difficult and are a welcome change of pace.
Picross puzzles are a pleasant break between levels
Visually and audibly – retro, but not appealing
I know that the low poly aesthetic was intentional here, and it's clear that the aim was to capture the charm of the Nintendo 64 era, but let's be honest, the game looks... ugly. Mac and Regina are too small on the screen and easily get lost in the vast, unpolished world full of polygonal, unrefined objects.
For comparison, in Super Mario 64, the game always focuses on Mario, who occupies a good portion of the center of the screen and is almost always clearly visible. Mac and Regina easily blend into the background of monotonous colors.
Poor Mac blends in and disappears in this mass of green and brown
The animations are very sparse. Mac literally looks like he is sliding across the surface when we move him, rather than actually running. And the sounds? Every jump from Mac has an irritatingly high "plop" that is very unpleasant to the ears, so after a while, I continued playing the game without sound. The soundtrack is hit & miss, in some levels it sounds quite solid, but mostly it is uninspired, generic, and short, with a quickly repeating loop.
Maybe a bit too retro
Regina & Mac tries to be a charming homage to old 3D platformers, attempting to recreate their magic, addictiveness, and sense of discovery. Here and there it succeeds, in moments when the controls click and when you manage to forget that you've fallen off the same platform eight times. But most of the time it fails.
Rigid controls, boring design, flawed animations, and unpleasant sound make the game more frustrating than fun. Nostalgia is a powerful tool, but it is not enough on its own. At the end of the day, Regina & Mac feels more like a reminder of how much the classics were ahead of their time.
A copy of the game for review purposes was provided by the development studio Diplodocus Games
