Devs give legendary 2D platformer a Nintendo makeover to celebrate 6th anniversary
Celestecelebrated its sixth anniversary this month, and developers Extremely OK Games have marked the occasion by releasing a free Nintendo 64 homage to their excellentplatforming gameover on Itch. Made in just “a week(ish)”, Celeste 64: Fragments Of The Mountain channels the spirits of Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie as it tasks players with collecting dozens of strawberrys hidden around its snowy 3D landscape. It’s well worth checking out if you’ve got a spare minute or so, though given how rock hard it is you may want to put aside a good hour or so if you want to truly master its controls and uncover every last secret.
You can grab it forfree on Itchright now if you fancy giving it a spin on Windows or Linux devices - and the devs havesaidthey’re still working on a macOS version of it as well, which is “coming soon”. You’ll also want to use a controller for this one, as having given it a spin myself this morning, its platforming segments are pretty darn tricky, and likely even fiddlier if you attempt to play with a keyboard.
Admittedly, part of Fragments Of The Mountain’s difficulty comes from having to figure out exactly what all the buttons do, and what effect its various power-up doodads have on your chibi version of Madeline, as the game doesn’t tell you a thing when you first boot it up. It’s also been a hot minute since I last played Celeste proper, too, so I had to spend a bit of time re-acclimatising myself to its climbing, wall jumps, dashes, jump dashes (and dash jumps) before I felt like I could take on its various challenges.
The world itself though feels just like an old Super Mario 64 level, with distinct challenges branching off in all different directions, and multiple pathways to explore and take through it. Here, though, you don’t have to start the level again once you get one of its many collectible strawberries - you just carry on and see what else lies in store for you. The soundtrack is peak Super Mario 64 as well, which is just the icing on the cake for me. Honestly, there were moments when I could have sworn I was back in the depths of oldDire Dire Docks. The choice of instruments is that on point. Lovely stuff.
