Astro Bot Is Becoming The Game Of A Generation

Astro Bot is celebrating its 1-year anniversary today, September 6, 2025. Below, we reflect on what the plucky robot has come to represent for some burgeoning gamers.

More than 30 years ago, I fell in love. I was visiting extended family with my parents and two siblings, and the object of my affection was a boxy gray-and-black video game console hooked up to an equally boxy CRT television. I had seen video games before in arcades, and had played some rudimentary Mac games on our family computer. But Super Mario Bros. was something else entirely. The simple but flexible controls, the stage variety, the music. By the time we left my aunt’s house, we three children were staging a coordinated influence campaign to convince our parents to buy our own Nintendo Entertainment System, eager to play more Mario. The rest is history.

My story isn’t unique. Lots of children of the 1980s have similar origins for their gaming obsession. But now, decades later, as a parent myself, I’m struck by how Astro Bot has enraptured my own kids in ways that remind me of my experience with Mario. Years in the future, it will almost certainly be Astro that they credit with first igniting their love of games.

In my particular case, my experience with Mario all those years ago had a massive impact on the trajectory of my life. It affected not only my hobby and interests and circle of friends, but also my career. It’s hard to imagine that I would have gone into writing about games professionally without catching the bug from an early age. I don’t particularly think my own kids will become games critics, but it’s a testament to how important these early experiences can be, and how they can manifest in unexpected ways.

Just before the release of Astro Bot, I visited Team Asobi in Tokyo for an extended hands-on^[5]. It was a normal-enough studio visit, but I could sense an infectious energy around this game in particular. This was shaping up to be something special, and I think Asobi knew it. In interviews, game director Nicolas Doucet talked about how important it was to make this game appealing and approachable for younger gamers. Astro is a robot with a relatively simple character design, intentionally kept simple enough so that kids would be able to draw themselves. The character communicates wordlessly with expressions and sounds so that even kids who haven’t yet learned to read will understand the story. The platforming stages are made to be tough enough to present a nice difficulty ramp for younger or novice players, with optional challenge stages for older and more experienced players.

“I remember the first few video games that I played, and because of how greatly they were designed, they stayed with me for my whole life,” Doucet said. “And both of these are really important, I think. When we make something like a platformer, we have to be able to cater for both. So we’ve been building not only the game, but the culture of the team, always around that principle.”

While Doucet didn’t mention Mario specifically during the studio visit, the inspiration was clearly there. The studio set out to make a game that would feel great and have staying power.

They succeeded. A year later, Astro Bot is still one of the most-played video games in my house. My youngest, who can’t read yet, usually calls it “the wobot game,” but has started to know the character as Astro. The levels are just challenging enough to give him a satisfying sense of friction and accomplishment, while still remaining doable. He often surprises the rest of the family with how well he navigates even more challenging late-game stages.

My older kids are happy to play with him, helping him past the difficult parts, or playing their own extra-tough challenge levels. They all love to take on bosses together. They laugh and cheer each other on as they take on tougher challenges or replay their favorite stages. When one of the kids inadvertently deleted my 100% completion game save–I’m not naming names here; they know who they are–I ultimately shrugged it off because we could just start anew.

Now to be sure, Astro Bot isn’t likely to be as ubiquitous for my kids’ generation as Mario was for mine. In the ’80s, video game releases were sporadic and mascot characters were almost unheard of. Today, kids get into video games in all sorts of ways, from mobile devices and tablets to consoles, with massive, established franchises like Minecraft and Fortnite. Almost every gamer who came of age in the 1980s has a memory of Super Mario, but Astro’s impact will be more diffused because there are more avenues leading to the same destination. Astro won’t be a universal constant for its time period, and only time will tell if it has anywhere even remotely approaching Mario’s staying power. Still, it will always be special to me for what it has meant in my household.

Astro Bot has enjoyed plenty of success over the last year. It has sold well, inspired merchandise (including multiple special-edition controllers), and won the top honor at The Game Awards 2024^[6]. For me, though, the impact has been more personal: Astro Bot is the game that unlocked a sense of curiosity and play in my kids, and sparked their interest in playing video games more broadly. When I see them playing it, it’s like staring through a portal in time and watching myself all those years ago–face alight with the hypnotic glow of an old brown television, mouth agape as my mind reels at the possibilities of this magical new medium.