Snow Bros

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Snow Bros

Developer(s)	Toaplan
Publisher(s)	Romstar
Release date(s)	1990
Genre(s)	Retro/Platform
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	Joystick (8-way); 2 buttons
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade display	Raster, standard resolution, horizontal

Snow Bros is an arcade game released in 1990 by Toaplan. It is a platform game similar in gameplay to Bubble Bobble.

[edit] Overview

In the game, the player must eliminate all the enemies on each level. This is achieved by rolling the enemies into snowballs, and then smashing them against the walls.

[edit] Description

The game supports up to 2 players, and each player takes the part of one of two snowmen Nick and Tom. Each player can throw snow at the enemies. The player must throw snow at each enemy until it is completely covered, and turns into a snowball. An enemy partially covered in snow cannot move, until it shakes it off.

Once an enemy has been turned into a snowball, the player can roll it. The snowball will re-bound off walls, until eventually shattering against a wall. Also, any enemies the snowball rolls into are eliminated, and other stationary snowballs start rolling when the rolling snowball touches them. If you can manage to take out all the enemies with kicking one snowball (this one snowball may be used to make others bounce around as well and increase the chances to pull this trick off), money in the form of large green bills will fall from the sky. These disappear in a very short amount of time but are worth 10 000 points each, the most you can get as a bonus.

Every 10th level there is a Boss. Each Boss has a number of hit points, and attacks the player with ordinary enemies, which the player must turn into snowballs and roll into the Boss, until it runs out of hit points.

When you bowl an enemy over, it may drop a jar of hot sauce. The color of the sauce lets you know what special power you will acquire.

Red - increases walking speed.
Blue - increases amount of snow thrown, thus making it easier cover an enemy in snow.
Yellow - increases the distance that snow can be thrown.
Green - causes your character to inflate like a balloon while having the ability to fly around screen and knock out enemies for a limited period of time.

The effects of the red, blue, and yellow hot sauces wear off after you lose a life.

If you take too long to complete a level, the evil pumpkin head will come and try to kill you. It is invincible but can be stunned and sent to appear somewhere else in the level with snowballs or your snow shots. After a short time, the evil pumpkin will spawn ghosts that can travel freely through the level and seek you out, so your only hope is to avoid them while eliminating the rest of the baddies to move on to the next floor ASAP.

The Amiga version of the game has been recently found by the WOLF, dumped by DLFRSILVER, and finally preserved by Software Preservation Society (softpres.org). The game was completed 15 years ago, but never released on the shops shelves because ocean thought that the game would never be a hit, and therefore canceled it. The game can be found on the Hall Of Light, the biggest database for Amiga games on the net.