For both a huge Bitmaps and Gauntlet fan, I never really got into Chaos Engine in a big way despite being really impressed with many facets of it (the steampunk setting and AI companions being two). I don't think I ever really got a proper chance to sit down with it, and in the brief moments I did, it frustrated me a little. It was difficult, but so were most Bitmap games, I think it's just that I didn't have time to get a proper handle on it.
Magic Pockets, Speedball 2, Gods and Xenon 2 were more my thing.
I remember seeing MP for the first time on MotorMouth, ITV's saturday morning kids show, where they had it as one of those phone in games (Walk! Jump! ZAP!). Noticing the "A Bitmap Brothers Game" written beneath the title screen had me almost wetting myself.
MP was a very clever little platformer. Premise being that The Bitmap Kid's four favourite toys had been stolen by the nasties that lived inside his bottomless pockets and now he had to venture inside through four worlds of four levels each to get them back (Never did quite understand how he could be inside his pockets and wearing his trousers at the same time). Title music was Betty Boo's seminal "Doin' the Do" which was, I think, the first major licensed track in a videogame at that point. IIt also continued the Bitmap's trend for stonking title music in their games (Xenon 2's Bomb the Bass number and the amazing title track to Gods, "Into the Wonderful" by Nation 12).
Like any platformer, each world had a different theme (Cave, Jungle, Lake and Arctic), but cleverly gifted a different power to you that you could use in different ways to solve puzzles and trap baddies. For example, in the cave world, you could throw tornadoes from your pockets that could be used to trap enemies, or alternatively to catapult yourself into the air. In the jungle, you could create rainclouds for the same purpose or to water the foliage, creating platforms. At the end of each level you reclaim one of the toys, which then need to be used to get to the next stage or to square off against the boss.
For all its little innovatave touches, Magic Pockets didn't do anything radically new but it did something the Bitmaps were very good at; overhauling existing genres and infusing them with gloss. They also gave their distinct graphical aesthetic to anything they touched. A look which shifted across genres but always remained consistently recognisable as a Bitmap Brothers game. A sort of a polished flesh, metal and stone look that to me was most at home in Chaos Engine, Speedball, Gods and the much earlier Cadaver.
The Bitmaps were at the top of their game in the ST and Amiga days, producing an unbroken string of AAA titles that reminds me a bit of Rare in their N64 era. Their success also enabled them to found the influential publishing house Renegade through which they published their later output (CE included) and which also brought us Sensible Soccer (The only football game I have ever liked, and I fucking loved that game) from Sensible Software, who then went on to give us Cannon Fodder, but that's another thread altogether..... |
