Amongst the pantheon of games, if you ask DigitallyDownloaded.net editor, Matt, which is the greatest, he’ll often reply that it’s Toaplan’s 1990 platformer Snow Bros, inspired (cough) by titles such as Taito’s sublime Bubble Bobble.
Yeah, I sit with a different capture-and-break-enemies platformer as the greatest game of all time, but I can accept tastes can vary, and also that it’s not a good idea for me to antagonise my editor just because he’s clearly wrong (guess who gets to review all the AI slop going forward… – ed.).
Snow Bros. is a fine game, but Toaplan didn’t stop with just the one title. While it’s best remembered for its many great shoot-em-ups, the very last game that the classic Toaplan released was Snow Bros 2, sometimes called “Snow Bros 2 With New Elves”.
Toaplan is long gone, but the company that holds the modern rights to its titles, Tatsujin (itself part of Embracer) certainly hasn’t been shy in mining its IP for new titles, whether it’s the nicely done Snow Bros Special which is an excellent title, the slightly more divisive Snow Bros Wonderland, or the heavily IAP-laced Amusement Arcade Toaplan for mobile devices, which features both Snow Bros and Snow Bros 2 as additional pay-to-play titles.
If you own a library of classic game rights, why stop there?
Snow Bros 2 Special takes – more or less – the refined visual engine used for Snow Bros Special and applies it to the Snow Bros 2 formula. This means you get a more cartoonish approach to the visual style of the original game if you’re some kind of heretic who can’t appreciate classic pixel art, though I should note that Snow Bros 2 Special does include the classic arcade title in there as well, so fans of either style have plenty of snowball throwing to get through – at least if you only stick to the game’s classic hero, Nick.
The hook for Snow Bros 2 is that you’re not just limited to capturing foes in snowballs, with other available characters that can instead roll foes up into other forms with slightly different movement patterns through each level.
This is important because like the original game, while you can just take on enemies one by one, the biggest points, rewards and power-ups are typically only available by chaining together your captures, whether that’s in a flood of water cascading down the level or a gust of wind flying up it. Not all powers are equal or equally good in each challenge however, and it can be a little frustrating trying to fight through some levels with some combinations of powers, though you can mitigate this with multi-player play to an extent. Playing through levels and hitting specific objectives unlocks an expanding roster of playable characters, though they’re only available in the “Special” version of the game, not the arcade original.
Snow Bros 2 Special also slightly remixes the boss characters, adding a second stage to their health bars along with changed movement and attack patterns, something that will challenge even those with good muscle memory of the original game. I can’t say that I’m one of those; when Snow Bros 2 made its apparently much more limited debut in 1994, most of the arcade world had largely moved into a sphere absolutely dominated by one-on-one fighting games. It’s probably for the best that we were saved the indignity of Snow Bros x Street Fighter, mind you…
Like so many arcade games that (spoiler) didn’t love you and just wanted your money, Snow Bros 2 Special isn’t always terribly fair, though you can cheese your way through the game’s 80 levels – 50 original and 30 for the new special version only – without too much fuss if you’re so inclined to just keep hitting continue.
Doing so will unlock additional characters to play as, though again quite how hooked on those you’ll get when some are pretty much just palette swaps to existing characters is perhaps debateable. To keep up a little interest over and above the classic platforming action, there’s also options for time trials, survival mode (AKA “no continues”) plus a straight up the screen jumping mode, dubbed Sky Run.
Ever played Doodle Jump or any of its many clones on your phone over the years? That’s Sky Run in a nutshell, albeit with Snow Bros characters. It’s a cute diversion, but the core mechanics of the levels don’t really lend themselves to anything that’s all that compelling in and of itself. As an extra bit of value for Snow Bros 2 Special it’s not bad, but it wouldn’t make the grade as a standalone game, though I suspect meetings may have been held to work out if that was a viable business model in itself. Modern game making is like that, you know?
I can’t say I have the same nostalgic vibe for Snow Bros 2 as I do for the original game, because like most people there just wasn’t a lot of scope to play it back in the day; I’m not even sure that a single Snow Bros 2 cabinet made it to Australia all those years ago, though I’d be perfectly happy to be proven wrong there.
The effect there is that while Snow Bros 2 Special feels much “newer” because it’s fresh material to me, it lacks that nostalgic hook. It’s a fine example of an arcade game of its era, and if you do love that style it’s certainly fun, but I think the purer approach of a single character type in Snow Bros makes it the better example of that form. Not the best game of its type, because that involves bubble dragons obviously, but a good style imitation nonetheless.
If you did have nostalgic love for Snow Bros 2, it would clearly hit you a little harder, though I do have to note that if it’s just the arcade game you want in a legal fashion it is part of the Amusement Arcade Toaplan app too – and there it’s a fair bit cheaper than Snow Bros 2 Special’s asking price too!
