Magic Pockets

Bitmap Brothers couldn't make ugly games in 1992. It was a fact that held up as reliably as law. Magic Pockets looked like a fairy tale for schoolkids at first glance, but hidden beneath that naive exterior was a surprisingly tough platformer that kept me occupied for more evenings than I'd be willing to admit back then.

You play as a small boy with a magical pocket that can fit practically anything. The world is divided into four environments — caves, jungle, lake, and mountains — and each one tightens the screws a notch further. You start in the caves where you get used to the game's rhythm, and at that point it feels almost welcoming. Then the jungle arrives and you realize the Bitmap Brothers aren't welcoming at all.

The mechanics are simple: you collect items from the world and immediately throw them at enemies. No swords, no weapons — just whatever you find along the way. The controls worked well on PC, the character movement had that right weight that Bitmap Brothers knew how to deliver even when porting from the Amiga. The problem is that the game doesn't have much variety — collect, throw, move on. After a while the routine starts to creak a bit, especially in later levels where it tests your patience more than your reflexes.

What saved Magic Pockets was the visuals. Bitmap Brothers had a style you could recognize at a glance — vivid colors, carefully drawn sprites, animations with grace. On DOS in 1992, that was something unforgettable. The music went hand in hand with the graphics, though of course it sounded different coming from a PC speaker than from the Amiga it originally came from. Fortunately, the game provided level codes progressively, so each attempt at progress didn't start from scratch — small mercy, but a valuable one at the time.

Today Magic Pockets will appeal mainly to those who want to taste the Bitmap Brothers aesthetic and don't mind that the game has no ambitions to be more than a solid, short platformer. Pure nostalgia without unnecessary complications. It runs in your browser in a minute and the first level shows you exactly what you're getting — no more, no less.