Snow Brothers: A videogame masterpiece

[Zerodash]

http://www.klov.com/S/Snow_Bros._-_Nick_&_Tom.html

One of the greatest pieces of entertainment software ever written, and sadly cloaked in obscurity. Snow Brothers showcases gameplay in a most briliant and incredible fashion.

The premise is simple: shoot ice at your foes to turn them into snowballs, kick them into the walls-killing your foe. Collect powerups. Fight bosses.

The aspect of Snow Bros. which makes it great is the Chain Reactions. You can turn a foe into a snowball and leave him be (if you wait too long, he will escape, though) and proceed to freeze other foes. Once you have everyone frozen, you can kick a single ball and start a chain reaction. Snowballs richochet (ask your parents) against one another. If you time things right and set up your snowballs in the right places, you can destroy all of your snowballs simply by kicking only one. A perfect chain reaction results in plenty of bonus points.

Though challenging, it is not impossible to finish the game in a single credit (it took me $100's and 1 year to achieve this). Merely finishing the game is only a fraction of the meat of Snow Bros.
The true test is to figure out how to achieve perfect chains in every stage. Some are quite simple and obvious. Others take intense study, practice and skill to pull off. Most importantly, however, is the sheer amount of fun that Snow Bros. offers.

Snow Bros. was made by the now defunct Toplan, who is primarily accredited with the shmup genere.

There were a few home conversions released: passible NES and Game Boy translations and a decent Mega Drive conversion. Sadly, an arcade perfect port never happened. It does run very well on MAME, though- but it does not come close to playing it on an arcade cab with the arcade controls.

There was a sequel made, but it unfortunately was horrid- Don't even get me started.



I beseech all who have not had a chance to play this to do so ASAP. Try to do some perfect chains, and you will see why this game is a true masterwork...


(if anyone knows where I can buy a Snow Bros arcade cab, let me know)

[sleeve]

Snow Bros. is indeed an excellent game.

I think the MD port is great, actually. Did it ever come out here?

You know, if you really like Snow Bros., you should play it online via the GENS emulator sometime. Regus and I played it recently, and it was a lot of fun.

[Zerodash]

I will check it out. thanx!

[Geruto]

I think Snow Bros. Megadrive was a Japan only release. (not sure though). Sadly this one has become a collectors item and goes for alot of $'s on the ebay and such.
I thought the game was ok, nothing special though. Liked BB more.

[Videodrone]

the funny part is i saw the thread name, and knew who started it before i even finish reading the title...
gotta pimp what ya love...

[padman]

Whatever floats your boat. Its an ugly mo-fo of a game.


Said it before and I'll say it again. Its stupid how the MD version is 4 times the price of the PCB. For the same money as the MD game you could get the PCB and a JAMMA set-up. Actually thats not too shocking in a world where people pay $2500 for a certain AES game that they could on MVS for $40. But hey, they give me something to laugh at.

[NeoZeedeater]

Snow Bros. is pretty cool. I haven't played any of the home ports though.

[Regus]

Ah yes, this game's slow gameplay makes it perfect for 56kers to play online via Gens.

Good times.

[Zerodash]

Assuming the online play entails 2-player co-op, its a no-go.

Like many (most) shmups, Snow Bros. is better as a 1 player experience. Ture, cooperating to make perfect chains is cool, but that would also negate much of the challenge of the game. It would be too easy.

Snow Brothers can actually be considered more of a puzzle game than an action game if you play it for the chains.

Actually, to sum up:

SB is only a good game if played only to beat the game.

SB is a perfect, excellent, amazing game if played to figure out the perfect chains.

[Golgo13]

Play this and then play "Nightmare in the Dark"(NG)


Interesting, no?

Through MAME i've played the Snow brothers sequels which I find disturbing (just look at the character select screen). The games in general play a little like BubbleBobble but are different enough to be a contender.

Back to "Nightmare in the Dark" though, are both of these games by the same guys? It's basically the same game except with a dark twist. Kind of like a spooky sequel of SnowBrothers.