ULTIMATE GUIDE
MAGIC POCKETS
WORDS BY GRAHAM PEMBREY
WHEN THE BITMAP BROTHERS SET OUT TO MAKE A “CUTESIE PLATFORM GAME” FOR THE AMIGA, THE RESULT WAS JUST AS WEIRD AND WONDERFUL AS YOU WOULD HOPE FROM THE ROCKSTAR DEVELOPERS. WE DIG DEEP INTO THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC POCKETS
The technicolour cartoon platforming of Magic Pockets was an anomaly for The Bitmap Brothers. By 1991 the company had built a reputation for developing exceptional Amiga games with a dark and edgy art style, including sci-fi shooter Xenon and cyberpunk-sport classic Speedball. Greyscale press photos of the collective looking as though they should be in a punk band, replete with shades and leather jackets, only added to the rock-and-roll aura. So when the Bitmaps decided to make what programmer and designer Sean Griffiths described to Zero magazine as “our first attempt at the cutesie platform game”, the end result was always going to be less conventional than that description seemed to imply.
You only need to know the bizarre backstory of Magic Pockets to get a sense of the surreal and anarchic capers ahead. The Bitmap Kid is a backwards-baseball-cap-wearing, early Nineties cool dude with strong Bart Simpson vibes, who’s been gifted a pair of mystical trousers by a “strange old man” according to the game manual. All is well until our hero’s precious toys disappear into the depths of his bottomless pockets. At which point he transports inside his own pockets, as you do, and sets out on a mission across Pocket Land to retrieve his lost playthings.
Scenes are no less bombastic when you reach the introduction sequence, which sees pulsating stars swirling towards the screen to the strikingly highquality sounds of Doin’ The Do. Betty Boo’s 1990 top-ten hit was sampled and converted to the Amiga by respected composer and sound designer Richard Joseph. As Sean Griffiths told Zero at the time, “Betty Boo is very ‘now’ and it’s a very ‘now’ sort of game.” Sean also cited the effervescent arcade platformeruni39 Rainbow Islands as a big inspiration. You can spot signs of this influence in the game design, from levels being littered with colourful sweets you can gobble up to amass points, to the ability to ‘capture’ enemies using an arcing projectile weapon. Instead of throwing rainbows, the Bitmap Kid reaches deep into his pockets to hurl a weather element that differs across each of the four worlds he explores. To begin with you’ll throw magic whirlwinds around a dark and dingy cave world, before clouds become your weapon in the tropical jungle. You’ll then chuck ice blocks in the semiunderwater lake world, and snowballs in the final freezing mountain zone.