1. Genre
2. Similar games
3. Technical profile
4. History of the game

Snow bros is a platformer-arcade game, genre which was highly popularized during the 80s and 90s era due to the arcade machines hype. Later on, these games would make their way into the home consoles such as NES or Megadrive, which ended up replacing the arcade machines because of the commodity of playing in home that they offered.

This genre is characterized by having stable rooms (they are not scrollable) filled with some enemies and a platform map in which you usually have to go up or down to avoid or attack the different creatures. Moreover, on some games you can even fall of the map through a hole on the ground and reappear on the top of the screen.

Games as Snow Bros inspired other game-developing companies to create their own platformers and, thanks to that, the genre has become one of the most important ones on the game industry.

Game launched on 1986 and developed mainly by the japanese company ‘Tito Corporation’, belonging to the Square Enix group, was one of the most iconic arcade games of the 80s, countin with a large number of sequels due to its huge success. The game itself consists of a dragon that traps the enemies into bubbles on a platformer environment, which its purpose is to make the gameplay more challenging. This is a very similar concept to the Snow Bros game, which would be released later.

Bubble Bobble image

After the big success of donkey kong this sequel brings us a new character: Donkey Kong Junior. In this game, he has to save his father from Mario, who has locked him up in a cage.

In this platformer, as usual you have to avoid some enemies but to do so you have to move horizontally, which is not very common on an genre like this. You also have to collect some fruits in order to get more points, a common characteristic on this type of games. To sum up, this game resembles Snow Bros in its general concept: climb up, defeat a boss and save someone.

Donkey kong junior image

Game produced by Universal Entertainment Corporation in 1980 which consisted on trapping the enemies (aliens) by breaking the ground so that you could kill them. The goal of the game was to kill all the aliens on a stage to advance to the next level, and that’s exactly how Snow Bros works.

Space panic images

Another game produced by Universal Entertainment Corporation on 1983 with the exact same idea as Space Panic but with different staging and design. This goes to show that back at the 80s when a game got very popular even the company that produced it would launch copies with the same mechanics. That’s why there are so many arcade platformers, a lot had different gameplay but they all followed the same general concept because it worked.

Mr. Do's castle image

Snow bros has been released on various platforms but, out of all of them, the original arcade version has always been the most popular one. Aside from that, it has also been one of the most technically limited due to the technology used on the arcade machines.

• CPU: MC 68000 manufactured by Motorola that worked at 8MHz and was the main processor

• Sound microprocessor: Zilog Z80 (8-bit) on its 6MHz version, which was used only to process the music and the different sounds of the game,
• Sound chip: Yamaha YM3812 working at a 10 bit frequency.
• The machine has a mono sound, not stereo.

PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board

PCB

• Type: 8-way
• Buttons: 3 (start, throw, jump)

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controller

• Display: 8 by 6 inches
• Orientation: horizontal
• Color: CRT*
• Video resolution: standard raster** (256 x 224 pixels)
• Refreshing rate: 57,5 Hz
• Colors: 256

Cabinet style: upright / standard

Cabinet

• *CRT: the device that mixes RGB colors and then assigns them to the different squares created by the raster resolution

• **When talking about the resolution, the Snow Bros machine’s monitor uses a raster resolution, meaning that the entire display is divided into small squares, with only one color each, that contain various pixels. This is used to facilitate other components of the machine to refresh the display faster. We also have to consider that arcade machines work with lines (that contain the squares) that display the graphics. In the Snow Bros machine, the amount of lines is likely 262, being the most basic resolution on arcade machines. Moreover, out of all these lines only 224 are actually displaying data while the other 38 are blanking due to the buffering time of the CRT. On further information the lines refresh from 50 to 60 times every second (about 15720 lines per second) to try and simulate movement as precisely as possible.

Toaplan logo

Snow bros is a game published in 1990 for the arcade platform and manufactured by Toaplan. The music was composed by Osamu Ōta.

In the original game, you have to beat 50 levels in order to save two princesses. On each level you will have to beat different enemies by turning them into snowballs. On top of that, each 10 levels a boss will appear with a special attack pattern that you will have to learn in order to defeat it.

The game would be so successful that Toaplan decided to port it to other platforms, having a different publisher each.

• Game Boy:

It was released on 1991, published by Naxat Soft and included 10 more new levels. This new version would be single player and the storyline would change, being the brother the character that is kidnaped and the princesses not existing.

Game Boy cover

• Famicom:

It would arrive later on the same year but without the 10 extra levels offered in the game boy version and the original storyline. This version was published by Toaplan themselves

Famicom cover

• Mega Drive:

The last platform to be ported to. The game was released on 1993 and published by Tengen. This version was exclusive to Japan and included 20 new levels, being the princesses the ones who rescue the brothers from level 50 to the end of the game

Mega Drive cover

• Commodore Amiga

The computer version of the game was to be released on 1991 but ended up being never officially released. On 2006 a ROM image was leaked

Commodore Amiga cover

An IOS and Android version was published on 2014 by Platum Inc.

Due to the huge success of the game a sequel was released called Snow Bros 2: With New Elves (Otenki Paradise in Japan). This was one of the company’s last games as Toaplan would bankrupt during its release, so it stayed on the arcade version without being ported to any other platform officially.

The game included three new playable characters but excluded the original brother Nick. Moreover, 4 players could play simultaneously.

Snow Bros 2 footage

Lastly, a fake new sequel called Snow Bros 3: Magical Adventure appeared on 2002 and got quite popular. This game changed the snow brothers for elves and the snowballs for soccer balls.

Fake Snow Bros 3 footage