Magic Pockets was made in the early nineties by the bitmap brothers, who also made ‘Gods’ and ‘the chaos engine’. This game is similar to those two graphically, but differs as it is far more cutesy even though the game looks dark. The game started life on Saturday morning TV as one of those phone ins where kids used to call in and shout out ‘left!’, ‘right!’, ‘FIRE!!!’ etc. to control the game. Then they could win prizes. After this, the full game was released.
A much talked about little bonus that made the game quite street cred at the time was that the opening music was Betty Boo’s “Doin’ the Do”, a funky little early nineties dance track which was very hip at the time.
The story of the game is that you are a boy called the bitmap kid. The bitmap kid was just a normal kid until one day he was given magic trousers (pants) with huge pockets that could contain anything. After keeping his favorite toys in his pockets, some monsters steal them and the aim of the game is to get your toys back.
The basics of the game are as most standard platformers ie: left, right, jump, duck, fire. After that the game becomes
a bit more unique as there are a number of tricks the character can perform. The Kid’s weaponry is magic stuff – whirlwinds, clouds, ice etcetera, a different weapon for each of the 4 worlds and you can interact with the weaponry to help you through the game. For example, you can use the whirlwind to perform a high somersault which not only gets you to high platforms but allows you to attack, too. The clouds drop rain droplets which can be used to make useful plants grow, and so on. In order to use these powers, you have to charge the weapons up by holding down the fire button, which also has the advantage of making your shot more powerful. A full powered shot will ‘trap’ a bad guy instead of killing him, and then you can walk over him to finish him off. Although this seems more long-winded than just destroying the monsters, it’s worth it as this way the baddies will release power ups.
On top of all this there are some weapons available by collecting stars. You collect silver stars by trapping bad guys, and then when you come across a gold star it turns into a weapon depending on how many silver stars you collected (I think that’s how it worked, anyhow). The weapon could be a gas can (fireballs), workbag (nails), or other stuff, or a helmet. The helmets have different functions such as lasers, teleports etc.
Finally, there are your toys. The only one I can remember was the bike on level one, this is playable in the game. It was quite cool as you could get on it, then you had to button bash to get enough speed until you could finally pull off a wheelie. Then you could zoom around to your heart’s content flattening baddies. At the end of each of the four worlds, you had to play to win your toy; in the cave world, you had to win a race on the bike. As I can’t remember the other toys, I can’t remember what you had to do but it added a nice little extra dimension to the game.
As with many bitmap games, it was never very easy to work out exactly how all the systems in the game worked. There were all kinds of hidden secrets which depended on you doing things in a certain order, or picking up certain items, but part of the charm of the game was trying to figure all that stuff out. Every now and then you’d chance upon some hidden treats room that you could never find again. This was very similar to Gods, although as Gods was much more puzzle based, this could be quite frustrating. Magic Pockets is a down and out platformer, however, and try as you might to be careful about who you killed in what order, there was always a temptation to pick up a big weapon at the end and wreak revenge on all those cute animals that had been getting in your way.
I really enjoyed this game at the time and it’s still worth checking out now.
