"Challenging and excellent"

Worth having a look at despite everything this game lacks, you'll still be trying to complete it for ages

- Story -
The story is very basic and essentially has no relevance to the game and what you actually have to do. You control 'The Bitmap Kid' and you have pockets with infinite storage space in them, he also has monsters and various creatures that live in his pocket. Then because the creatures are clearly bored, they decide to keep all the toys, so Bitmap Kid takes a journey into his own pocket to get all his toys back. Really, this story makes no sense and has no relevance to the game. It's not even mentioned AT ALL in this game itself. So complete rubbish really, don't dwell on it; it's irrelevant.

- Graphics -
Colourful, bright, bold, could be worse, for a game on Amiga of the time, couldn't probably be better either, everything looks as it should be and lots of nice effects. Such as enemies being sucked into little tornadoes make them look fatter and frozen enemies are visible in blocks of ice. Frozen water also looks oddly good for a game of its time. The enemies are well animated and colourful, I like the frogs from the first world the most, they're excellent.

- Gameplay -
Well, it's very simple gameplay, you press fire and you shoot a projectile of some sort from Bitmap Kids Pocket (that you happen to also be inside, but this paradox aside). You hit the enemy enough and bang they explode. However, hold fire down and you increase the power so you fire larger whirlwinds, clouds, bocks of ice etc, it's pretty cool seeing his pocket expand as it's about to happen. You also get special characteristics with each different projectile you are firing. Whirlwinds allow you to do backflips and fly about the level, ice freezes water so you can pass over, it's all quite cool. For some reason this game loves bicycles so you can also get on a bicycle and ride about killing everything you hit and there's also an entertaining bicycle race later on.

- Sound -
Well, there is literally no music apart from the intro video and in between levels, so that's fairly disappointing but you can live with that. Every level actually sounds the same in terms of enemies being killed and firing projectiles from your pocket. The only constant sound is your footsteps that you can hear constantly as you walk about. Could have been much better really, not much more to say on this.

- Difficulty -
Freaking difficult, I'd be impressed with anyone able to make it past it past the first world on their first try, it's THAT hard. Still, worth sticking with as it gets better and better throughout. Also some hilarious end of levels bosses such as boxing with a gorilla, hard but hilarious.

- Replayibility -
Like many Amiga games, once you complete this, there's no reason to really play this unless you REALLY enjoyed it. Still a good game, that's worth checking out if you can

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/08/08

Game Release: Magic Pockets (EU, 1991)