exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I've finally bought Magic Pockets by the awesome awesome awesome Bitmap Bros. These guys sure knew how to program our Atari ST and never once settled for a lame port. The cover art is a quite simple, especially when compared to other games I've already featured. Anyhow, I'm proud to own what is nothing less than another belting piece of hiSTory from the Bitmaps!!

There are lots of crazy monsters to kill but... hang on... what's that TV doing there?

The Bitmap Kid (BK to his burger friends) has been given a brand new pair of magical trousers from an old man he met in the park one evening... No, not really!! Anyhow, he loves these trousers but then finds out that his toys have somehow disappeared into the fantasy world, PocketLand. Of course, our cool Kid is determined to get his toys back so enters PocketLand via a black hole he conjured!! Boy, if there was ever a whacky storyline...

PocketLand is split over four enormous levels and the BK is armed with different powers depending on the world he's currently exploring. There are so many awesome enemies, bonuses, and he even has extra abilities like using the whirlwind to jump higher. Sometimes the route through can feel like a wild goose chase, but often you're lead onto secret areas which contain lots of goodies. I admire their overall design because most levels never feel linear.

The first level nicely introduces various aspects of the game with their trippy mechanics.


Visually, this has a Godly design with lovely colours, but the sprites are something else. So many incredibly cute critters all of which are nicely animated. Sound effects are fine but sometimes I feel an additional background tune would have been a good option to have. The title music is by Betty Boo of course... I'm meh but I guess it's okay!

So far, I've played the first couple of levels from Caves and it's like Christmas Day here. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into this platformer and hoping I'll enjoy it just as much as I did back in the day. This might be a preview but, like anything from the Bitmap Brothers, Magic Pockets is top-notch and highly recommended. Wish me luck...


Help out the Kid and download this funk platformer for either floppy or use the superb hard disk version.


AtariMania has a huge scan of the instruction sheet.

Article source ataricrypt

Feel free to post your high scores below

Apologies for the necropost, but I don't suppose you remember what TV show this was on do you? It was the typical phone in thing (like Hugo) It may have been one of those "summer holiday" type series, or a staple thing such as "Number 73" - probably later than that.

All I know is that it was definitely part of a phone in game in the UK, and it was the epitome of lag.

Edit; It may have been the Acorn (possibly on an A3010?) release come to think of it seeing as that machines lineage was tied into broadcasting.

Neffers wrote: ↑Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:39 am Apologies for the necropost, but I don't suppose you remember what TV show this was on do you? It was the typical phone in thing (like Hugo) It may have been one of those "summer holiday" type series, or a staple thing such as "Number 73" - probably later than that.

All I know is that it was definitely part of a phone in game in the UK, and it was the epitome of lag.

Edit; It may have been the Acorn (possibly on an A3010?) release come to think of it seeing as that machines lineage was tied into broadcasting.

From wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Pockets

Magic Pockets also appeared as competition on the Saturday morning children's TV show Motormouth. The caller would watch the game on their TV screen at home and shout the instructions 'walk', 'jump' and 'zap' to control the character.

I remember the show, don't remember it being magic pockets though. Half remember they had other games not just 1 as well.

I can't remember the platformers. "Get Fresh" had a modified version of Starglider at one point as a phone in game.

According to this ( http://birdsanctuary.co.uk/starglider/2/ ) it was followed by Xenon and then "Weird Dreams" on Motormouth.

Didn't some other program like "going live". Have some game... I'm sure it was really simple.. Left right jump... Like a skiing game or something..

Apparently they had "Feed the Dog" and "Feed the Frog", which were not real games.

I remember Magic Pockets on a Saturday morning show I remember seeing it on there, kids phoning in and screaming left left left
I thought it was Going Live too, I would have thought those kind of games would just not work well like that

This is a great game... did play it a lot when i was younger although i never got any further than to World 2
A Sega Megadrive version was released this year but the gameplay is ruined as they have speeded up the game... it is not designed to be as fast the Megadrive version

I just realised that as usual The Bitmap Brothers licensed real music.

The theme is Betty Boo, "Doin' the do."
https://youtu.be/sM_9As_2VAg