Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom

Snow Bros. is an arcade fixed-screen action game released by Toaplan in Japan in April 1990. Outside of Japan, the game was released under the title Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom, and licensed to Romstar for US distribution.

The main characters, Nick and Tom, are snowmen, and they must defeat their enemies by turning them into snowballs in order to rescue the kidnapped queen. The game is rendered in 2D side-view graphics, but the game basically unfolds in a single screen without scrolling during normal play. The game was developed by Toaplan, and the music was composed by Osamu Ohta, who also worked on "Wardner" (1987) and "Twin Hawk" (1989). This work was a clear departure from the previous works released by the company, which was widely known as a long-established shooting game company.

Gameplay
The system consists of the following three types of actions.

Move your snowman left and right with the lever controls, and jump with button 1.

Shoot the enemy character (button 2) to solidify it into a snowball, and kick it away to defeat it.

Or, while rolling the snowball, roll other enemy characters into it and defeat them.

Enemies who are defeated will receive either items or sushi (the score varies depending on the item).

In addition, if you wipe out all the enemies on the screen with one snowball, an item worth 10,000 points will fall from above as a "congratulatory gift bag" (you can also roll in other snowballs in a chain. The number of congratulatory bags varies depending on the stage).

In addition, snowballs with enemies trapped in them can be pushed to move them, and they can also be jumped on. You can also jump on the snowballs, which can be used to move to places that are beyond the reach of normal jumping. Furthermore, immediately after being caught in a snowball, you are invincible for a certain period of time.

At the end of each stage, a boss character appears, and if you hit him with the snowball a certain number of times, you can clear the stage. 10 snowballs per stage, for a total of 50 stages.

Items

Red: Increases the speed of your snowman

Yellow: Increases the range of your shot

Blue: Power up your shot

Green: Becomes huge and invincible for a certain period of time

Player's face mark: After the enemy temporarily stops moving, another four round monsters will appear. If you turn them into snowballs, the letters will appear, and if you kick them away, you will get the letters (not valid if you hit the monster with the snowball). Collecting "S", "N", "O", and "W" will give you a 1-up.

Ports
Snow Bros. was ported to the Game Boy as Snow Bros. Jr. It was also ported to the Famicom by Toaplan themselves, and on the NES by Capcom. Once again, it was ported to the Sega Mega Drive in Japan only as well. Snow Bros. was also ported to iOS and Android as Snow Bros. Classic.

Trivia
The movement system and the ability to change the enemy's state and defeat them by rolling them up are features that were popularized in Taito's "Fairyland Story" (1985), "Bubble Bobble" (1986), and "Don Doko Don" (1989). Similar titles include Data East's "Tumblepop" (1992).

Sequel
A sequel to this title, "Snow Bros. 2 With New Elves" (1994), was later released, but Toaplan went bankrupt in the same year (the number of platforms on the market seems to be very small). And so, the sequel was made by Hanafram.