Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom (c) 1990 Toaplan.

One or two players take on the roles of snowmen Nick and Tom as they
battle a variety of monsters over fifty platform-based, single screen
levels. The snowmen must throw snowballs at the enemies, eventually
encasing them completely in snow. The encased enemies must them be
kicked in order to destroy them. This is achieved by standing next to
the snowball and pressing the "kick out" button, which sends the giant
snowball flying around the screen, killing any enemies that lay in its
path. During every 10th level, the players must face and defeat an
end-of-level boss.

A number of power-ups are available, in the form of coloured potions.

The power-ups are as follows :
* Yellow = Long shot
* Red = Speed up
* Blue = Bigger snowballs (encases monsters quicker)
* Green = Inflates the players like a balloon and lets them fly around
the screen, killing any monsters they touch.


- TECHNICAL -
Game ID : MIN16-02
Main CPU : 68000 (@ 8 Mhz)
Sound CPU : Z80 (@ 6 Mhz)
Sound Chips : YM3812 (@ 3 Mhz)
Screen orientation : Horizontal
Video resolution : 256 x 224 pixels
Screen refresh : 57.50 Hz
Palette colors : 256
Players : 2
Control : 8-way joystick
Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -
Released in April 1990.

Like Taito's "Liquid Kids", Snow Bros. was licensed to Manchester's
Ocean Software for conversion to both the Atari ST and the Commodore
Amiga home computers but, again like "Liquid Kids", Ocean decided that
the game wouldn't perform well at retail and the game was cancelled.

It's not known how far into production Snow Bros was before
cancellation, although several work-in-progress screenshots were
published in the games magazines of the time.

This game was released as a conversion kit only (often factory installed
in a generic cabinet), so any such machine could be converted into a
proper Snow Bros. machine. This title is JAMMA compatible (the circuit
board for it is one of the smallest ever made, it is barely larger than
a Nintendo Famicom cartridge). The marquee for this title shows a ''Snow
Bros.'' logo, with two snowmen, and a couple of cartoon enemies in the
background - in keeping with the game's ''cute'' theme.

Licensed to Romstar for USA distribution.

A bootleg of this game is known as "The Winter Bobble".

Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for
this game (Out Zone, Snow Bros. - PCCB-00044) on 21/10/1990.


- TIPS AND TRICKS -
* Killing all the monsters on a level with a single snowball causes
money bonuses, worth 10,000 points, to fall down, but sometimes a
glowing cake bonus will appear instead. When the cake is collected, the
game stops and four blue snowball creatures appear for a short time. If
these enemies are killed, they each provide a letter : 'S','N','O' or
'W'. Collect all four of these letters for an extra life. The glowing
cake can also appear at other times during the game.

* Hidden Functions : If the 'Invulnerability dip switch' is enabled, you
are invulnerable but you may also 'Pause' the game with P2 Start and
restart with P1 Start.


- SERIES -
1. Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom (1990)
2. Snow Bros. 2 - With New Elves (1994)
3. Snow Brothers 3 - Magical Adventure (2002)

- STAFF -
Music composed by : Osamu Ohta

- PORTS -
* Consoles :
Nintendo Famicom (1991)
Sega Mega Drive (1993)
Nintendo Game Boy ("Snow Bros. Jr.") : includes 10 additional (new)
levels after you complete all 50 from the arcade.

* Computers :
Amstrad CPC (1991)
