NEC AVENUE/SEGA

1992

Robo and Mobo are thieves. And damn good ones. It's their quest in life to pull of the ultimate raids, from banks to shopping malls and even pyramids! Best described as a platform-stealth-thieve 'em up, Bonanza Bros is converted from the popular 1990 arcade game by Sega. Either one or two player simultaneous, you have to break into various buildings and pinch all the treasure. You are aided by a handy map in the middle of the screen and once you have swiped everything in the level, you have to hot foot it to the roof and escape on your personal hot air balloon. But there are various things out to stop you - from cops to security guards and dogs. If they see you they will chase you, so make sure you do plenty of hiding around corners.

Sega chose a very unique style for Bonanza Bros. It's sort of what people imagined computer graphics to be like in the late 80s - squared, smooth shaded objects and people made from cylinders and domes. It's visually very original and the Engine version successfully copies that style. It is a fun game to play - there are lots of nice cartoony touches, like the springboards and the rakes and banana skins littered around and this all helps keep it interesting from level to level. One gripe is that the play area is quite small - even in single player mode the screen doesn't open up in any way, but after a couple of levels you begin not to notice it much. The music is a selection of well arranged tunes from the original; quite funky and it's nice to hear that the sampled speech (especially the laughs) from the arcade are in here too.

My main problem with this game, and the reason that it only gets 3/5 instead of 4/5 is its lastability. It is very easy and quite short too, and this seriously affects the replay value. But despite this, it is a quirky and enjoyable game and worth picking up if you can.