REMAKING MAGIC POCKETS

PHILIPPE NGUYEN ON CREATING BRAND-NEW SEGA PORTS

You might think Magic Pockets would have been a neat fit with early Nineties consoles, with all its vibrant cartoon platforming appeal, but the game was only released for home computers. That would change in 2018 when the French indie publisher Pixelheart, which specialises in limited-edition retro games, developed and distributed a port of Magic Pockets for the Mega Drive, followed by one for the Dreamcast the following year. Company founder Philippe Nguyen explains that his motivation for bringing the game back stemmed from growing up playing the developer’s games on his Atari ST. “I’m a huge fan of The Bitmap Brothers. I had a great time with my friends on Speedball, I loved Cadaver, stressed on Xenon II and raged on Magic Pockets!” Philippe and his team would go right to the source to acquire the rights to republish the game, by getting in touch with the previous Bitmap Brothers managing director himself. “Our team ported the game to Mega Drive and Dreamcast with the source code given to us by Mike Montgomery,” Philippe says. He admits that working with such raw material had its challenges. “Old code in assembly language is never easy. We had signed four games with The Bitmap Brothers, but some code was missing so we could only port one game.” Pixelheart launched physical releases of the games with two brand-new cover designs crafted by Philippe Dessoly, the artist behind cult 1993 SNES platformer Mr Nutz and the 2018 remake of the arcade game Toki. “We also made new music for Magic Pockets because if you look at the original there is no in-game music,” Philippe adds. The lively soundtrack is an excellent fit, mixing well with the classic Betty Boo introduction song. Both releases are available via Pixelheart’s website (pixelheart.eu/en/home).