Every holiday growing up, we’d head off to our caravan. I spent each day embroiled in outdoor activities like riding my bike, climbing trees and skateboarding exceptionally badly, and I loved every single second of being there. When all that fresh air wore thin, the other thing I loved was the arcade. This wasn’t a huge arcade, it was a room in the central caravan site centre, with three or four arcade machines and an air hockey table that never worked. Still, this was my haven, and my first experience of classic games like Rainbow Islands and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. There are formative moments in your life, and this place played a huge role in my love for games.
Snow Bros. was a major part of that. An absolute favourite amongst those machines, it was a riff on the original Super Mario Bros. game, giving you a single-screen platform arena that saw you coating enemies in snow before booting them across the screen, taking out any enemies stupid enough to get in the way, plastering them all over the place. It was the right side of chaotic, and visually appealing, and my supply of 20 pence pieces would clink satisfyingly into the beckoning coin slot until my pockets were empty.
This is all to say, I was astounded and eternally happy to discover that the Snow Bros. would be returning. Snow Bros. Wonderland is a sequel to the original two games, following on from their storyline, with the children of the original Snow Bros. taking up the mantle to save the kingdom from the evil King Atchich. It shifts from the 2D perspective to an isometric 3D one, but the overarching gameplay remains the same: cover the badguys in snow, and then yeet them around the screen. As a starting point, it’s a great one.
The team at Tatsujin, under the watchful eye of original developers Toaplan, have captured plenty of the charm of the original, though I preferred the slightly chubbier build of the original Snow Bros. to that of their slender sons. The enemies have made the jump to 3D as well, and though it’s not as immediately arresting as the original, it’s a fine attempt. The game is broken up into different worlds, with the landscape and enemies changing as you advance, each one headed by a massive enemy boss, each of which are simple, but visually appealing.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises is the challenge that you can face in Snow Bros. Wonderland – its cheery visual style belies some tough moments, particularly against the bosses. That said, it’s just the right side of challenging, and there’s plenty of reward for seeing off the final enemy or firing the last snowball into a particularly annoying enemy.
You’re aiming for the highest score as possible as these are then converted into a currency you can use to upgrade your Snow Bros. abilities and their visual look. I loved being able to deck them out in cute hats and boots, and they really become yours, while the slow and somewhat puny feeling attacks they have at the start soon advance into powerful and uproarious abilities later on.
You’ll need them too. My favourite moments were where you have to survive against a steady stream of enemies for a set amount of time, and the game pours it on here, dropping wave after wave into your area. This, in turn, lets you ride a giant snowball through a ton of enemies, resulting in a deeply satisfying combo. You can multiply that enjoyment by playing in four-player co-op too, as there’s plenty of amusement to be had yeeting snowballs at each other on the way to clearing an area.
The only yellow mark in the snow is that the Nintendo Switch version of the game has a poor frame rate when docked. It’s not aggressively bad, with inconsistent dips, but you’ll notice it the moment you start playing. It’s still playable, but it makes the game feel hastily put together when that isn’t the case. Things improve greatly when you play in handheld mode, and everything becomes brighter and more vibrant here, rather than the washed-out look it has when blown up on a TV, and I happily played here for many hours through the campaign.