Ocean had a bucket load of titles in development at the time, and Snow Bros was one of them. This was going to be a conversion of the fairly popular arcade, which was a sort of clone of Bubble Bobble with snow.
The game promised some great graphics and sound in typical Ocean style, but it was never to be. Only a few news snippets were the existence of this game in the magazines, and no screenshots ever surfaced. Here is a CVG one below thanks to Ross Sillifant.
For years it has been pretty much rumour mill that a conversion ever took place at all, but when the Amiga and ST versions were confirmed (and Amiga version recovered), it suggested that conversions for the 8-bits could well have taken place.
In 2020, Twilight developed Andy Swann confirmed that the conversion of Snow Bros was going to be their first work for Ocean. They had the arcade board in a silver case ready to go, but at the last moment the game was swapped for Plotting instead.
Andy confirmed that as a result, no code was ever started (at least by Twilight). Had they done the game, code would have been by Stuart Cook (who did Plotting) and the Spectrum version by Jase McGann.
When asked on Twitter by @JamesPond47 if there were any concerns, Andy responded that it would have been a challenge – but would have tried their best. One player only was likely too.
It doesn’t quite close the case – as the 16-bit versions did get worked on. Was the work moved onto another team or brought in house perhaps? We’re still not sure. But certainly we now know that the conversions were in the process of being started at the very least.
Contributions: Ross Sillifant, Andy Swann
