Naughty Ones

STORY / GAMEPLAY
On a sunny afternoon, the two naughty brothers John and Jim were playing with their rubber balls in a field near their home. Summer holidays already started and both those kids were jumping around having no other worries than who they were going to tease next. But all of a sudden, the sky went dark, the birds stopped chirping and a chilly wind blew all over the landscape. A powerful beam lit up everything and gravity seemed to change direction. In a whirlpool of colors and bright light, the two brothers kept on falling, completely losing track of time, place and dimension. They were captured inside a surreal world and apparently nobody will help them getting back to the real ones!
You control John or Jim or both (the game can be played in one or two-players mode) and guide them through five different stages on a quest to defeat the evil king that brought chaos. Each stage consists of linked rooms and you must find a key to progress to the next. Each stage is full of deadly surprises, including deadly pits and several enemies that are connected to the actual stage's storyline. Those enemies vary from robots, blobby things, soldiers, plasma balls, to mummies, crocodiles, spiders and birds. John and Jim must jump onto a number of platforms, collect power-ups and shoot their rubber balls to kill enemies until the exit key is reached. Some of the enemy sprites need split-second timing to be dispatched, otherwise a single collision with the assorted opponents will drag you back to the start of the screen and you will lose a life instantly. Fortunately, the bad guys don't come back after you kill them (they do not re-spawn) and only the indestructible hazards remain (pits, spikes and the stuff). Each power-up can increase your firepower and shooting accuracy and you will occasionally stumble over a hidden bonus room or you may need to find a switch to uncover a hidden platform.
Naughty Ones is an engaging and intriguing platform game and its greatest strength is its awesome gameplay.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the Amiga OCS version are nicely designed without utilizing any special advanced techniques (multi-scrolling, EHB coloring etc) and the sprite's animation is very smooth. Each stage has its own little details and has more than 45 simultaneous colors (32 for the gameplay area and a few more on for the info panel on top).
The sound is action platform typical, featuring nice in-game stereo tunes (fit to the stage you're into) and a few sampled sound effects.