Bounty Bob Strikes Back

Great game

Received this for Christmas off my wife to go with the Atari 7800+ that my family bought for me. It was a lovely surprise. I have played miner 2049er on the Colecovision and with bounty bob on most retro platforms costing a lot of money (around £600 on Atari 5200) it’s nice to see a homebrew port made easily available to the public.There is a cool quirk I noted with my television, and I will need to test on original Atari 7800 hardware, however at least on the 7800+, despite being a Pal variant of the game, it actually runs at 60hz, not 50hz like Bentley bear which came packed in. I believe this is due to the game being pal60. As a result it may also run at 60hz on original hardware which for those with old systems, will find a lovely optimisation.It works perfectly on the Atari 7800+ with no update and the 2600+ I believe requires an update so please do bear that in mind. Let’s talk controls first, it does feel better than using a colecovision controller, I feel the thumb stick attachment for the 7800 controller really does add some precision and it is required for this game, it is incredibly hard, precise movement is required just like the original prequel. Movement in instantaneous and responsive to player input.Sound wise, I am unsure if the game uses a pokey chip, but it does sound better than the standard 7800 sound chip, so something is being done, it’s pleasant to listen to.Graphically, the game appears to be a slightly upgraded Atari 8bit computer line game, there are a few more colours to each screen compared to the original, so I am sure it is an enhanced port, it won’t take full advantage of the 7800, but for a port it does look a little nicer than the original version on those computers. For the price of the cart in box with manual compared to the used market with the original, again looking at the Atari 5200 version, it’s actually a real nice bargain and an official release at that.Overall, I really would recommend this, it is a great and challenging game, I would go more into the gameplay but for those who played Miner2049er, I can sum it up this way, donkey Kong meets qbert, platform your way and fill in all the blocks. Buy it while stocks last.

BBSB is equalled as a platform game only by its predecessor, Miner 2049er. It is otherwise peerless. 5* for that. This review concerns only this recreation. It comes close, but minor bugs and missing features make me think this was rushed in development.The original introduction is truncated - the birds do not complete the credits.When Bob is on a moving platform, he often ends up moving with the platform, but not on the platform.Some of the random colour schemes aren't great.If the attract mode gets to a level with a lifting platform, the sound never disappears until reset - starting a game does stop the sound and there are no game sounds.Bob moves much faster than he did in the original and there are minor changes to the jumping physics.