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HamsterJam is a Windows remake of an old game called Rockman. Rockman was released by Mastertronic in 1985 and gave Vic-20 owners a frantic treasure collecting, boulder dodging game, all within 3.5K of RAM. This is one of the few in our most favourite games list.

Rockman has similarities with games such as Repton or Boulderdash, however the gameplay makes it stand out in its own right. Rolling boulders that bounce and split in two gives Rockman its unique charm and challenging gameplay. All the action is on one large colourful screen, and the player can choose which route to take through the twenty rooms in their quest to collect all rings.

In remaking Rockman we have painstakingly recreated all rooms and implemented the same behaviour and game logic. The graphics had a big and bold quality which we did not want to loose and we decided to carry this across by using a high resolution of 1024x768 pixels. The characters were typical of Vic-20 games and in updating them we decided to change them to hamsters and mice. Besides being cute, my son wanted a game with his hamster in. The boulders ended up as walnuts and the grass was scattered with flowers!

So why did we call it HamsterJam? There are two reasons, the first is that the game obviously has the odd hamster in it, but the main reason is that we recently remade a game called Imogen. One level was called Hamster Jam. In this level you had a hamster, a tulip bulb and a very heavy weight on a rope. I won't spoil the surprise, but be sure to play Imogen to find out!