Mission Pom-Bär: The Snack'N Run Game

Mission Pom-Bär is a promotional side-scrolling platform game featuring the eponymous Pom-Bär (Pom-Bear in English speaking countries), the mascot of a popular German snack brand. Rendered in colourful hand-drawn style with CD Audio music, the game invites players to join Pom-Bär in his adventures to recover stolen snacks. As the story goes, the protagonist was enjoying a sunny day on the beach with his favourite food when a wicked sorcerer called Larvos seized all the treats as soon as Pom-Bär dozed off in the sun. Now the hero must set forth to recover what is rightfully his.

The game offers all typical elements of the platforming genre: to get Pom-Bär to the level exit, he must be carefully maneuvered through obstacles and hazards, collecting keys and bonus items along the way, and shooting enemies. The hero has two attacks: red orbs fly in a straight line, while blue ones are launched in a parabolic arc, which is useful for disposing of enemies that are outside of the direct line of sight. Pom-Bär has a health bar that will rather rapidly decrease upon contact with hazards, and a number of lives that can be spent to retry a level. Health may be replenished by picking up bear-shaped items that represent the snack itself.

Mission Pom-Bär was sold on CD-ROM for a small price, with the packaging explicitly allowing to make and distribute copies thereof, similar to other German advergames like 2FAST4YOU. For this purpose, there is a special installer on the CD that can be copied to three 3.5" floppy disks. The only difference from the CD version is that these floppy copies do not have the CGI animated sequences or the CD Audio music. The game includes support for multiple languages that are selectable from the options menu, including German, English, French, Czech, Polish, Dutch, Slovak, Slovenian and Hungarian.