Longplay: Battery Check - Nederlandstalig (1998) [WINDOWS]

If you grew up in the nineties, before easy internet piracy and free-to-play, free games were a rarity, especially good ones. Which may just be why many Dutch boys and girls have such fond memories of a battery recycling promo game called Battery Check. Battery Check was spread by Stibat (short for Stichting Batterijen, the 'battery foundation'), which promotes the recycling of empty batteries. The proposition was simple: bring 15 empty batteries to one of the affiliated stores, and you get the CD-ROM in exchange. According to this ancient webpage the initial plan was to give away 50.000 copies of the game, but in the end 220.000 were handed out. Newspaper Trouw has an 1998 article in its online archive about the early success of the promotion. "Real computer freaks finish the game within two days," the article reads, "as Stibat received 150 response cards after three days." Not only was the game made by Hootchie Cootchie Cartoons, maker of R-rated children's cartoon Purno de Purno and a predecessor of today's serious games studio &ranj, it also ran on an engine by Orange Games, one of Guerrilla's predecessors. In fact, the very same engine powered lightning fast platformer Jazz Jackrabbit 2, which Orange founder Arjan Brussee made with Cliff Bleszinski (the two recently got back together to found Boss Key Productions). The speed may be why people liked Battery Check so much; or it may have had to do with the fun, exaggerated animation of its hero Batteryman (who seems more than a little inspired by Capcom's Mega Man). Otherwise, it was a pretty simple three-stage platformer with an industrial setting, in which you obviously collected batteries and, if you weren't careful, ran out of power like a Duracell bunny. Interestingly, Stibat still uses the Batteryman character in various small games on its Battery World site, 17 years after the fact. Apparently that site offered the game as a free download for years, and Ranj still does. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nostalgic value for retrogamers in the Highest HD quality you can find on Youtube! All in 1080p and 60fps! // Facebook // --   / dosgamert   // Twitter // -------   / dosgamert   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------