Cool Spot Review (SNES, Genesis)
Developer: Virgin Games
Publisher: Virgin Games
Released: April 1993

Cool Spot has absolutely no business being a good video game. It stars the red dot from the 7-Up logo. That’s the whole premise. Someone at Virgin Games pitched a platformer built around a soft drink mascot that is literally just a circle with sunglasses and arms, and somebody else said yes, greenlit it, and put money behind it. Meanwhile, we still couldn’t get a halfway decent Aliens game. The video game industry has always had its priorities straight.

And yet here we are, because Cool Spot is genuinely good. Not “good for an ad game” or “good considering what it is.” Just good. A well-built, charming, surprisingly solid platformer that holds up better than it has any right to three decades later.

The setup is straightforward. You play as Cool Spot, the aforementioned sunglasses-wearing red dot, working your way through side-scrolling levels collecting other red spots to fill up a Cool-O-Meter until you’ve rescued enough to unlock a caged Spot buddy at the end of the stage. Standing between you and that cage are enemies, a time limit, and platforming that starts easy and gets legitimately challenging as the game goes on. The levels take you through beach environments, amusement parks, and other settings that are bright, colorful, and visually varied in a way that still looks great on original hardware today.

That last part is worth dwelling on for a second. I remember when the original PlayStation launched and everyone lost their minds over 3D graphics and polygon counts. Go back and boot up a PS1 game now and it’s practically unwatchable. The textures are muddy, the models are blocky, and the whole thing has aged about as gracefully as a milk carton. Cool Spot on SNES still looks clean. The sprites are sharp, the colors pop, and the animation has a personality to it that a lot of bigger budget games from the same era never managed. Early 3D aged terribly. Good 2D sprites didn’t.

The controls are mostly solid. Jumping feels responsive, the platforming is tight, and working your way through a well-designed level still has that satisfying flow that made the SNES golden age what it was. The one area where age shows its hand is the combat. You shoot soda bubbles at enemies using the D-pad, and that was perfectly fine in 1993 when analog sticks didn’t exist and nobody knew any better. Going back to it now, after thirty years of thumbstick aiming, it feels stiff and imprecise in a way that takes some readjustment. It’s not a dealbreaker, just one of those things where modern muscle memory works against you until you recalibrate.

Where Cool Spot really earns its reputation, though, is the soundtrack. Tommy Tallarico did the music, and it shows. The tracks are catchy, a little cheesy in the best possible way, and surprisingly memorable for a game that was designed to sell carbonated sugar water to children. I remember playing it as a kid specifically to hear the music sometimes, and going back to it now that nostalgia holds up. There’s a certain charm baked into those compositions that’s hard to explain and impossible to ignore.

Cool Spot is a product of a weird era where licensed and mascot games could still be legitimately great because developers actually had to try. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, it looks and sounds better than it should, and it’s a reminder that a solid gameplay loop covers a multitude of sins, including the sin of being a 7-Up advertisement. If you’ve got an SNES, a Genesis, or any way to play original cartridges (such as a RetroBit Retro Duo), find a copy. It’s worth it.

Cool Spot gets a three out of five: SUBSTANTIAL.

TITAN’S DECREE:

If you enjoy this one, you might also like to check out my column on Revisiting Rayman Legends or my review of LIMBO. Or click here to check out more game reviews. If this sent you on a 90s nostalgia spiral, check out my review of Blank Check (1994).

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