Grag And Thog Bonkheads

Grag and Thog Bonkheads is a 2D single-screen platform arcade game for classic Mac OS, openly modeled on Nintendo's Mario Bros. Players run the cave-troll buddies Grag and Thog as they defend Trollsville from waves of pests, jumping under platforms to flip enemies and then bonking them off. Released in 1996 by 1 A.M. Productions.

How it plays

Each stage is a single-screen field of stacked platforms. Pests - dogs, raccoons, bees, snakes, dinosaurs, demons - tumble in from the top and walk laterally; when a pest reaches the edge of a platform it falls to the one below. The trolls run, jump, and headbutt platforms from underneath to stun enemies, then make contact to clear them before they reach the bottom.

Cooperative caveman duo

The hook over its Mario Bros. inspiration is the two-troll co-op: a single player runs as Grag, but a second player can drop in at any time as Thog and share the screen. The pair function identically, letting friends split crowd-control duties across the upper and lower platforms in the busier later stages.

Bosses and progression

The campaign covers 144 stages of Trollsville, punctuated by giant boss fights against named foes - Shrew-Man-Chew, T. Wrecks, and D. Evil among them. Power-ups along the way speed up the trolls or extend their bonk range, helping the pair handle the increasing density and speed of pest spawns deeper in.

Developer and re-release

Grag and Thog Bonkheads was made by Jason Tartaglia and Jason Malcolm, the founders of 1 A.M. Productions, originally as a PowerPC Mac shareware title for System 7.0 - 7.6 / Mac OS 9. It was later picked up by Aspyr and re-released across Mac OS, Windows, and Linux as Bonkheads Deluxe, with enhanced art and additional content built on top of the original 1996 engine.