Around the World

In Around the World, you take on the role of an anthropomorphic wolf sent across the globe by a museum curator to fetch four missing artifacts. It is a side-scrolling action platformer built on a surprisingly humble engine, asking players to leap over hazards and blast through obstacles using a unique charge-based attack.

When QuickBasic tried to tackle side-scrolling platformers

In the late nineties, most shareware developers writing action games turned to compiled C or assembly code to handle smooth screen scrolling and fast sprite animation on PC hardware. The indie team at TMB Productions took a noticeably different path when crafting this 1997 release. They built the entire game using Microsoft QuickBasic, a programming environment far more famous for textbook text adventures and simple educational software than responsive screen action.

Making a commercial side-scroller in QBasic was an ambitious technical hurdle for a small outfit. Standard BASIC struggled with memory allocation and redrawing complex graphics loops fast enough to avoid choppy screen updates. While Around the World managed to squeeze decent presentation out of the language, that underlying structure directly influenced how the core character controls and physics felt in action.

The premise sets a straightforward adventure tone right from the opening screen. A museum director tasks your suit-wearing wolf hero with retrieving four lost relics scattered across global regions. To collect each artifact, you must traverse side-view levels full of hostile creature sprites, moving platforms, and deep pits. The basic movement lets you walk, jump, and aim your weapon across two-dimensional levels that follow classic early nineties design conventions.

The charge shot in Around the World breaks the platforming pace

Platform games generally rely on quick reflexes and rapid button taps to clear rooms full of aggressive enemies. In this action title, the offensive combat introduces a deliberate mechanic that sharply alters how you approach every room. Instead of firing standard rapid-fire projectiles, shooting requires you to hold down the attack button to build up power.

Holding the attack key fills a charge meter that dictates how far your shot travels across the screen. Tap the key briefly, and your projectile drops uselessly to the floor right in front of your toes. To hit an enemy standing on a far platform, you have to stand totally still for a couple of full seconds while the charge gauge fills to capacity.

This design decision turns standard action encounters into a slow, tactical waiting game. Reviewers at the time pointed out that while the mechanism is unique, constantly pausing in place to charge up shots drags down the pacing significantly. You spend a large portion of every stage stationary behind cover, waiting for meters to fill before picking off enemies on the path ahead.

Decent sprite work hindered by sluggish momentum

Visually, the MS-DOS publisher delivered clean tile sets and well-defined character animations. The wolf protagonist moves with distinct frames, and the world environments feature bright color palettes so you can spot hazards against the background art without guessing. Reviewers like Darren Hewer on DOSGames.com highlighted the graphics and core input handling as solid given the project's modest origins, rating the release 5 out of 5.

Yet playing through the levels reveals noticeable weight in the jumping physics that takes real effort to master. Your character carries heavy forward momentum, making precise landing adjustments mid-air almost impossible once you leave a ledge. When combined with enemies that respawn or patrol tight ledges, landing small jumps while managing your charged attacks becomes a trial of strict memorization.

The sound design follows the simple audio capabilities typical of basic DOS speaker routines and early Sound Blaster setups. Sound effects provide brief chirps for jumps and dull thuds for landing hit shots, keeping the presentation functional rather than elaborate. It feels distinctly like an indie project made by enthusiasts experimenting with what their personal hardware could push out at home.

Odd trivia and the Christmas follow-up

One of the most memorable quirks of TMB Productions' work came two years later in 1999 with the release of a seasonal spin-off titled Around the World Xmas. What makes this follow-up famous among classic PC collectors is a hilarious oversight right on the splash art. On the main title screen, the word Christmas was blatantly misspelled as "Around the World Cristmas".

That typo neatly sums up the earnest, unpolished nature of this shareware era. These releases were built by small groups learning code on the fly, putting projects out directly to public bulletin boards and early online archives. It is a strange piece of software, showing just how far basic coding environments could be stretched when forced to run a side-scrolling action platformer.

The core design exhibits a clear split between ambition and execution:

• Clean visual sprites and clear environmental art contrast with stiff momentum-heavy jumping physics.
• An inventive charge-shot weapon system offers tactical distance control but halts character movement completely.
• A global artifact hunt narrative provides a fun backdrop, though level design repeats simple platforming tropes.

Fire up this DOS platformer directly in your browser

Around the World gives you a clear look at late-nineties homebrew coding ambition. The charge-up combat system forces a slow pace and the jumping physics demand patience, but the clean sprite work and the wolf lead give the game its own personality. Pulling all of this off inside plain QuickBasic took real work.

If you want to experience this piece of late nineties shareware history, you can play Around the World online right now. You can run the full Around the World MS-DOS game directly, playing Around the World free in your browser with no extra file setup required. Master the charge meter timing, clear those heavy jumps, and see how far you can take your museum wolf hero tonight.