“The Magic Roundabout” Headed to the DS, PC and Wii; Dime Bag not Included

Deep Silver, the games label of Koch Media, and French publisher Game Life today announced a game based on the popular children’s TV series “The Magic Roundabout” for Nintendo DS, Wii and PC.

For those unfamiliar with The Magic Roundabout, it was a five-minute long children’s show featuring stop-motion animation based out of France that gained enormous popularity in the United Kingdom. Broadcast between 1964 and 1971 by the BBC, the British version was different from the original French version in that narration was introduced to the series and was based upon the visuals instead of the script penned by creator Serge Danot.

At its peak, The Magic Roundabout gained eight million viewers, thanks to each five-minute show being aired at 5:40 p.m. each evening just before the early news. Consequently, the animated series gained a large adult following; thus making it the “Sponge Bob Squarepants” of its day. With its dry humor, distinctive visual style, and interesting storyline all centered on the roundabout (a carousel) in a park, speculation about possible interpretations of the show ensued. One being that each character was addicted to a different type of psychedelic drug, mostly due to the whole look of the show and the fact that many of the characters chewed on flowers and sugar cubes.

In the game interpretation of the show, all the well-known characters of the series will appear in a typical, humorous story created especially for the game: the magician Zebedee, an almost human creature in a soldier’s uniform with a spring instead of feet; he frequently went “Boing!” and regularly closed the show with the phrase “Time for bed”, the grumpy, shaggy dog Dougal, Florence the girl, Ermintrude, the pink cow with red spots who is fond of singing, Dylan was a dopey, hippy-like, guitar-playing rabbit, and many more.

The world of the The Magic Roundabout will be brought to life in a number of mini-games and bonus missions, based on the premise of, Zebedee promising Dougal a valuable gift if he is able to help everyone in the village on Friendship Day. The game makes creative use of the different platforms’ unique controls: for example, players control the flight of a paper plane by blowing into the microphone of the Nintendo DS, or uncover hidden objects by “shaking” the mouse cursor on the PC, or the Wii Remote in the Wii version.

The Magic Roundabout will be released for Nintendo DS, Wii and PC in the fourth quarter of 2008.