Cool Spot
- Brand
- 7 Up
- Year
- 1993
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Virgin Games
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
The player starts a cartridge-based platformer: the title screen shows Cool Spot, a red dot mascot from the 7 Up logo wearing sunglasses and sneakers, riding a giant branded bottle (unbranded in the PAL version). A difficulty choice before play sets how many collectibles are required per level and whether a special ending screen is reachable.
- 2
Each level drops the player, rendered tiny against oversized everyday objects (beach gear, toy-store shelves, pier debris), into a side-scrolling stage with an on-screen readout: a face icon for health, a counter for collectibles, and an alarm clock for the level timer.
- 3
The core loop is run-and-collect platforming: the player builds speed only after sustained movement in one direction, navigates using bounces off balls and balloons, flips, wire- and rope-grabs, and wall climbs, while touching water kills instantly.
- 4
The player fires soda-bubble shots in any direction, including diagonals and upward, to clear enemies such as crabs and bees that throw projectiles, drop from above, or block shots; defeated enemies stay dead even after the player dies and restarts the level.
- 5
Taking damage peels the health-icon face further off the screen until it falls away entirely at death; dying sends the player back to the last flag checkpoint rather than a save file, and a warning alarm signals when the level timer is running out.
- 6
Clearing a level means gathering enough scattered collectibles to unlock a caged fellow mascot and free it by shooting off its lock; collecting a higher threshold instead routes the player into a bonus stage inside a giant bottle, racing for points and a hidden letter that grants a continue.
- 7
The game strings together themed stages — a beach, a pier, an inside-the-wall level with mousetrap launches and wire-climbing, an inflatable pool with blind lily-pad jumps, a toy store, wind-up toys, frictionless slide-and-tube runs with no enemies, and a toy train set — repeating the same collect-and-free-the-mascot goal with escalating layouts.
- 8
The eleventh and final level returns the player to the opening beach before rolling the credits, with no boss encounters anywhere in the game; finishing on the hardest difficulty with every letter collected and no continues used unlocks a special screen inviting the player to photograph it and submit it to a real-world promotional contest.
Objective
7 Up needed to carry its "Uncola" attitude — not cola, cooler, with character — off a 30-second spot and into something a teenager would spend hours with, turning its red-dot mascot from TV ads into a product kids would pay to own. Virgin Games USA, which ran a whole line of mascot-licensed titles at the time, built the game to keep players engaged well past the ad's runtime, even baking a mail-in contest for finishing the hardest difficulty into the instruction manual.
Solution
You guide Spot, a tiny red dot in sunglasses, through a world blown up to giant scale — a beach with a volleyball net towering overhead, a toy store, a model train set, a swimming pool full of toys, a wooden pier, and the docks. Spot shoots fizzy soda bubbles in any direction, jumps, swings from wires and ropes, and bounces off balls and balloons; each level's goal is to collect enough of the smaller red dots scattered around to shoot the lock off a cage and free a trapped fellow Spot. Health isn't a bar but Spot's own face in the corner of the screen, which peels and falls apart piece by piece as you take damage, and a wall clock counts down the time — step in water and it's instant death. Collect enough points and you drop into a bonus stage inside a giant 7 Up bottle, grabbing bubbles and a hidden letter; gather all the letters across the game and they spell out UNCOLA, each one also banking you an extra continue.
Results
Sources
- 1M
- copies sold
The game sold 1,000,000 copies.
Can you still play it?
There is no official way to play Cool Spot today: it has never been reissued digitally, and in February 2023 Limited Run Games CEO Josh Fairhurst said he asked Keurig Dr Pepper for permission to revive it and was turned down, with the company "not even remotely interested." The game survives only through original Genesis, SNES, Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy, Amiga, and MS-DOS copies, with no listing in the Internet Archive or Flashpoint confirmed. A full playthrough can still be watched on YouTube.
