Return to Blacktooth: A Head Over Heels Adventure has found another home, with Colin Porch’s almost 40-years-in-the-making sequel now available for the Atari Jaguar. Following its Amiga and Atari ST debut earlier this year, the new Jaguar version has been produced by Reboot Games and can run on both original Atari hardware and emulators.
It is another wonderfully improbable chapter for a game Colin first conceived back in 1989 while working at Ocean Software. The project was abandoned as the games industry shifted towards consoles in the early 1990s, only for Colin to return to it decades later after encouragement from former Ocean boss Gary Bracey.
Colin was 81 when the finished game finally appeared in 2026, with Atari, which now holds the rights to Head Over Heels, giving the project the go-ahead. The Amiga and Atari ST editions arrived on 4th May 2026 through Thalamus Digital, turning an unfinished idea from the late 1980s into an actual new release for two machines from the period.
From Ocean Software to the Atari Jaguar
The Jaguar port adds another period machine to that list, although this one arrived rather later in the original 16-bit story. Reboot Games handled the conversion, with Lawrence Staveley involved in bringing Colin’s isometric adventure across to Atari’s final home console.
The Jaguar edition keeps the structure of Return to Blacktooth, with more than 300 rooms spread across five planets. Head and Heels retain their complementary abilities, with Head able to jump and glide while Heels brings speed and object stacking to the partnership.
As with the 1987 original by Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond, progress depends on using those abilities together to solve puzzles and get around hazards. The aim this time is to free the galaxy from Emperor Blacktooth, collect the crowns scattered through its worlds and presumably try not to lose one half of the duo somewhere inconvenient along the way.
There is plenty of new material rather than a rearrangement of the original rooms. Colin created new puzzles, hazards and layouts for the sequel, while Jochen “Virgill” Feldkoetter provided the music and h0ffman contributed technical support and sound effects to the Jaguar edition.
Wil Overton supplied the cover artwork and Ste Pickford created the loading screen, adding another couple of familiar names from British games history to a project already strongly connected to the Ocean era. Andy Roberts is credited with production and what Thalamus rather nicely describes as “inspirational input”.
The Jaguar release is currently supplied as a .ROM file. Thalamus says it can be played through the BigP emulator on Windows or Linux, or loaded on real Jaguar hardware using a compatible flash cartridge such as the GameDrive or SkunkBoard.
Both PAL and NTSC systems are supported, along with K and M-type Jaguars. That makes this a proper Jaguar release rather than a modern PC build wearing Atari colours, with the ROM intended to run on the console itself if you have the means to load it.
A physical edition is also on the way. Thalamus has not yet detailed the final cartridge package or release date, but its official Jaguar page confirms that a physical version is planned, which feels particularly appropriate for a game with such an unusual route to release.
The digital Jaguar version normally costs $12.99, matching the Amiga and Atari ST editions. At the time of writing, Thalamus is also running a 25 per cent launch discount, bringing the download down to $9.74.
The story behind Return to Blacktooth is still arguably as appealing as the platform list. Colin did not set out in 2026 to manufacture a retro-looking sequel to something he remembered from childhood. He went back and finished the game he had actually started planning while working inside the British games industry that produced the original.
That already made the Amiga and Atari ST versions a rare bit of living software history. Seeing the same project now running on an Atari Jaguar makes the timeline stranger again, especially when the console itself did not even exist when Colin first began thinking about returning to Blacktooth.
It also gives Jaguar owners another new release for original hardware in 2026, something that never stops being fun to type. New games appearing for machines long after their commercial lives ended is exactly the sort of retro scene we like covering, and this one comes with nearly four decades of unfinished business behind it.
Return to Blacktooth: A Head Over Heels Adventure was released for Atari Jaguar on 27th August 2026. You can buy the Jaguar version directly from Thalamus Digital on itch.io, where information about the planned physical edition will also be posted.
