Rolling Ronny is the coolest boy in town – a clown on roller skates! The player helps him on his delivery mission from the exhibition hall to Scotland Yard while, along the way, picking up and delivering additional packages for random people to earn extra money. Across nine levels, Ronny roller-skates, jumps, and shoots his way through the various platforms offered by the city and its underground sewers: telephone booths, windows, barrels, rooftops, pipelines, stairs, and more. After successfully completing a level, Ronny can take the bus for a short distance – but only if he finishes the level within a certain time limit, has at least 110 pennies for the bus ticket left, and has collected 21 of the 25 colourful little jewel cases. If he fails to meet these requirements, it’s game over, and the city map appears, showing how far the player has progressed.

The difficulty level is high. Countless unexpected and colourful enemies and obstacles await, including toy and regular cars, motorbikes, bird droppings, stars falling from the sky, flying books, bombs hovering up and down, and sewage monsters, just to name a few. The player can shoot them with salami (!) as long as Ronny has enough energy, represented by a series of fruit in the HUD. Colliding with enemies results in a loss of health, represented by six hearts. After each collision, Ronny is airlifted by a balloon and dropped back into the level with a few seconds of invulnerability remaining. The asphalt is not always smooth either, but occasionally cracked. In such situations, a super jump comes in handy – one of many essential power-ups that Ronny can collect along the way or purchase in the shops found in each level. The shops’ menu includes health, time, and energy, as well as fanciful power-ups such as Superjump, Megahonk, Magnetofluct, Stenchalizer, and Powersneeze.

The game-over screen is therefore quite a common sight. Fortunately, Roman Werner’s music design for Rolling Ronny is an absolute standout feature and sweetens the player’s inevitable grinding. The soundtrack delivers a high-energy, joyful circus march heavily reminiscent of fairground music, perfectly mirroring both the chaotic platforming gameplay and its clown protagonist.

But why is a clown running errands in the first place? The booklet, available in English, French, and Italian (produced by The Word Factory in the United Kingdom for Virgin Games), explains the backstory in the form of a personal letter written by Ronny himself. He addresses the player as an errand boy who has been hired as an undercover agent for Scotland Yard, disguised in a clown’s outfit, and tasked with recovering the stolen Crown Jewels of Fieldington.

The colourful platformer Rolling Ronny the Errand Boy was developed by Touch of Magic, a team name that René Straub and Orlando Petermann created specifically for this production. According to programmer René Straub, development took two years. The original game was published for the Amiga by the German publisher Starbyte in 1991 in cooperation with the British publisher Virgin Games, and was also released for the Atari ST, DOS, and Commodore 64. Unfortunately, the German publishing company Starbyte Software GmbH was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1992; as a result, announced titles such as Rolling Ronny 2 were never released.