A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Page 1: Hacker - Hardball Page 2: Hard Drivin' - Hawk Storm Page 3: Head Over Heels - Heroes of the Lance Page 4: Hero of the Golden Talisman - The Hit Squad |
Page 5: HKM - Hopper Copper Page 6: Hoppin' Mad - Hudson Hawk Page 7: Humphrey - Hydrofool Page 8: Hyperbowl - Hypsys |
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Hoppin' Mad
(Elite, 1988) This is one of those games that's rather out of the ordinary. You control a sort of snake which consists of four bouncing balls, which is constantly bouncing up and down while moving left across a landscape filled with hazards. The aim on each level is to collect little balls and balloons while avoiding the hazards. The snake can be made to bounce higher or move faster, but timing is crucial in this game. You don't die instantly if you hit a hazard, but you will lose one of the four balls which makes up the snake; lose all four, and you lose a life. The first thing you notice about this game is the spectacularly awful Spectrum-style graphics, with some of the worst colour schemes I have ever seen. I also found the game to be too difficult, which put me off even more. 5 |
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In Hora Bruja, you take control of a witch who tries to find her King. In order to succeed in her mission, she will need to travel through a big castle, some caves and finally through clouds! Hora Bruja is designed in MODE 1. Grey is the predominant colour; however, because of the detailed sprite and foreground design, the result is satisfactory. A pleasant tune plays throughout the game and there are some effects too. The gameplay is fast-paced; the hero and the enemies move fast and smoothly. The game itself is quite big and the mazes are designed with imagination without being frustrating to find your way through them. Until you complete it, the grab factor will most probably be quite strong! Overall, a pleasant and well designed game that is really worth playing. 8 |
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In Hot Rod, you race against two other roadsters around a 2D track. The tracks are short and scroll in small chunks as the leader reaches the edge of the screen. This forces any car lagging behind into the same area as the lead racer, often resulting in an unfair race. The controls are sluggish as the squashed-looking sprites crawl along with no car-to-car collision detection. Certain parts of the game look unfinished, such as the bridges that you cannot drive under. The visuals are a mix of good and bad and the playing area is too small. Two tunes take turns to play as you struggle with this game before you decide to quit. 2 |
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Hotshot
(Addictive, 1988) Imagine a two-player 'sport' that's a combination of pinball and Breakout – that's Hot Shot. It's a five-stage tournament in which you fire a plasma ball around an arena, trying to destroy bricks and qualify for the next stage. The ball moves across the screen very fast indeed, but touching it is deadly, and the only way to grab possession of it is to aim your vacuum tube at it. Unfortunately, the ball moves so fast that lightning reflexes are required, and its movement is very erratic and unpredictable, which means that amassing enough points just to qualify for the second stage relies a lot more on luck than skill. It's fun at first but it quickly becomes frustrating. 6 |
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For some unexplained reason, you decide to enter a creepy-looking building and then find yourself locked inside! You must move your stick-man figure around a maze-like plan of the building and reach the exit. Along the way, you'll encounter the tenants (and hazards) which present a challenge. Each challenge is a mini-game including hangman, maths tests, shooting a vampire, picking the correct door, and many more. The addition of these extra games does make this BASIC program interesting and it may give your brain a workout too! 4 |
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House of Usher is an early platform game made up of nine rooms. You start in the reception hall and pick a door. Each room carries its own challenge with certain aspects of the novel influencing it. This in itself doesn't always work, though, as some rooms are a nightmare to complete. The graphics look primitive and ultimately do the game no favours at all. The only aspect of this offering that does seem to work is the audio – a spooky, eerie silence throughout the game. 3 |
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Howard the Duck
(Activision, 1987) Howard the Duck has been parachuted on to Volcano Island, where the Dark Overlord has imprisoned Beverly and Phil. Howard must collect his gear and head for the volcano to ultimately destroy the Dark Overlord using the deadly Neutron Disintegrator. Once you have worked out how to jump over the mutant slime and collected your gear, you can fly across the river in your solar-powered jetpack (I thought ducks could swim?) and use your mastery of Quack Fu to kill any mutants on your way to the volcano. The game is based on a comic book character, who later appeared in a well-known turkey of a film of the same name. This is a turkey as well, with mediocre graphics and little or no thought having been given to the gameplay, which is incredibly dull, simplistic and tedious. 2 |
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Adrian has gatecrashed a yuppie party, and to acquire the honour of being the complete bastard, he has to perform all sorts of misdemeanours to make all the guests leave. Ransacking the house will reveal countless odds and ends; finding out their uses is left to you! In addition, there are four meters – the drunkometer, the weeeometer, the fartometer, and the smellometer – which are all self-explanatory. However, there are some things you can only do when you're sober, and other things you can only do when you're drunk. The nature of the game is initially appealing, especially to adolescents, but the way that the rooms are viewed is very confusing, and it's so slow that you'll switch off within minutes. 3 |
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The story behind this game is that you play a nerdy guy who, in order to discover what it takes to be a hero, is thrust by his super-hero teacher into several heroic situations, to see how much of a hero he is. Sounds good, but in reality the story doesn't play an important part in the game at all; it's just three levels of dull, very hard dungeon-roaming viewed from above. The first level is set in an Egyptian tomb and you must find keys and various treasures, shoot the obscene amount of bad guys (scorpions, spiders etc.) who never seem to die, and find the exit to the next level – another tomb. The graphics are bad, and the sound is pathetic. More like How to Be a Zero! 1 |
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Hudson Hawk
(Ocean, 1991) Eddie 'Hudson' Hawkins' friend has been captured by a gang, who force Eddie to steal three works of art made by Leonardo da Vinci in order to build a machine that will turn lead into gold. If he refuses to comply, the gang will kill his friend. The film that this game is based on was a major flop, but the game itself is not bad. It's a platform game with some puzzle elements to it; for instance, you will have to work out how to reach a high window, climb over large boxes (Hudson's a small fellow in this game), or avoid being caught by security cameras. Graphically it's brilliant, albeit very blue indeed, although there is no music and little in the way of sound effects. It's an easy game to get into and is worth trying out, even if Hudson's movements are a little sluggish. 8 |
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