HERO
1984
◼︎ Unusually for a videogame, you work your way downwards toward the end of each level in
HERO. This falls out of the game’s storyline, which has you rescuing miners from the depths of a mine. Where the game impresses most is with its protagonist’s mechanics and its levels’ layered challenges.HERO’s hero has a handy propeller jetpack that allows him to hover upwards, backwards and forwards through the game’s maze-like mines and above its deadly hazards and hostile creatures. He has a helmet-mounted laser to take care of the latter, and this can also be used to take out obstructive walls, however it’s quicker to use a stick of dynamite. You only get so many of these, and once lit you have to get out of their blast area or risk losing a life. Environmental features such as lava lakes and magma walls are equally dangerous, as is the fact that colliding with lamps can cause them to go out, which leaves you in darkness. Although individuallyHERO’s obstacles and opponents aren’t too taxing, the combinations of the dangers found in the game’s levels and the way those levels are laid out represents a serious challenge.