There is trouble in the mines! Volcanic activity has trapped numerous miners, and it is your job to save them. As Roderick Hero, you need to make your way through the dangerous mineshaft avoiding the dangerous creatures and lava, and find out where the miners are located before you run out of energy. To help on your mission, Roderick Hero has several useful types of equipment. A prop pack will allow you to hover and fly around the mineshaft and (hopefully) avoid the many dangers within. Your helmet features a short range microlaser beam which can be used to destroy the bats, spiders, snakes, and other creatures you'll encounter in the mines. From time to time, your path through the mine may be blocked by stone or lava walls. You begin each mission with six sticks of dynamite which can be used to destroy these obstacles (be careful you don't blow yourself up, though!) If you run out of dynamite, your laser beam can also be used to destroy the walls, though this will take longer and use up more energy. As the levels progress, the mine shaft will become longer and more maze-like, creatures will more frequently block the path, and lava walls and pools will appear which are dangerous to the touch.
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By John Van Ryzin
Published by Activision
Released for Atari 2600
Initial descent down the deadly caverns of this helicopter-cladden spelunker’s rescue operation is tense, but doesn’t stay unfamiliar. No two stages are the same, but every encounter with enemy and obstacle within maintains on reset. The adventure begins with an awkward tumble down initial screens as opposed to heroic dives and elegant acrobatics. And getting caught in the blast radius of your dynamite is an inevitability. The goal is simple: Make the unfamiliar, familiar. Be mindful of your resources. Become a hero for those trapped below. And where H.E.R.O. excels in this tee-up is within the exciting push-pull dance of authored imprecision, firm rules and our place between them.
Acceleration is abrupt. Nearly too fast, even. Inching towards obstacles is a task more dangerous than making room for dynamite. And with full directional movement, the possibilities of where to go – and what to crash into – are endless. Pressing down on the up-directional of the controller to whirr your copter-pack to life is laborious, and each release of the control demands immediate press-down follow up to hold control over climb and descent as each passage grows ever-narrow. The repetition of the similarly-constructed chasms, with their multicoloured walls and environmental abstractions, dull out memorisation. The friction is subtle, as to not lean too far into imprecision and unfair design, and calculated enough so that a perfect run is lost to overconfidence and carelessness than at the hand of faulty programming. Maybe you forgot that a snake pops out of a specific wall just a few stages in. After that, maybe you misjudged how narrow the passage between two hazard walls were when falling down. Got a bit too confident with blasting bats right above lava? That will cost you if you get too close. It’s in that push-and-pull of the immovable and faultless game against the unrestricted, but fallible player where H.E.R.O. shines as a chase towards a perfect run. Learn the rules, throw yourself at them, and fail then overcome.