With the game H.E.R.O. from Activision I again wander along the paths of my childhood when the computer age was still so young and you took note of every small progress with glowing eyes.

At that time, so many years ago, it was Atari who often came up with new surprises that very often the amazed me. One such example being H.E.R.O, with at that time extremely delicate and attractive graphics, which were instantly enchanting.

Among the many other clunky games H.E.R.O stood out ahead of all the rest and even today when I play it I am speechless about the craftsmanship of this game. H.E.R.O is a piece of video game history, and this is not only one on the Atari that is so, although a version of the game on the Commodore is more common the Atari one is amazing to play.

The four letters of the game H.E.R.O stand for: "Helicopter Emergency Rescue
Operation". They also stand for the ‘hero’ played the game whose name is actually Roderick. With his Special helicopter like backpack propeller, he was intended to help lost miners in Mount Leone.

The risky rescue operation takes our hero Roderick armed with a Laser beam and six dynamite rods per game section to attack obstacles in his way. As a player you fly Roderick through countless bays and try to rescue a miner at the end of each game section. At the beginning, this task is really quite easy to master. With the increasing complexity of the game, one becomes increasingly aware of the burden of obeying the law of gravity, where without thrust the character is taken independently towards the floor. This will kill you instantly, especially to hit the ground or the walls coated with a deadly red substance. With limited energy reserves in mind, which are shown in a bar, and with every movement of the propeller and enabling the Laser beams consuming it you quickly start to feel the pressure and start to sweat. The pressure increases even more if you run out of dynamite, or throw it against a wall which plummets you into total darkness, in this instance claustrophobic states are then bound to happen.

Due to the great presentation of the game, you can put yourself, with a healthy dose of imagination, in the threatening situations Roderick finds himself in. As if the dangers alone already would not be sufficient, many inhabitants of the mountain such as spiders, bats, snakes make ones life harder. In later sections, you can drown in underground waters if you fail to successfully negotiate the stone pillars placed unfavourably close to the waters surface. In such cases, one can only hope that no tentacles from the dark depths shoot out and grab you.

H.E.R.O is therefore a wonderfully playful fabulous and highly imaginative game that must be played. Because I like this game so much, I am willing to ignore the fact that the graphics are somewhat chunkier and the game play a bit easier on this version than on the Commodore, as you can still feel the depressing and claustrophobic atmosphere and the playfulness of the game no different. H.E.R.O therefore remains a perennial favourite that continues to entertain even some quarter of a century on from when it was released.