HERO

Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation.

Originally this game was released by Activision on the Atari 2600 at the very end of that machine’s life and was considered one of the best games on that platform. Unfortunately it was also caught in the fallout from the great videogames crash of ’84.

H.E.R.O. had the player guiding Roderick Hero through gloomy caverns filled with spiders, bats, tentacles, moving walls and darkness. R. Hero was equipped with a jetpack, laser beam and dynamite.  Limited power, trapped miner. Reach the miner, finish the level. Simple, no?

Much like Rick Dangerous published many years later, H.E.R.O. was an arcade puzzle adventure but at the time its gameplay was quite unique. Converted to many formats including Colecovision, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum, H.E.R.O. was a simple but surprisingly addictive game.