Henry's House Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]

Developed by Chris Murray and published by English Software in 1984

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If there's one thing that seems to be synonymous with childhood, it's turning your room into a bomb-site and subsequently being nagged by your mum or dad to tidy things up. This is exactly what has happened to Little Henry, whose escapades about the house have left it rather untidy and he must now clean up the mess he's made. Henry travels from room to room, collecting all of the objects strewn about the place and earning points as he goes. Only once all items in the room have been collected will the exit door open, allowing Henry to progress to the next level.

Nothing is as easy as it seems, however. Certain items in the room have to be collected in order to reveal the key that unlocks the exit door, or trigger a change in part of the scenery to expose other items that need to be collected.

As is typical for these early collect 'em-up games, each of the rooms is patrolled by whole menagerie of bizarre enemies. Whilst not quite as outlandish as the floating dentures or flying toilets, Henry will have to avoid hostile hot water bottles, giant teddy bears and an itinerant toothbrush if he is to succeed in cleaning up the house.

I have to admit that the game features some impressive graphics for the time, especially when compared to it's contemporaries within the same genre. Although the main Henry sprite is pretty basic, the artwork making up each of the rooms in the house is especially good and is far less 'abstract' than in other games.

Whilst the game isn't especially long (there are only eight rooms in the house), the game is actually quite difficult will certainly take a while to beat. Many of the levels require precision jumping skills and plenty of patience to beat.

Speaking of patience, one of my main gripes with the game is the fact it's almost impossible to tell which parts of the scenery are purely decorative and can be touched, and those that are classified as hazards and must be avoided. A good case in point is the living room where touching the curtains will result in instant death; curtains are not something I'd normally consider an endangerment to life, so it caught me off guard when touching them caused poor Henry to fizzle out of existence.

Things aren't helped by the fact that this is one of those games where jumping left or right is set on a fixed movement path. It's not possible to change direction once airborne, so you have to judge each jump carefully before pressing the fire-button. And did I mention that Henry dies if he falls too far? You'll be doing a lot of that...

Henry's House is a difficult game to sum up. It has excellent graphics (for the time) and presentation that outshines similar titles, but the frustrating jumping mechanics and frequent deaths as a result of colliding with parts of the scenery means it starts to get frustrating after a while. The game's charm will keep you playing for a while, but it's probably not something you'll return to that often.

An interesting footnote is that, according to Murray, the game was originally going to be called "Home Sweet Home", but the publisher was keen to cash in on the fact that Prince Henry (Harry) had recently been born. This probably explains why certain rooms contain monarchistic regalia (crows, suits of armour etc.) and why the game's title theme is "Rule Britannia".
#retrogaming

Видео Henry's House Longplay (C64) [50 FPS] канала Al82: Retrogaming & Computing