Planet Bob

Before reporting todays progress, here's a warning for others: Beware if you're playing the "Hotline" crack! The game has re-definable keyboard commands and this particular crack starts the game with the "Fire" action redefined to _nothing_ !!!

 

Well, starting over from the very beginning of course solved this problem

 

While looking for a map, I also stumbled accross the manual, so now I also know the objective of the game. You have to find 4 crowns each of which is located on a different "slave planet". By getting them you're causing a revolt there or so

 

So with a map in hands, finally knowing where to go, today I managed to get the first two crowns already. It's been a very tough journey, beating the individual rooms of the game requires either good joystick skills, creative puzzle solving, quick puzzle solving or combinations of the three.

 

There's also always passages where Head and Heels can only go alone, so they have to find their individual path for a while until they meet again. There's really been amazing level design in several parts so far

 

The crown rooms have been incredibly tough. I needed over half an hour to solve the first and in the second I was so clueless that after a while I did watch that particular part in a Head over Heels longplay video (they're available at Youtube).

Before reporting todays progress, here's a warning for others: Beware if you're playing the "Hotline" crack! The game has re-definable keyboard commands and this particular crack starts the game with the "Fire" action redefined to _nothing_ !!!

Sounds like the making of a particularly nasty 2600 game. It wouldn't really matter what it was about, the gimmick would be that the controls would randomly reassign themselves during the game, so you never quite knew which control did what at any given moment. (That would solve the "this game is too boring" syndrome in a big hurry.)

Hehe, now that'd be a game that everybody would hate with a passion

 

I'm just remembering how I'm already cursing when running into a controls-reversing skull in Bomberman

Man Goes Down also has a controls-reversing mushroom power-up.

After sinking another evening into Head over Heels I have it already solved:

 

A very hard, yet challenging game. I'm sure back in the day one could've sunk several months into it. I didn't because I'm no mapper, but playing it with a map in hands and the ability of state saving was fun

 

I think it's the first time I've been beating one of these games. I remember playing several of them back in the day, but I usually failed because I could only memorize a limited number of rooms until I got lost...

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another isometric action-adventure game in the form of "Airball", but first it will continue with a shoot'em up I think.

Great game. My wife, Kate, finished it. I feel I must point out, though, that you are playing rather a crippled version of the game on the C64. Because of it's rather limited RAM (64k - they wish!) some objects and details had to be simplified. It's best played on the Spectrum or, at a push, Amstrad. Alternatively, here's a rather lovely remake for PC.

Wow! Your Kate is my new Heroine! I would've never made it without tons of state saving and other peoples maps

 

I realize that the C64 version isn't the best, but I'm a C64 fanboy after all

Interesting - the remake has an Linux, BeOS and OS X versions as well.

 

Ooh - a remake of Wizball! Will have to check that one out too.

Ooh - a remake of Wizball! Will have to check that one out too.

 

Uihjah! Thank heavens they didn't base that one on the Speccy version

Wizball's a universal binary

 

HoH is interesting. Took me a bit to figure out the teleporter things. Couldn't figure out how to fire the donuts - it's supposed to be left-control but it doesn't work. Tried remapping the key but that didn't work either

HoH is interesting. Took me a bit to figure out the teleporter things. Couldn't figure out how to fire the donuts - it's supposed to be left-control but it doesn't work. Tried remapping the key but that didn't work either

 

Head needs to pick up the trumpet first, it's in one of his early screens. It's represented by the icon on the left bottom, it gets highlighted once you pick it up. I'll see if I can post a screenshot of the room tonight

Here it comes. It's rather easy to find, basically you just take the left-bottom path on every junction: