Game:

Zoom! (1988)

Category:

Review

Duration: 36:15

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INTRODUCTION:
As H.E.R.O. You will have to rescue the workers of a mine system that have ended up trapped in a cave system after an accident, for this you have your unicopter and a set of 4 dynamites (per level).
Your unicopter has limited energy so you must complete each level before it ends, if you run out in the middle of a rescue mission you will be trapped.

Inside the caverns you will find dangers such as lava (red and yellow blocks), water (flashing blue and cyan blocks), and a variety of enemies. The list of enemies is as follows:

-Bat, watch a vertical area of the map trying to catch victims.
-Spider, lives in the walls ignoring everything, only if you bother her it will be a danger.
-Fly, you bastard, like any good fly does not stop moving.
-Roach, disgusting bug that crawls along the walls of the cavern.
-Crab, a terrestrial creature that is looking for the feet of any unsuspecting person who dares step on it to herd a good pinch with its clamps.
-Snake, with a very bad idea, lives in the walls and from time to time it stretches to catch prey, be careful not to be one of them.
-Crocodile, lives in water and occasionally pops its head out to breathe and look for food.

You are armed with a short-range electric arc pistol which can fry any critter that gets in its way except those that live in the water since the electricity will disperse through it without causing more than a slight piss off.

There are very dark areas of the mines so the workers installed a lighting system, be very careful, it is very delicate and any blow can break it.

To complete the game you must rescue the 16 people who are trapped in the caverns. You are their last hope.

-Score, lives and continues

Each bug you kill will give you 100 points, each dynamite you use will give you 50 points, each rescued person will give you 500 points and a bonus will be added for the remaining energy of your unicopter. Evaluate whether or not to kill bugs since every 4096 you will receive an extra life as long as you have less than 4.

Apart from these extra lives you have the option to continue once, which will fill your lives, energy and dynamites.

-Tips

Don't waste the dynamite lest you get stuck!

Learn to level your unicopter, a quick finger on the height control can be crucial at times.
Do not trust any aquifer, you never know what may live in it or when it will come out of there.

Take a little time when you enter a screen to assimilate the patterns of the enemies and the dangerous areas, but be careful, don't get soaked that the energy runs out!

Good luck hero!

REVIEW:
This game is very faithful to the original game, so it is going to depend on if you like the 1984 game, whether you like this version or not.

Graphically it is kept the same way with extremely simple graphics, but where the original game always had black backgrounds this version has not, and a nice effect is that the border will always change to the same color as the background.

The sprites has been redrawn and the original annoying beeper fx has been changed to better ones. The game exists in two versions – one with intro and one without. If you have AY interface or a 128k machine the intro will have AY music.

This new version is very huge, there are 16 levels with tons of rooms. This could be done by reusing some screens and mixing them with new ones.

Just like in the original game you have dynamite to blow up walls, and when flying be careful to not fly into the lamp, if there is one of these on the screen, because then the light will then go off. You have unlimited shots in your electric arc pistol, but not unlimited power for your unicopter, so especially in the last levels you have to avoid flying more than necessary.

You can only play with keyboard, there are no joystick support, and a few places is extremely tough to get past (and they are off course some of these that are being reused!). One of these places is at 9:47 where it is very hard to fly under the lamp without breaking it, because touching the lava means instant death, and if you break the lamp the screen is impossible to complete. But besides that this is a worthy comeback for H.E.RO. (Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation) and if you liked the first game this is a must have, and if you find the game too tough you can use the build in cheat mode: When you are going to start a game you can hold down B and you will enter cheat mode: infinite lives, infinite time, infinite bombs but no score.

The game was made by Dr. Gusman in 2020

Rating = 84%

Download here: https://github.com/gusmanb/HERO/releases