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H.E.R.O. is an acronym for Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation, it is also one of the most original games that prolific Atari 3rd party stalwarts Activision ever released. Released for the Atari 8-bit, 2600 and ColecoVision in 1984 during the North American video game crash, this game was criminally over looked at the time because of it. You play the game as R Hero (groan!) who is on a mission to save some trapped miners. Equipped with his helicopter pack (basically a jetpack), a gun and limited dynamite he heads on down through the maze like caverns. You must watch out for bats, spiders and other enemies as you go and will need to blow away walls to progress, but make sure you choose the right route or you will get trapped and have to go back! To make things even harder the lights have blown in some caverns and you will need all your senses about you to progress through these. The graphics in this game are rather nice, they are not only high res but wonderfully coloured too. The audio isn’t special but it does the job here well enough I suppose. The gameplay is the real winner though. It is just so easy to pick-up and play but requires some real skill if you actually want to get far into the game. I loved this game on the Atari systems and this Coleco version is just as enjoyable and even benefits from some vastly improved graphics that make it look very pretty indeed, don’t let this one slip under the radar!

Parker Brothers’ James Bond 007 was the first ever video game to be based on the popular British spy and the series of films he has starred in. Released across a wide range of 8-bit formats the game contains four stages, which are all based on a different film. The missions included here are from: Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and The Spy Who Loved Me. Before each mission begins, the game displays the film’s name, your lives remaining, the vehicle you have and a message from M stating, "Good luck, Mr. Bond." Each mission has a specific goal, with various checkpoints throughout, and varying gameplay. There are also two difficulty levels and you can play against a friend to get the high score. The first level is basically a rip-off of Moon Patrol, the second is very reminiscent of Konami’s Scramble, the third stage is almost the same and the last stage is just a mix of the two. All in all the game really bares very little resemblance at all to the movies it is supposed to be representing and is nothing more than a cheap cash-in on the name. I am not even sure why they bothered to even pretend each level was supposed to be based on an individual movie. Graphically the game is reasonable, if unspectacular. Sound wise there is a nice rendition of the Bond theme as well as decent enough effects in game. Overall James Bond 007 is a pretty underwhelming experience that will no doubt disappoint hardcore Bond aficionados. Not terrible by any means but certainly a very uncreative effort that could have been so much more.

Williams’ Joust certainly has one of the craziest ideas of any arcade video game, those guys back in the 80’s must have been doing a serious amount of drugs! You ride on the back of an ostrich flying around the screen trying to “Joust” the enemy knights from the back of their buzzards. You do this by landing on them or flying into them at least one pixel higher than they hit you. Of course, they will also be trying to do the same to you and also vastly outnumber you too! When you hit them they turn into an egg which drops to one of the platforms below. You need to collect this egg before it hatches back into a knight who will be faster and more intelligent than before. Take too long doing defeating the enemy and a pterodactyl comes along and wipes you out without remorse. After every few levels you get a bonus wave where you must collect as many eggs as possible in a short time. One of the best things about Joust is that two of you can play together as a team, one of the first games to do this! Sadly this ColecoVision version was a victim of the North American video game crash and was never finished. The actual game part seems to be finished and plays very well indeed. It is however completely devoid of any sound and missing any sort of intro/title screens. It’s a great shame this version was never completely finished as it’s a very impressive port indeed. You will just have to stick on some music while you play it!

Taito originally released this game into the arcades in 1982 and it went under two different name changes before it became known as Jungle Hunt, the original names were Jungle Boy (a nod to Disney’s Jungle Book) and then Jungle King (where it became more of a nod to Tarzan). One of the reasons for the name changes was because Taito were threatened with lawsuits. And indeed the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate took them to court for copyright infringement for using Tarzan’s likeness, which prompted the change to Jungle Hunt where the character became a more generic Pitfall Harry like explorer. The game is split into three separate parts that are cleverly linked together. In the first of these you must use the vines to swing through the jungle and not fall to your death. In the second scene you dive from the trees into the water where you navigate a crocodile infested river. You can use your knife to stave off attack and you must keep returning to the surface to get air. In the final part of the game you must rescue your girlfriend from the clutches of some angry (and slightly racist) natives. First you must run up the hill, jumping over the boulders as you go, and then avoid the cannibals and rescue your gal before she is dropped into a giant boiling pot! After this the game repeats, only much harder. In all honesty I was a little disappointed with the CV version of this game, it actually seems weaker in many ways than the 2600 port. Given how this machine struggles with scrolling it wasn’t a surprise to see the parallax gone but the lack of detail and boring flat colours was a real disappointment. The sound isn’t that great either but thankfully the gameplay does hold up. It’s not a bad game by any means but there is no doubt that it could have been much better.