Number 6: Head over Heels

Set in a pseudo-3D environment, Head over Heels is a game like no other. It has a very special atmosphere to it created by the monochrome graphics. A weird story, odd characters and a 3D that works incredibly well for the C64 make this game unique.

Blacktooth, tyrant, dictator and all-round bad guy, has enslaved four other planets and people of neighbouring stars are worried that he might expand further. Enter our heroes, Head and Heels, top-trained spies from the planet Freedom. Each of them has distinguishing abilities: Head can jump high and stun enemies with his doughnut-gun (!), while Heels is the faster runner and the only one who can carry objects. If you get them both together, they can be combined to a single character, with the abilities of both.

As you read the manual, it becomes clear that the programmers of this game have a very vivid imagination. The game features such odd elements as Reincarnation Fish, which take on your personality so that a clone is created when you die - the oddest save game feature ever. Or how about Hush Puppies, who sleep for their entire lives and are used as building bricks. However, they disappear whenever Head enters the room. Playing the game, it gets even weirder, as you discover your enemies take on the forms of jellybeans, fruit machines, daleks, and even Prince Charles!

There are so many remarkable ideas in this game that I don't know where to start writing. For example, you can choose whether you want to liberate any planets or just escape to your home planet. And then there's the option to set how sensitive you want the controls to be. Or the way you can choose how much sound there should be, which is a welcome option, as the effects and the tunes every time you enter a room rapidly become annoying. Or the way that puzzles can often be solved in several ways, which makes you want to kick yourself when you realize you've taken the long way around. Or the sheer size to the game, with 300 puzzle packed rooms crammed into 64K.

You wouldn't believe that a game that looks like something from a ZX Spectrum (and is in fact a straight conversion of a Spectrum game) is one of the most playable games ever, but it is. It truly is.

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