Hacker
(Activision, 1985)
Reviewed by Guillaume Chalard

You're taking part in the Magma project, a top secret plan to use the heat produced by our planet's magma to create energy. This endless source of energy could allow a country to dominate the whole world. But several spies have stolen pieces of a very important document and threaten to sell it to federal agents, so you must negotiate with each spy to recover the document. You can travel using a subterranean vehicle, but heat will soon damage it, and during the main part of the game, you'll be only guided by the sound of your sonar. Each spy talks in his own language (Chinese, French, English, Greek or Egyptian) and the subterranean tunnels are a maze. If you buy or sell the wrong object, you'll be blocked later in the game so it's trial and error... It's a very clever and difficult game.

See also: Hacker II.

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Hacker II
(Activision, 1986)

Alexander Cherkazov, a Russian scientist and political strategist, has formulated a plan to overthrow the US government, and intelligence reports indicate that the plan is hidden in a military complex in Siberia. The CIA have enlisted your help to infiltrate the complex and steal the papers. You control a robot and move it around the building whilst evading detection by the security cameras. There is an excellent tutorial built in to the game to get you started, but the game itself is too tricky, and there doesn't seem to be much else to do.

See also: Hacker.

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This is one of those games which has such a simple concept and which is still great fun; it's a manic arcade game with four levels, where the aim is to survive for the entire time limit (roughly one minute) without letting any enemies scale the walls of the fortress that you are guarding, or destroying it! You're constantly being bombarded by the enemy, and you must batter them with your hammer to stop them; if too many of them enter the fortress, they'll capture the flag and you must start again. It's a rather short game, and once you get used to it, it's not that difficult, either. It is very good, however, and both the graphics and music are marvellous.

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This is a slightly weird platform game in which you control a character whose method of killing monsters and enemies is to headbutt them! In each of the nine levels, your character must simply reach the end of the level without running out of energy or time. Along the way, coins can be collected. Some of these will top up your energy or give you a bit more time. Every few levels, there is an end-of-level monster which must be defeated, by headbutting the cannonballs that it fires at you! This is one of the last games that Zigurat released for the CPC and is very little known indeed. The graphics are reasonable enough, but the game slows down considerably when there is a lot of action on the screen, and the gameplay is rather simplistic and limited.

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Hamsters en Folie
(Generation 5, 1989)

Games don't come much sillier than this one, in which your great-aunt has left you her hamster shop and trusts you to take care of them and make a successful business out of breeding and selling them. Ils sont fous, les Français! You need to buy food for the hamsters, and as more hamsters are born, you must also buy cages and open more shops to prevent overcrowding. Other events also occur in which you can make or lose money, including such hilarious things as your prize hamsters winning a beauty contest, being kidnapped by a terrorist (!), and standing for the European elections! There is no real end to the game, but it's such a laugh that you won't care.

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Hard Drivin'
(Domark/Tengen, 1989)

This game made a great coin-op and was quite realistic - for its time. There are two tracks - the speed track and the stunt track - for you to race around in your high-speed road car. However, there are other vehicles on the track, so don't crash into them! Initially, you'll be impressed by the true 3D graphics, and it's also fun at first to watch replays of your many crashes. Unfortunately the game is really slow and the engine noises are terrible, but the worst thing of all is the steering system, which makes negotiating the tracks a nightmare. You're constantly fighting to keep the car on the road.

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Mack is working on a construction site and has to complete the work on three sections of the site. On the first level, you have to collect beams and place them in the gaps in the platforms, then collect the jackhammer to secure them in their place. On the second and third levels, you have to collect all the boxes. Transport between platforms is accomplished by elevators and springboards which you jump on. Watch out for Vandal and Osha; touch either of them and you lose one of your three lives. This is based on a very old game, and it shows. Three levels is not a lot, and the graphics are primitive. The first level is annoying in that you are supposed to place all the beams before picking up the jackhammer, but it's easy to pick it up accidentally and be unable to complete the level.

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This game was released in the same year as the inaugural Harricana event - a snowmobile endurance race across the frozen landscape of Quebec in Canada. Loriciel even entered a team for that event! The game consists of eleven stages with twenty competitors taking part, and one competitor is eliminated at the end of each stage. The boundaries of the course are marked with posts, and it can be difficult to see which direction the course goes. Fortunately, you can stray off-course, but you may crash into a tree or a log. The game is relatively easy - I reached the ninth stage without any major problems - and the graphics are detailed, although some horrendous colour schemes are used. There's some nice music on the introduction as well.

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Piloting a harrier jet, you launch from an aircraft carrier and fly over an island towards the city, bombing everything as you go along. Enemy 'planes fly towards you and can fire missiles at you, as can the tanks and launchers on the ground. Once you've returned to your aircraft carrier, it's the same thing again, but faster - and any game which is as repetitive as this will not grab your attention for long. Both the graphics and the sound effects are poor and this is one game which really shows its age.

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Harvey Headbanger and Hamish Highball like nothing better than to fight with each other, and this game sees you and either a computer or a friend taking control of these two characters. When they collide, both of them bounce around the screen uncontrollably for a while, but if you collect some cocktails, this will enable them to recover more quickly. When Harvey and Hamish move, they paint the tiles on the screen to their own colour, and cocktails will magically appear if you can draw a circle in your colour. To win, you will need to do the same thing to your opponent. You'll be addicted for quite a while, especially if you can find a friend to play against, and there are five skill levels if you're playing the computer, but ultimately the game is fairly limited.

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