Head Over Heels is a classic 3D game from the 8-bit era, which made it to the Amiga with minimal fuss in 1991. The graphics may look dated, but the gameplay remains intact. Lets check it out.

Production Notes:
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Episode: 43 of 44
Game Captured: May 5, 2015
Narrated and Edited: April 10-13 inc., 2018

I couldnt do a 3D and shooter based series without returning to this classic game, which was everywhere on the 8-bits. I never could get very far, and this is about as far as I ever got with it. After the moon rooms in the video, we go to another planet, but after all these years I cant remember how to get there. This was recorded with Camtasia in 2015, and is hopefully the last review which used that software. The audio is out of sync because at that time, the software had a major problem with doing that on my machine. I would always sync each section of the audio to the game, using blank screens to move the audio up. But having spent my usual 30 hours a week on the video, I really couldnt bring myself to go through it this way, so the audio is ahead at the start of the video, then goes in sync, and then lags behind towards the end of the review.

I always had this game in mind for this series, and as usual it got moved around, from #1, right down eventually to #43, as I didnt know what to do with it, where it wouldnt break the chain of mega graphics and sounding orchestrated hits. So in the end, I decided to close the series out with a big hit, followed by two rather less graphically intensive classics. So next week we have the final requested game - Vektor Storm.

Most of the time this week went into research, and its surprising the hours which are absorbed in making these reviews. I got stuck in to the history, and reading up on it. I always thought that Ultimate - Play The Game pretty much invented the genre, but it turns out they used the idea given to them by two other guys, who made a faux 3D game for the C64. There are tons of games in a similar style now, and I remember there was a robin hood game on the Amiga which used the dimension, and lets not forget Diablo and Diablo II, and even Command and Conqueror, used this tilted viewing angle to give the feeling of depth. And to think it all started with Q-bert. Most of the screenshots came from World of Spectrum, although I forgot to include an image of Jon Ritman in the review.

Danscore:
When this game arrived on the Amiga in 1991, many games had been converted from the 8-bits. Manic Miner being a great example of how they can get it very wrong. In this case, the lazy conversion doesnt add anything in terms of graphics. The sound effects, what there are of them, seem ok, and I like the teleport sound. The music sounds more like it belongs in a desert level platformer, but seems ok, if underwhelming. The gameplay is 95% there, with some small differences in the hit detection and speed of some enemies, compared to the 8-bits. In 1991, I had just started with my first Amiga, so everything automatically seemed impressive, even this game. Looking back I guess the charm of the classic game remains, and thats a good thing. But they used a red, white and grey colour theme, with solid colours everywhere like a ZX game, so with no originality to this straight port, there is nothing which can take it above a 6 for me. Its a good game, and its not impossible to understand it, or get into it. But the port suffers from being a port and not a conversion or a dedicated Amiga revision.

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