Ok you’ll have to indulge me for a few minutes. The 1983 original Halls of the Things (HOTT) for the Spectrum shaped my life more than anything else. From the weeks of waiting to get it and actually expecting it to look like the cover, to the gut wrenching disappointment of no sound, no(ish) animation and more controls than I had fingers. But this was ALL my money, you didn’t just move on to the next game back then. You played them, no matter what. [Except The H.U.R.G. obviously - Ed. ]
So I played it. And played it. Until eventually I had the kensho realization that the graphics, sound, keys, none of that matters; is it fun? is the bottom line. And yes readers, this was nearly more fun than the other game young pubescent boys play.
So from there it’s your typical story of a young impressionable kid corrupted by hidden messages in games. Years of using HOTTs ZXNM controls brainwashes him into using VI as his IDE of choice thus (thankfully) causing him to miss the obscenely high paid jobs using Visual Basic until eventually he ends up…well here.
Yes the original game is broken in many ways and this remake by Andy Stewart doesn’t address them (in fact he’s basically ported the original assembler to C#), but this was an incredible game at the time and one everyone should try before they die (which will be very quickly, probably with cursing about the keys and speed).
Get it from here.
I think claiming a causal connection between HOTT and VI is a tad tenuous but it’s always nice to hear of another young life successfully ruined
That reminds me of a game that I want to play again!!! But I don’t remember it’s name. There is a DOS game with a similar concept. The difference is that the walls are blue and the main character is made by two zeroes that represents eyes (I think). The character shoots some colorful letters that reflects to walls and kills enemies. The goal was to destroy all the hives from which the enemies are coming. It was really fun game and I will be more than happy and thankful for any information about this game! Thank you!
Thank you for saying nice things about a game that devoured most of my childhood. You are right about the multiple keys; I enlisted a friend to open and close the doors for me! Hard to believe now that those monsters made my heart race.