Extropia’s Retro-Gaming: ‘Head Over Heels’

Extropia’s Retro-Gaming; ‘Head Over Heels’.

‘Head Over Heels’ was programmed by John Ritman, with graphics taken care of by Bernie Drummond. It was originally published in 1987 by Ocean and is available on multiple formats.

The version I played was for the ZX Spectrum, and for some reason the style of game that included ‘Head Over Heels’ was popular on this format. But what style is that? Why, the ‘Isometric 3D game’. This was a visual look that began in 1982 with Q-bert, and would be used in many other games, such as Zaxxon, Knightlore and Populus. Head Over Heels’s programmer, John Ritman, had previously coded an isometric 3D ‘Batman’ game, and ‘Head Over Heels’ used the same game engine.

Anyway, in this game, you play not one character but two. According to the plot, ‘Head’ and ‘Heels’ are two friends who have been kidnapped by the Black Tooth Empire. They have to escape, and doing so will involve them working together in order to figure a way out of the five worlds of Black Tooth, Egyptus, Penitentiary, Book World and Safari.

In terms of gameplay, ‘Head Over Heels’ is simple enough. You can alternate between ‘Head’ or ‘Heels’ who, at first, are separated from one another. There are 400 rooms in total, and the goal for each room is to figure out how to escape from it. Since this mostly involves jumping over obstacles, or jumping from platform to platform, it’s probably most accurate to describe this game as an Isometric 3D puzzle platformer.

I said that ‘Head’ and ‘Heels’ start off in separate locations. Each character also has different abilities. In the case of Heels, the first thing you notice about this character is his enormous feet. Unsurprisingly, these give him the ability to run twice as fast as ‘Head’, who has no feet at all, but instead is a head with two arms. A downside to Heels is, having no arms, he cannot pick anything up. However, there is a bag that Heels can find, and once he has this special item, he can carry objects.

You have to do lots of jumping in platformers, obviously, and you would be forgiven for thinking Heels must be very good at jumping. I mean, just look at those kangaroo feet of his! But, actually, he can only jump half as high as ‘Head’. Not only can ‘Head’ jump higher, he also has a limited ability to glide around corners, thanks to little wings under his arms. There is also a special item just for Head, which is a ‘donut gun’ that can fire donuts at enemies.

It might sound like Head is a more useful character than Heels, but both are needed to complete this game. Some of the rooms contain foes that only Heels’ superior speed can defeat. And some rooms require the two characters to come together. Once you have managed to unite Head with Heels, Head can be made to sit on top of Heels and they become, effectively, one character that combines the abilities of both.

‘Head Over Heels’ is not a fast-paced game. It is not like Sonic, insisting on you racing from stage to stage. There are no time limits hurrying you along. Its emphasis is on figuring out the puzzle in each room. If you make a mistake, you can exit that particular room, and when you re-enter the puzzle will have reset and you can try again. That is handy for when you want to reset the puzzle, but it also means that if you have to return to the same room multiple times as you figure your way around the maze of rooms, you’ll have to redo the same puzzle multiple times. If a puzzle seems impossible, that’s most probably because only Head (or Heels) has the requisite ability. Or maybe it needs Head/Heels combined? Having, effectively, three different characters gives you scope to try to solve the puzzles in three different ways.

Downsides? Getting lost and having to redo the same puzzle is a bit of a pain. Also, the point of view that Isometric 3D affords the player is not all that friendly for pinpoint platform jumping. Expect to waste lives from inadvertently miscalculating the distance from one platform to another, or from touching some lethal object. Oh, and you often cannot tell, from appearance, which objects are lethal and which are safe to touch. Also, both Head and Heels have 8 lives each, but if you run out of lives for one character, the other will not be able to complete the game without their friend, so it’s pretty much ‘Game Over’, even if Heels (or Head) has all their lives intact.

But, really, these are pretty small gripes. The game looks good, the two characters are very distinctive, and the puzzles are not too taxing but, at the same time, not insultingly easy. I really enjoyed this game.

Thanks to Ocean for the images