Henry's House

I never liked this game on any platform. The Atari version has nice and colorful effects and 'rasterbars', which I always like.

The game itself is nothing to type home about, and as these very old games tend to be, it's way too difficult to be enjoyable. You basically have to memorize everything and play pixel-perfectly to proceed, and any experimentation is always punished.

Basically you have to hone your skills until you memorize everything perfectly and can play instinctively in some kind of Zen mode.

The reward is not worth the work.

The reason why in 1987 a simple game like this would've sold more than its slightly crappier C64 version in 1984 is that by 1987, not many games were released for Atari computers, so any game would seem like a mirage that you have to get.

Another reason is that in 1984, the C64 was still fairly new platform, but it was almost drowning in all kinds of games - many much better ones than this. People wouldn't have been so ready to give up their money for this, when so many better games were already available. We have to remember that games like "Impossible Mission" came out the same year.

So I don't know what Philsan was trying to prove here, but I think the results would be confusing at best.

There are games that are better on the Atari, games that are better on the C64, and games that are 'pretty much equal' on both.

This game falls to the 'better on the Atari' category, although the difference is not big.. especially considering this came out three years after the C64 version, so better polish is expected.

I like the presentation, the visuals, etc. but the game itself is just too tedious for me.

Owning an Atari has changed my viewpoint about many C64 games - nowadays there are games that I never play on the C64 anymore, since I can play the Atari version.. if I wanted to play this game, it would be one of those games.

CHEAT MODE unlimited lives, built-in back-door, type CPM on the title screen.

There is supposedly a bug that can crash the game if you jump and land a certain way.

impossible to get pass screen two well for me anyway

I remember waiting for the end of holidays to play Henry's House again at home.

The greatest retro game of all time in my opinion. The controls are spot on and the level design is borderline genius!

The only slight disappointment is that there isn't an ending screen - you simply loop back to the first level.

However, you can't really complain with what's here. I didn't touch this game for about ten years but was surprised by how well it holds up today. I still hate that damn bird though!

Great game; even by 1987 standards it seemed like an "old school" platform game, but it was done so effectively. I was particularly impressed with the second screen.

I didn't find out until later on that it was a conversion of an English Software C64 game from a few years earlier (Mastertronic must have had a deal with them; I think they converted ElektraGlide to some other formats.) It explains the homages to various games of that time.

Ironic that the JSW-influenced sprites on one screen of HH look really nice, and the graphics on the "real" Atari JSW were atrocious. Oh well :-/

There's not that much difference between the C64 and Atari versions (Atari has a slight edge), except that the music in the Atari version is better :)