I haaaveeee theee pooooweeeeerrr !

Let me tell you this: This game is the jewel of Amstrad. Coming out right at the golden age of gaming, it is one of the first games made from a movie. A bad movie, to be fair. It is He-Man: Masters of the Universe, in 80s technology, and 80BC`s taste of entertainment.

First, I want to give you a quick walk-through of the Loading screen. The tab on the left and bottom is your HUD, which will remain there from the loading screen till the end of the game (almost like a gamewatch). The HUD contains a compass, your life and weapon gauges, a "chord" indicator and your score. The image depicts you, as legendary Dolph Lundgren. Could you recognize the guy at the back? He is one of the greatest villains of all times. He is Skeletor!

Here on the left you can see the title screen, which evidences the effort and time put into this masterpiece. It really is a masterpiece. You`ll understand why.

Your in-game info and mission is given by the beautiful and talented Teela in a pop-up window. It may look more like a passport picture of a eastern European transvestite, but she has vital information for your game...well actually no, she has not. Because whatever you do, everything is the SAME in this game. Nothing ever changes. Even the gameplay screen remains the same.

Basically, what you do is wandering around bunch of corridors, which literally feels like Eternia. When you enter a new screen, you`ll notice that it`s the clone of the previous screen with new enemies scattered around the black parts of the screen. The bad guys are from Skeletor`s army, they are the little mighty pixel people flying around.

These sneaky and very dangerous people throw small dots at you, but do not fear - you can do the same. You`ve got to make sure that no small dot hits you. I believe these are laser beams, which confused me a lot for many years. Thinking about the whole concept of He-Man, I don`t remember He-Man`s sword (THE power sword) was able to blast laser. But hey, who am I to judge the successful designers at Gremlin Interactive.

In this picture above, you can see He-Man going after a chord, while the bad guy relentlessly fires his fearsome dot at him. 

The informative gameplay immediately lets you know that you, He-Man, found a chord. You know, that happens in Eternia.

In case too many small dots hit you and the number over the small head in your HUD drops to zero (your lives), you lose the game. Game over. Skeletor and his army of pixel people have won and became the masters of the universe. Shame on you!

pics: mobygames.com