The Hair Raising Adventures of Mr Hair (ZX Spectrum)

by Lee ' Chops' Stevenson

Mr Hair is a character created by Lee 'Chops' Stevenson quite a while back. Being a Spectrum fan Lee jumped at the chance to learn AGD (Arcade Game Designer) and create his first ever game based on the character he created years ago. The games loading screen is another zinger by Andy Green with some wonderful original AY music by Pedro Pimenta. The game is free and any donations towards it go straight to the Southend Cystic Fibrosis Charity. There is also a physical version of the game which you can buy from BitmapSoft.

At first glance Mr Hair seems like your regular AGD platform game. However, this is a proper mystery adventure as you are given absolutely no clue as to the what's, where's or why's about anything in the game other than the fact you have to get out of the place whilst avoiding a number of obstacles. I'm reminded of those Ultimate games which informed you of hardly anything other than the game controls which let your imagination run riot whilst you went on a voyage of discovery.

In this game you can move your single solitary hair with a face, up, down, left, right and jump using the familiar QAOP and Space combo, or a joystick, Kempston or Sinclair type. Start the game by selecting 1,2 or 3 and suddenly you are in the mind of Mr Stevenson, and what a wonderful place it is. A few of the initial screens reminded me of Bugaboo with their mushrooms and other greenery and later screens will remind you of other familiar games.

There are many surprises to be found along your escape route, which is not as obvious as it seems. As you run and jump around the platforms you find you can also climb around vines, ropes and foliage too. Also watch out for flashing lava and other fatal spiky looking hazards.

There are plenty of lovely looking, well animated bad guys with various patterns of movement scattered along the way to freedom including bats, fireballs, complete with some fabulous particle effects firing out in all directions, spiders, multi-coloured star thingies, also with a particle effect vapour trail, giant droplets of fire, weird flashing alien infinity symbol things and many more. 

As you progress you'll notice the stars I mentioned earlier which can be collected. These open various barriers which bar your route. They begin flashing once you're able to pass through them. There's nothing showing in the status bar at the bottom of the screen besides number of lives. There's no score or anything else. It's a very straight forward game in that respect, not much to worry about besides dying.

It's obvious this game is a labour of love and the developer has tried to cram in as much as he can into it. There are a massive number of screens to navigate through and it feels even larger as you enter different portions of the same screen at different periods of your journey. The variety in the graphics used for the screens is also large scale. Never a dull moment in this game.

There's a little bug with the lives display showing as one once you get more than nine. When you collect an extra it corrects itself but when going to the next screen the second digit is covered with a heart. But it doesn't really affect the game at all.

The graphics are a treat. They're so varied that, like me, you might feel a tad excited to see what's next regarding the environment and the bad guys. The in-game music is a jolly, original tune, if I'm not mistaken, and when it's game over you can almost hear Freddie's vocals.

For something which looks so wonderful it's quite mean on the difficulty, and you've only got five lives to play with, which didn't last yours truly five minutes. I've been told by the developer that practice makes perfect and it's not as difficult as it first appears and the more I played the easier it became. But sometimes when your hair dies he reappears at a set position rather than the last position you entered a room and because of the way the game map is designed you can find yourself having to traverse difficult screens you passed previously all over again, which made things a bit more hardcore than necessary.

There are hearts to be found which will grant you an extra life but even with these and weeks of play I still imagine it's going to be a challenging game and you'll have 'Another one bites the dust' ringing in your ears for quite some time.

Lee has tried to use every trick in the AGD book, and then some, for his first game including multi coloured objects and enemies, moving platforms and particle effects. The game is also extremely imaginative and pleasing to the eye. It has its flaws but nothing that'll spoil your enjoyment of the adventure. It's a solid first game from the developer and I can't wait to see the sequel which was almost finished as I wrote this.