Halls of the Things

I can remember sitting at my family's Commodore 64 for hours on end, playing every game I could get my hands on, back in the day. Back then we didn't have IGN, there was no G4 and no trailers for games like we have now. Sure there was the occasional TV add for a game....but for the most part you had to rely almost completely on the game's box art and blurb on the back, or a small blurb about the game from a mail order section in the back of a computing magazine (such as Compute's Gazzette or ZZAP!). I can remember perusing through these mail order sections in magazines and making lists of games I wanted to play, based simply off of the game's title, the short blurb and a fuzzy black and white scan of the box art.

One such game that had captured my imagination was Halls of the Things.  Being a monster movie freak, I was totally intrigued by the description for the game:  Seven Magical Rings are hidden amongst the seven floors of a tower, where an escape key lies.  Of course all the levels are crawling with the evil blood-thirsty Things!  Mwaaa-huaaa-huaaa!

The praise for this game was immense in 1983 when the game launched on the Spectrum ZX system.  In 1984 it was ported to the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC.  It was hailed as a new breed of game.  A graphical adventure of epic proportions, perfect for those gamers who stay up till 4am giving it just one more go.  Here are some of the adverts that appeared in UK magazines from '83/'84:

I wanted to play this game in the worst way when I was kid.  My imagination ran wild!  What could these Things be?  What were they after?  What Master did they serve?  Well, I never got to play that game as a kid.  Only recently have I had the chance to sit down and play this on a Commodore 64 emulator.  So was the 20 some-odd year wait worth it?  Meh. 

It's not a bad game by any means, but it's really hard to rate a game that is 28 years old!  It plays well and it is fun, but it's really hard to imagine that Halls of the Things really set the gaming world on fire back in '83.  Would I recommend it to retro game hounds?  Absolutely!  I've been having fun with it. 

It got a great review from Zzapp! Magazine in the UK....which I will add here for your enjoyment.  So if you've got a few hours to kill and you're in the mood for some retro dungeon crawlin' and monster slaying then check out Halls of the Things!