The arcades were formerly a hall where the civilizations of players from another era gathered to enjoy a large number of games of different styles and genres, many of these games being classics of a time and even being considered the best of its kind, but not only that, but also due to its success many of those games were versioned in different video game consoles some years later, some of these titles maintaining much of the characteristics of their versions of arcade, others even improving or changing completely their graphic style or playability, but there were also other games that were never versioned in other video game consoles more current, but remained in the arcade. The game that I will talk about today, has several versions, besides its original arcade version, however, it is the arcade version that I like the most and it is the one that I will talk about to the next.
Today's Retro Review is about: Hammerin' Harry.
Logically, being an arcade game, it consists of an extremely simple story, which is that our protagonist, Harry, after going out to work, a company whose name is: Rusty Nailers Inc, has destroyed his house, leaving only rubble. So when Harry arrives at what was once his home, he goes into an uncontrollable rage when he sees how little is left of the house, so Harry equips himself with a huge hammer, which is even a little bigger than him, and goes in search of those responsible for such an act to apply the classic "Hammer Time" and thus get his well-deserved revenge. And that's how simple the story of Hammerin' Harry is, a game from which you don't need an extremely deep story to side with the main character and want to destroy those responsible for the destruction of his house.
Hammerin' Harry is developed by Irem, company which was the creator of the spectacular In The Hunt (game of which I recently made his respective review) and that years later, the same group of people formed another company and created the wonderful and timeless Metal Slug, so it was expected that Hammerin' Harry had a pretty good graphic quality.
And although it does not have the same graphic style as In The Hunt or Metal Slug, in Hammerin' Harry we are going to see a graphic style a little more "childish", so to speak, since the characters present designs in the "chibi" style, which are characterized by character designs with a big head and a small body. Hammerin' Harry also has a very "cartoon" style, very similar to cartoons or also "anime" style, but it looks pretty good, has many Japanese features and that can be noticed with certain details in the scenarios that just by looking at them we can intuit that they used Japanese elements to decorate scenarios and create that kind of environment.
The character sprites are quite big, much bigger than any other video game of its genre (adventures and platforms), which look very good on screen, I even would have liked to see this game in an original arcade, I'm sure it looked really good. The use of colors are not that flashy, that is, there is a great variety of colors in the scenarios, however, despite being a "childish" game, it lacks a flashy or bright color palette. The scenarios are very well decorated and with good details, and very consistent with the small argument that presents this game, as all the scenarios that we will find in Hammerin' Harry represent places of construction, so we will see all kinds of elements related to this, ie, we will be able to see objects like: wooden boards, cement sacks, wooden boxes, beams, trucks, tractors, that is, all those elements that we will be able to see in a construction site, although there will also be other types of elements and scenarios, but they are very well implemented, decorated and drawn in the game.
Hammerin' Harry has a more than accurate soundtrack, which is not going to amaze us, but it is the right one for this game. It fits very well with the situations that our protagonist is going to go through. The tunes in this game remind me a lot of several old animes, I don't know how to describe them, but it has that essence of 90s comedy anime, so I like it a lot.
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Hammerin' Harry is a platform, adventure game and even has some beat'em up elements, although it focuses specifically on the first two genres I mentioned above. Our main task in this game is to go through a series of scenarios hitting with our huge hammer all the enemies that dare to stop us in our mission of revenge for having destroyed our house. Our protagonist will only be equipped with the hammer, but we will be able to obtain by means of items that we will find in the scenario attack improvements, one of the improvements consists of attacking with greater speed, another improvement makes the hammer grow in such a way that it causes more damage, also we will be able to obtain a helmet that will allow us to receive one more attack, since in Hammerin' Harry we die of a single blow, that is to say, it is instakill.
Hammerin' Harry has very easy, intuitive and simple mechanics, so in a few minutes we can learn all the movements that our beloved and vengeful protagonist can perform. Using his hammer, our protagonist, in addition to making attacks, can use it as a shield, to defend us from frontal attacks or attacks from heights, he can also hit throwing objects from certain enemies and redirect them towards them. Otherwise, Hammerin' Harry is a pretty arcade game, and that can be seen very easily thanks to its simple, but addictive gameplay.
Hammerin' Harry is one of those games that due to its simplicity in mechanics, but well made and implemented, makes it a very entertaining title, it was also developed by one of the groups of programmers and video game developers responsible for some gems of video games such as In The Hunt and Metal Slug.