Reviews
Hammerin' Harry
Irem 1990
Contrary to popular belief, there are some things out there that haven't made it into MAME just yet, and there are also arcade emulators other than MAME which can emulate these. For example, in the days before NeoRAGE Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela made this neat little emulator called just plain RAGE, As proof that I don't just review bad games that managed to find their way into MAME at the hands of some insane completists, I have decided to write one p from RAGE which we haven't seen in MAME yet.

In the arcade and beyond, Irem has largely built their reputation on the shoot-em-up genre, producing a plethora of these twitch games, including the R-Type series, which is considered by many to be the definitive series of the genre (Shmups! is an excellent website covering all manner of shooters, and I highly recommend it.) Irem has also made several ventures into other genres such as platformers, with mixed results.

Hammerin' Harry is one of these platformers that adds a new concept to a much overdone genre, and does it successfully. You assume the role of Harry, a big burly guy (well, short and stocky guy) with a really big hammer. One day, you decide to go out for a stroll, but the Rusty Nail construction company decides your house is currently in the way of their new skyscraper, and sensing this, tears the place down. Of course, not having a place to live anymore and all, you happen to be a little mad about the whole thing, and decide that a little vengance won't hurt (well, actually, it will hurt quite a bit, but that doesn't flow as well in the text, and you can probably figure that little bit out by now. For some odd reason, you happened to bring your favorite implement of destruction with you when you were out, which means that you have it handy to prove the meaning of the phrase "if it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer."

As you may have figured out by now, the idea of this particular game is to cause as much destruction as possible and generally make life miserable for the Rusty Nail Construction Company for wrecking your home. Along the way, you find such things as gift boxes (good for extra points,) a bigger hammer (naturally), a hard hat (which allows you to take a licking and keep on ticking) and a pair of blue trousers (I think they make you jump higher, but they may just be to make Harry look spiffy while he bashes the badguys.) As you might imagine, Harry's primary (and only) weapon is the hammer, which can be used to pound your adversaries senseless, as well as to block proejctiles.

Throughout the game, Irem influences are obvious. The graphics are of a distinctive style found in several other Irem games such as Legend of Hero Tonma, and the overall feel of the graphic environment also resembles that of the R-Types. In the gameplay, there are things like the bosses at the end of each level that also seem as crossovers from the shoot-em-ups (appropriately themed, of course. What fun would it be to hammer snakes flying in all directions?)

Overall, this does turn out to have a lot more originality than a lot of the platformers that I have encountered, and can be fun to play... until you get to some of the hard bits, particularly the level 4 boss (as well as portions of level 4 in general) and some sections where it seems that each time you get hit, you have to go quite a way's back before you can get back. The graphics are clean and effective (although there are some graphic glitches in RAGE.) There is currently no sound for this game in RAGE, so I cannot make any evaluation of the sound. All in all, this one is a good game to kill an hour or two, but does fall into the category of being something you'll come back to later on when you get bored.

Rating (1-10 scale):
Gameplay:8
Graphics:8
Sound: N/A (not yet emulated)
Controls:7
Overall: 7.6

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