Game Review: Masters of the Universe, aka He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Ilearth Stone (Commodore 64, Americana)

During the 1980s, the Masters of the Universe franchise was an essential watch on many a youngster’s television screen, with the Filmation animated series of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe a regular at the time. It was perhaps inevitable that a licenced game would be based on the characters, and in 1987 US Gold had Adventure Soft program two games – the Super Adventure, which was a standard Adventure Soft graphic or text only adventure game, and the Arcade Game – which is what this Americana re-release is based on. He-Man is the alter ego of Prince Adam, the prince of Eternia, with his trusty tiger Cringer transforming into Battle Cat whenever Adam holds aloft his sword, proclaiming “By the power of Grayskull. I have the power!” – and together with their allies, they battle the evil forces of Skeletor.

For the Americana re-release, it is perhaps noticeable that as well as it being a later release with an Americana specific catalogue number (AC 0005) that initial copies of the game had the original US Gold cassette. It was only later on that a remastered version of the tape, with both the Americana branding and indeed having Invade-a-Load during loading to play, which does at least ease the burden of waiting for the game to load. The original full name of the arcade game is a mouthful: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Ilearth Stone, which also just shows Masters of the Universe: The Arcade Game on the original’s front cover, shortened further to Masters of the Universe for the front cover of this re-release.

Commodore 128 Conundrums

When this game was first released, the game had to have a circular sticker which said it was Commodore 64 only, and not Commodore 128 compatible. This was primarily due to some rushed code. When the Commodore 128 runs in Commodore 64 mode, there is an extra register in the VIC-II chip available, which you can use to determine the 2Mhz mode of the 128 and activate some extra features, which for example Uridium Plus does. Referencing that register does not have any effect on a stock Commodore 64, because it doesn’t exist, but on a 128 it can prove to be a problem if not done so correctly. Needless to say, for comparison, Uridium Plus works properly, but when loading Masters of the Universe, it fails miserably as you cannot scroll the screen whatsoever – and having tested the Americana re-release with Invade-a-Load, that fails in the same way too. If you do need to play this game on a Commodore 128, then there is a working fixed version of the game which you can use, should you wish to.

Time Seems to Slow Down

The game loads with a basic title screen and no indication of what is to come – just text on a white background. You have to press RETURN to start which seems an odd choice, why is pressing fire to start not available? Once you do start, He-Man is in Castle Grayskull. His mission is clear: he first of all needs to find his magician friend Orko, who has been imprisoned within the castle’s fortress. Find him and free him, and then present him with the right ingredients, and he can magically transform He-Man’s sword of power into an Atom Smasher. This can then be used to break and destroy the fabled Ilearth Stone, which the evil Skeletor plans to use for his own power, having already trapped the Sorceress, threatening to wreak havoc in Eternia, and take over the palace as well as Castle Grayskull.

As soon as you move, and the title theme from the cartoon series plays, it all initially looks nice enough, with He-Man at least resembling the character. And then you scroll the screen to get towards the platform. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. The scrolling is slower than you move, meaning you have to let the screen catch up with you, and when you are scrolling the screen pushing it to the left or right, the music slows down to the same slow pace. Bear in mind that a Commodore 64 can smoothly scroll easily, and can run music under interrupts without any issue or slowdown whatsoever, and it is clear to see that even this early on, these slowdowns are going to spoil your enjoyment of the game.

Trapped in Eternia

If you happen to have the Americana cassette branded re-release, the game loads with Invade-a-Load. When it does, the title screen shows, but the moment that you press RETURN to start the game, He-Man ends up in a location close to the water, and although you can move across the screen left and right, you cannot move or scroll the screen. This is clearly a remastering error but also shows that the game was not tested either, meaning that you basically have a copy of Invade-a-Load but no working actual game in the meantime. That further lessens the appeal of the game and if you are unfortunate enough to own one, it is purely a collectors’ piece only.

By the Power of Grayskull

Back to the working version, you need to make your way around the castle, locating some important objects to hand over to Orko. One of which is to the far left of the initial opening level, but needs to be a case of heading along the top platforms, and then down to a section where the object is, before flicking a lever to make your escape through a door, and back to an initial screen. You then make your way outside past the castle guards. There are six objects which need to be collected for the spell for Orko, and if you do not collect the right six, well you cannot complete the game and it is back to the start for another go. There are also no clues as to what those six objects might be for the spell, so trial and error is the order of the day. They are also randomly placed, albeit in similar positions, each time you play.

He-Man can collect some firepower for the sword and by collecting that object, the sword can fire bullets instead of only being used at close range. However, keep the firing to a minimum, only killing the enemy Clones as you need, because you do not get many shots. You can jump on to a platform that goes either up and down or left and right, but when you do, you rotate around the moving platform, requiring the right move to jump off. Often, this results in you just dropping down to your knees, losing all your energy and therefore losing one of the four lives that you have. It also seems to happen at random too, so that is definitely a bug that should have been ironed out.

Searching for Skeletor

If you manage to get the right objects from the castle, at the top of the castle are a number of turrets. One does include Skeletor himself and one of the objects needed for Orko’s spell, but also this is where you use the sword after destroying the Ilearth Stone. Once you have reunited the objects, the status display shows the sword with magic, and you can destroy the stone and locate Skeletor. Easier said than done though at first, with many of the henchmen set to fire whatever they can at you and determine an early death or at least a loss of some of the body shield beforehand. Some of the jumping can be quite finicky too and the slowness of that jump coupled with the slow scrolling and speed can lead to some frustration to say the least.

The final encounter with Skeletor, should you get there, is massively disappointing too. No combat, no battling, simply touch with the sword and he is captured. There is no game complete screen, no nothing. It feels such a let down especially as there was plenty of room within memory to add something memorable which would have made the previous minutes of tedium be worth it, but alas, nothing. It is a shame because it could have gone some way to redeeming the game but unfortunately was about par for the course.

Status? What Status?

The status display at the bottom of the screen also has a known bug where this does not display the border around the display correctly, or even on certain screens misses out the last two lines of text within the display panel, which again smacks of poor programming. When this does actually function properly, it displays the skulls cracked (effectively your score), the sword status with an energy bar if it has a weapon you can fire, the moons til doom which is your time remaining, and on the right hand side, the lives left, if you are using music or sound effects (toggled with the N key for some strange reason), the body shield you have, and any objects collected for the magic for the sword, or the sword itself if you have cast the spell with Orko. All is normally clear but when not displayed properly, it looks unprofessional.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Masters of the Universe look fine enough when stationary, including some nice detail on He-Man himself and the enemy characters and some reasonably drawn backgrounds. Then you start to scroll the screen, and it becomes apparent that smooth movement is not the order of the day here. Everything slows down including a frustrating mechanic of animation when jumping, and also including the rather nice Ben Daglish rendition of the television series theme, which is short and sweet. The tune also does not loop for whatever reason, meaning minutes of silence as you explorer unless you happen to switch to some rather weedy sound effects that do not work as well as they could do. It looks pretty enough but does not move pretty at all.

Final Thoughts

Whilst the Masters of the Universe franchise was still good business at the time of this Americans re-release, the cold reception the game got the first time around, especially around the lack of smoothness and Commodore 128 incompatibility, should have been enough to put off a budget re-release, even if that did mean getting the game a lot cheaper. It is clear from the moment you start to move around and experience the slow down of the music, the controls and the overall feel of the game, that it was rushed for original release, and unless those mistakes were going to be tidied up and at least make the game play a lot better, it should have not been a re-release whatsoever. The poor gameplay mechanics, the fact that the game is relatively short once you are able to explore around, and the missed opportunity really does insult even at this low price. Even worse, if you have the remastered version with Invade-a-Load, you cannot even play the main game properly and are stuck in limbo in one part of the game, rendering it unplayable. Absolute dross, of the highest order.

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