Masters of the Universe: Power of He-Man

"How good is his power?"

The "Masters of the Universe: Power of He-Man" for Atari 2600 was released back in a time in which the original He-Man series could be seen on television, so this would be one of those products which all the fans would love to have. When you could originally buy it, it would even come with a small comic, a thing that would please all those fans even more.

After a really small introduction sequence in which we can see the main character turning into the strong man shown in the series, you will engage in a game with better visual and sounds than most of the games for this console.

While most of them have a poor sound and old graphics, even if in this game you can't clearly recognize all the characters (due to the images having huge pixel blocks, something quite frequent in this console), you will at least be confronted with an introduction scene which is rather well drawn. Concerning the sound, this game features more sound effects than the ones usually heard in games for this console, so you will be able to hear all the lasers, weapons and even the soft sound of your airship's engine. Every action you perform in the game seems to have their own sound effect, something frequent nowadays but rather unusual back when it was released, and the music in the introduction scene can be easily recognized as being the theme from the series. The sound is really repetitive, but strangely you won't even notice it since you will be too busy playing.

Then, as soon as you start playing the actual game, you will notice one of the best features about it, and I am talking about its difficulty level, so hard that it may sometimes become frustrating to the player. Even if you are an highly skilled player, you will find it quite hard to control the airship (in which He-Man appears to be currently in) and take it to Grayskull's castle, while avoiding (or destroying, it's up to you) the shots the enemy unit (which can be seen at the bottom of the screen, and re-spams after being killed) throws at you and destroying a boomerang that he always seem to be surrounding you, no matter how many times you destroy it. This long trip will probably resemble a 2d scroller to you, in which you just have to travel while performing the task said above, and it is all that you will find in the first part of the game.

Once you've accomplished that first section, like it is said on the box of the game you will have to face GraySkull himself in a battle in his own castle, but that won't be one of your problems, mainly since by that time you would have already defeat the most difficult part of the game. Ok, some elements of the scenario will be moving, but is that important? No, at least if you are a skilled player.

Even in the slight possibility that you would play this game without knowing anything about the story from the series, the game itself won't tell you anything about it, and you are most likely not to ever get to to know that GraySkull was a strange skeleton like monster who was the most powerful of He-man's (the main character) foes.

Despite the difficult of the game itself, you will also have to try beating some of the bugs this game appears to feature, like lasers who seem to follow your airship wherever it goes (making you sometimes lose your 3 lives in less than 1 minute) and a land mine that can hit the enemy unit normally seen under you, but which you can only seem to perform sometimes.

Now, I must refer that this is one of those games that probably you will put away after finishing once, and due to the rarity of it, that's surely a game only worth getting (or searching for) by people who are huge fans of the series or general collectors.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/23/05