The Return of Heracles was written by Stuart Smith and published by Quality Software in 1983 for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit and in 1985 for the Commodore 64. You may remember Stuart Smith from his previous efforts: Fracas and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves.
My prior playthroughs and reviews of Smith’s earlier games had been very positive and thus I was eager to play this latest effort and I was not disappointed. Like his earlier efforts gameplay is nonlinear and its scoring system gives it some replay value.
The game takes place in ancient Greece and allows you to control up to several different characters. Some of these you play at the same time if you form a group while others you’ll play if your current character dies. The latter is a strength of the game. You’re not likely to lose the game through loss of life as you can immediately leap into the body of another character from Greek mythology should you perish. This development decision thus places the game’s focus on exploration and interaction with the environment. The characters which you might play includes quite a list of classical heroes; each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.
The game also doubles as an educational primer for Greek mythology. If not completely accurate it stimulates you to do some reading and research of your own. The main quest involves completing 12 labors for Zeus. Some of you may recall the twelve labors of Hercules and wonder if this game’s title was a way to avoid copyright problems. In actuality the true name of Hercules WAS Heracles and it was later changed to Hercules by Roman literature.
In the Greek Mythos Heracles is performing these twelve labors at the service of King Eurystheus but in the game Smith has his characters performing these labors at the behest of Zeus. You can visit the Oracle of Zeus who will assign you the task of completing a specific labor or you can explore the game world and complete them during your travels. You can visit the Oracle of Delphi for hints.
The twelve labors that you have to complete are:
- Slay the 12-headed Hydra
- Kill the Nemean Lion
- Find and recover the Golden Fleece
- Slay the Minotaur
- Kill the Stymphalian birds and recover the Stymphalus Treasure
- Solve the Riddle of the Sphinx
- Rescue Penelope
- Recover the Cattle of Geryon
- Rescue Helen of Troy and lift the gates to the city
- Rebuild Thebes
- Slay the Mares of Diomedes
- Find the Golden Apples of Hesperides
The game world is huge and your screens shift from an overland view to a city-wide view and even to single room. All of these places are connected by portals and when you enter a portal you’ll find you are then at a different location. The map is so large it did require that I visit the Oracle of Delphi a couple of times to receive clues. Sometimes clues might include a marker or location that is close to your task you’re to undertake to help you better get your bearings.
This is the game’s greatest strength. It’s huge nonlinear map with all of the locations and the non-player characters and wandering foes is just pure enjoyable chaos. This landscape is absolutely deadly and survival is extremely difficult. The game would be extremely hard if you were not able to jump from character to character. I still struggled mightily in the beginning of the game until I arrived in Colchis near the Golden Fleece. It was here that others wanted to join my party and I ended up with a party of four. This made all of the random encounters and fixed boss battles much more manageable.
The combat is mechanically handled. You can close with an opponent and switch to a dagger (you’re both then occupying the same square) or you can fight with your sword (at which point you’re adjacent to your opponent). Where the game becomes pure enjoyable chaos is that each of the wandering monsters, Greek heroes, and non-player characters all have a will of their own. Events continue to transpire on the screen outside of your party’s actions. Monsters may engage with and fight other monsters while non-player characters may be working with you or against you. The NPCs can even take treasure from the area that you may have had your eye on. It’s all quite a bit of fun and what you would expect from a Stuart Smith game. The documentation has over 250 different monsters and foes with their statistics listed. There are many NPCs, monsters, and mythological creatures that you’ll encounter during the course of this game.
Once you complete your final task you are given a congratulatory screen.
You also get a very cool depiction of Zeus:
The Return of Heracles is another reminder how much fun Stuart Smith’s games are. The game took me about 10 hours to complete and it was probably my favorite of the three different Stuart Smith games that I’ve played. I believe I’ll get to experience Stuart Smith one more time with his Adventure Construction Set that was released in 1984.
Next up on the docket is Ultima: Escape From Mt. Drash. Thanks to William Hern, my technical engineer and production designer, I was able to get Escape From Mt. Drash working.
Until next time…
I always found it weird that Heracles is pretty much always referred to by the Romanized form of his name even though it’s the greek versions of his stories that we recount and all the other characters use their greek names as well. I discussed it with a history blogger a while ago, and the best guess we have is that Hercules remained a popular folk hero among the people in Latin-speaking and later romance-language-speaking world even during the centuries where the Greek sources had become obscure. So when the Greek myths were repopularized during the Renaissance, audiences already knew of the legendary strong-man called “Hercules” even if they weren’t familiar with the other characters from the older versions of the stories.
Ross it’s an excellent point and I’m glad you brought it up. I had wondered the same myself. Thanks for commenting