Just what the hell was Horace anyway? He’s some sort of blob with legs, but are those arms or flippers? And are they eyes on his front, or holes? Is that his actual head, or should his head be on top?
Look at him. He’s creepy.
In case you weren’t aware, Horace was a popular character in some 8bit computer games. Horace Goes Skiing is probably the best known of his titles, and is a game in two parts.
The first is not entirely unlike Frogger, where you navigate Hellish Freak Face across a busy road, avoiding the traffic, in order to reach the Ski Shop. Once there, you buy some skis, and have to cross back over the road.
Why the ski shop didn’t think to either a) position itself on the side of the road where the actual ski slope is, or at the very least b) lobby to have a crossing of some sort put in, isn’t made clear. Needless to say, Horace gets run over a lot. Ironically, most frequently by an ambulance.
If he successfully reaches the ski slope with skis (and himself) intact, he gets to slalom down the mountain, trying his best to weave between the flags and avoid the trees. How a ski slope like this operates with damn trees all in the route I don’t know. They never had them on Ski Sunday.
Manage to reach the goal, and you do it all again, only harder!
Bonus Fun Fact: In my house, this game caused an argument when my parents were adamant that “skiing” only had one “i” and the game was wrong. Apparently no words have a double “i” in them.
Anyway. Let me know how well you do.
[includeme src=”http://torinak.com/qaop#l=https://lofi-gaming.org.uk/tools/speccygames/HSKIING.TAP” frameborder=”0″ width=”440″ height=”330″]
Controls: QZIP. Like QAOP, only for people with big hands.
The emulator used is Qaop/JS – a rather spiffy HTML5 Spectrum emulator.
Pingback: Let’s Play! Hungry Horace - deKay's Blog