The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules
By Terry Taylor
Published by Zenobi Software
Release Year: 1987
Version Played: ZX Spectrum

Having once been an eleven year old socially awkward extremely nerdy boy on the verge of becoming fat during junior high school, I should ease through this game! I first read the twelve labors of Hercules in sixth grade, possibly between reading Elfquest Book One and The Amityville Horror (if those haven't painted a thorough picture of the awesome kid I was, I was also reading Piers Anthony's Xanth books and his Incarnations of Immortality series. I was also just getting into Dungeons and Dragons! (And don't forget my interest in text adventure games!)). But I don't remember them all that clearly because that was a long time ago and I don't think Disney's Hercules remained too true to Hercules' story. Although if it had, would it have been the first Disney movie where the tragic family death scene that begins the film was caused by the star of the film?

Having not thought about them for several decades, here are my guesses as to the twelve labors (in totally random order):

1. Kill the hydra.
2. Skin a lion.
3. Tell some cranes to fuck off.
4. Clean some horse shit.
5. Fuck a bull.
6. Bake a perfect Genoise sponge.
7. Take Cerberus for a walk.
8. Don't rape anybody.
9. Punch a harpy.
10. Eat a golden apple.
11. Help Jason steal a sheep's skin.
12. Torture a stag.

Let's see how many I guessed correctly as I play . . . THE LABOURS OF HERCULES!

How the game begins:

Greek heroes out there with origin stories like this and it took over two thousand years before Gail Simone would come along and write "Women in Refrigerators"?!

How the fuck did Disney make a movie about this guy? What was the pitch meeting like?

Joe Haider: "Hey guys! Hear me out: Hercules the musical!"
First Disney Exec: "Hey! I've heard of that guy! Sounds great!"
Second Disney Exec: "Doesn't that guy kill his wife and children?"
Joe Haider: "But that's the beauty of it! Disney films always begin in tragedy! It's built in!"
First Disney Exec: "I can see the big murder musical number now!"
Second Disney Exec: "I don't think so. I mean, technically, Hercules is also a product of rape. So will that come into play as well?"
Third Disney Exec: "But if you think about it, was it really rape?"
Second Disney Exec: "You're fucking lucky this is 1992 with comments like that, you pervy dope."
Joe Haider: "Maybe it needs some tweaking. Get rid of the rape and the murder. Jam in a love story and maybe a sibling betrayal with Hercules as the pawn. Have him fight lots of monsters!"
First Disney Exec: "Look, how many of our viewers have ever read about Hercules? We can portray him however we want. As long as they've merely heard of him, they'll flock to the theaters!"
Second Disney Exec: "Can we fire this other guy? He's really creeping me out."
Third Disney Exec: *puts his penis away* "Wait. What? Is that not allowed anymore?"

Drunk, temperamental men really, really need you to believe in religion.

Hercules goes to the Oracle and is told to submit to Eurystheus, King of Mycenae, which makes me think Eurystheus spent a lot of money lobbying the Oracle at Delphi. "Send as many lost losers my way as you can and there's more drachma where that came from, baby!" It's like getting free slaves who feel they have to submit to your twisted machinations because it's their destiny!

Instead of one more page of introductory text that could have gotten Hercules started with his labors, the game begins outside the gates of Eurystheus's citadel. I hope the entire game isn't just trying to get an audience with the King of Mycenae! Even if it isn't, I hope I can solve all of the puzzles barring me from the audience so I can attempt the twelve labors. This is stressful! I spent like two theoretical pounds on this game!

If anybody is curious about my first three moves of this game, here you go:

I expected a pleasant olive smell not a "Phew!" Where the fuck have I been sticking that thing?!

Look, when you get a response like that, you have to pursue it, don't you? Figuring it was just an automated response to "smelling" anything, I decided to smell my finger and my balls. They both elicited the "Phew!" response which tells me, as Hercules, I'm a rank motherfucker who loves to finger his own asshole.

Also, this game might be racist.

Or would racist actually be my reaction: "Masturbation is Greek? I thought that was anal!"

Upon entering the gate, I realize this isn't even the gate to the citadel or castle or whatever. It's just the gate into the town of Mycenae! So now I have to waste time finding the castle before finding the king before telling him how the Oracle of Delphi sent me to him to provide free labor and before he, upon hearing that, acts surprised!

The royal throne room isn't hard to find and Eurystheus doesn't even feign surprise. I knew this whole Eurystheus/Delphic Oracle thing was a fucking scam.

The first labor: Bring Eurystheus the body of the lion of Nemea! Why? I don't know! I guess he's into hipster taxidermy.

Labor I: Skin a Lion.

After bumbling around the countryside for a bit because Hercules doesn't own a map, he arrives at the den of the Nemean Lion! Trying to kill it simply results in Hercules getting mauled. Some demi-god! Being that there are items littered all over the landscape which might possibly help in this situation, I'm beginning to think this is less a game filled with puzzles and more a quiz to make sure you've done the reading.

So, I decide to do the reading. I thought Hercules defeated the lion by wrestling it while naked but that didn't work. I mean, it didn't work to defeat the lion. It did work to get me aroused! But then I remembered I'm not a furry and stopped being aroused rather quickly. So I checked out Wikipedia which was no help at all because it said, "Hercules eventually shoots it in the unarmored mouth with an arrow!" Oh, does he now? This game would beg to differ! Fucking Wikipedia. Nobody gets any smarter by relying on a bunch of self-appointed know-it-all nerds in charge of keeping all of the facts straight. So instead, I turned to GreekMythology.com to discover Hercules strangled the lion to death. So I did that! Stupid lion!

Was this cheating? This feels like cheating! But I guess it's the nature of this game. Maybe like the jerk who wrote the Three Musketeers game to honor Dumas, Terry Taylor wrote this game to honor the Greeks. It's not like I'm going to come up with the exact way Hercules solved all of these problems without rereading the myth. I'm not as creative as an Ancient Greek storyteller! The only one I remember is where he diverts the river through the stables to clean them. Oh, and using fire to defeat the hydra.

Upon delivery of the Nemean Lion, Eurystheus doesn't act impressed at all. He just gives me my second labor: defeat the hydra!

Labor II: Kill the Hydra.

This one should be easy! I know I have to cut off its heads while my sidekick cauterizes the neck so that more heads don't sprout out of it! But I don't have a sidekick so I'll probably just cauterize the wounds myself. The only problem is that I can't get the hydra out of its lair where I'll have room to decapitate it nine times. So it's time to do my reading!

Trusting Wikipedia this time, I discover that Hercules fired flaming arrows into the hydra's cave to lure it out. No problem! I have access to fire and arrows! This will be a piece of Greek cake!

Except I guess the Greek's don't have cake because fuck if I can figure out how to shoot a flaming arrow into the cave of the hydra to lure it out. I guess I'll have to do more reading! Except this time, it will be the solution to this puzzle!

Hercules is apparently too incompetent to ignite anything except a rag tied to an arrow. Stupid me trying to light rags and arrows separately to cause a fire to force the hydra from the cave when what I needed to do was "tie rag" to the arrow before Hercules could figure out how to light it. I'm such an idiot!

After forcing the hydra from the lair, it's a simple matter of cutting off its heads, cauterizing the neck wounds, dipping the remaining arrows in the hydra's blood (because I remember that bit!), and fucking off back to Mycenae.

To complete the task, you have to approach King Eurystheus and type "give head." Fuck! If I knew the labor could be accomplished that easily, I wouldn't have bothered with the hydra!

Labor III: Torture a Stag.

First thing I try when the King gives me this labor is "give head" but the game responds "That is not possible!" I guess Hercules ends his blow jobs by biting off the recipient's penis.

Finding the stag is easy enough. I just mapped the forest maze and sat in a tree until it appeared. But how did Hercules capture it?!

With a net, of course! Good thing I already mapped the entire game so I know where the net is. I drop the net on the stag, tie it up, and take it back to Artemis's temple. Because Eurystheus isn't as huge a douche in this game as he is in the myth.

Labor IV: Bake a Perfect Genoise Sponge Capture a Boar

How many innocent creatures did Hercules have to fuck up to repent for killing a few innocent humans? Isn't this just like mankind?! I mean, maybe the hydra wasn't exactly innocent but can the hydra help the way it was made? It was born of monsters so it was just being true to its nature by being gross and poisonous and deadly. And the Nemean Lion probably mauled a careless jogger in the Nemean countryside, so of course it had to be put down. That's the Law of the Edge of Suburbia! Mankind can encroach on nature but fuck if nature can encroach on mankind! Stupid animals! Although I bet it's only a matter of a few years before the raccoons come riding into the suburbs on the backs of mountain lions whipping opossums around their heads like the scariest fucking flails in history.

Since I'm mostly just finding the location to complete the next labor and then reading about that labor online and then reading the solution to the puzzle because I'm too stupid to figure out how to implement the solution in the game, why am I not just following the walkthrough step by step? I can just pretend like I'm figuring them out and save a lot of time! Like how I caught the stag! Nobody knew I couldn't figure out how to net the stag on my own!

After declaring that I'll just the walkthrough, I manage to capture the boar without even reading about Hercules's fourth labor! Not that anybody will believe me since I just declared I could cheat and nobody will ever know! Stupid past me putting doubt into the accomplishments of future me. What an asshole.

Labor V: Clean Some Horse Shit.

What the fuck kind of labor is this?! I guess Eurystheus and Hera have decided Hercules can't be killed and now they just want to humiliate him.

Being that I remembered how this was done, it's the easiest of the tasks. I mean, I knew how the hydra was to be killed and I couldn't figure that one out, so maybe I'm not as smart as I want people to believe I am.

Labor VI: Tell Some Cranes to Fuck Off.

Oh come on! This was the easiest labor yet! I just made some noise and shot the dumb birds full of poison arrows! I don't think King Eurystheus is trying anymore. Also, more poor animals have just suffered for my repentance. At least cleaning the stables was a reasonable chore for a person trying to make amends. It was hard work, helped out the community, and maybe taught Hercules a bit of humbleness. Except Hercules didn't actually do the labor he was supposed to and instead changed the local environment by diverting a river, almost certainly, causing a lot of fucking problems for the surrounding ecosystem and communities.

I don't think Hercules is actually repentant.

I just realized this was the first twelve step program.

Labor VII: Fuck a Bull.

Doesn't everybody?

To fuck the bull, Hercules had to navigate the ocean and make his way through the labyrinth. After that, I just played some sweet music for the bull to get it in the mood and it became docile (which I think must be a synonym for "down to fuck").

I can't believe how easy these got once I insisted I was going to cheat! I haven't even Googled any of Hercules's labors since the Stag!

Labor VIII: Punch a Harpy Steal Diomedes' Beautiful Mare

I think Eurystheus has an addiction to fucking livestock. Now I'm wondering what the hell he's doing to that hydra head behind closed doors.

Hercules has been tasked to complete these labors to repent for murdering his wife and children. To complete this labor, he murders Diomedes and feeds Diomedes to his own man-eating mare. How many labors is Hercules going to have to complete to redeem himself of this new murderous deed?!

Labor IX: Don't Rape Anybody Steal Hippolyta's Girdle.

Is it actually funny that somebody with "hippo" in their name wears a girdle or am I just stupidly immature?

That was a rhetorical question! Obviously it's hilarious.

My guess is that the wine and cake are going to come into play during this chore! Also some fucking!

I meant consensually!

Well one of my guesses as to Hercules' labors was to not rape anybody, so I think this must be the labor I was thinking of.

Reading up on this myth didn't help solve the problem at all. I kept trying to lure Hippolyta into her bedroom with wine and cake and my cock but she just wasn't interested in any of it. Like, who isn't interested in cock? I mean cake!

The solution to this puzzle, which nobody would have ever gotten correct in a million years, is to leave the Amazon village and wait until night falls. I tried waiting inside Hippolyta's hut and inside her bedroom but that didn't work. So why the fuck would I think night would fall immediately if I wandered a little ways out of the village to wait? Fuck you, Terry Taylor! I knew it was only a matter of time before you completely betrayed me! I might not have guessed some of your earlier bullshit (like typing "tie rag" to prepare an arrow to be lit. At least I can somewhat conceive of having come up with that if I were twelve years old and didn't mind this game lying around unsolved for months while I occasionally dipped back in to try new things) but this solution was fucking ridiculous. You could at least let me wait creepily underneath Hippolyta's bed! Now that would have been a reasonable solution!

Labor X: Help Jason Steal a Sheep's Skin Steal Geryon's Prize Ox.

More fucking theft! Let's hope I can accomplish it without killing Geryon but I'm not fucking holding my breath.

Who's the real monster in this story?!

So now I'm back to consulting the walkthrough because the in-game help system is no help at all. Having created this game before the Internet existed, I guess Terry thought the only book on Hercules was whichever one he had read before writing this game. So whenever you type "help," the game says, "Brush up on your mythology!" And I respond, jauntily and full of pep, "Okay!" Then I delve into the Internet and discover seventeen different versions of the Hercules myth that all suggest he did something different. Most of the myths have Hercules killing Geryon with the poison-tipped arrows so it's a good thing I hadn't read the myth before deciding to kill Geryon with the trident. And none of the myths have Hercules catch the ox in the way the game does. Of course, the game does give a more direct hint in this case. I'm really thinking about other labors like getting the girdle from Hippolyta. "Brush up on your mythology!" the game says as I read all seventeen different versions, none of which are "Hercules hid outside Hippolyta's bedroom until she fell asleep and then sleep-creeped all up in her shit to remove the girdle and run awkwardly back to his ship with a huge boner."

Anyway, I got the stupid ox for Eurystheus to fuck. Next!

Labor XI: Eat a Golden Apple.

The apple really is solid gold so Hercules refuses to eat it. It's not like that would be much harder than most of his other labors. Gold is a pretty soft metal, you super strong freak of nature!

I don't know why Eurystheus wants the golden apple since he's rich as fuck. I guess it's one of those rich people things. He just has to have one because no other rich dudes have one. Or it's nature's perfect butt plug.

Hercules travels to the end of the world, kills a dragon, and drinks from a mysterious pool which he'll probably regret in the endgame causing me to restart the whole stupid adventure from the beginning. Oh well. Next!

Labor XII: Take Cerberus for a Walk.

To successfully capture Cerberus, Hercules has to enable an alcoholic which, I suppose, isn't the worst thing he's done so far. He also has to feed Cerberus cake which doesn't make any sense, does it? Was that in one of the legends? Or is it common knowledge that dogs fall asleep after eating cake? I'm beginning to feel Terry is just taking the piss.

Once Eurystheus gets a close up view of Cerberus, he becomes too terrified to fuck it. He forces Hercules to take it back to Hades. Once that's done, Hercules has atoned for killing his wife and children! Now everybody can live happily ever after! Except for Megara. And Hercules' children. And Geryon. And Diomedes. And the Stymphalian birds. And the Nemean Lion. And the Lernean Hydra. And Hippolyta (I mean, not in this version. But a good number of versions have her dying at Hercules' hands).

It was all worth it in the end!

SCORES

Game Title: Straight to the point. Every twelve year old nerd knew exactly what they were soon to be about.
Puzzles: What's weird is that the puzzles that followed the myth nearly exact were the easiest puzzles to solve. They were logical and straightforward even if you didn't know the myth. But too often, the "help" command directed you to brush up on the myth which only then confused the puzzle. Take getting a ferry ride from Charon as an example. In the myth, Hercules doesn't pay. He either sneaks on or intimidates the Ferryman (although I didn't read every fucking version, so maybe he does pay in the one version Terry Fucking Taylor based this game on). So when the game says, "Brush up on your mythology," I brushed up on my mythology and spent way too long trying to force Charon to let me cross. In the end, you actually need to sell some wine to a drunk centaur to get the coins to pay the fare! On the whole, I wouldn't say any of the puzzles were more unfair than any other late 80s/early 90s adventure game that needed a way to extend the life of a game with no replay value.
Gameplay: Most text adventures have mazes. Most of the mazes are a simple matter of using inventory tricks to map. This game has several different mazes with various methods of making them more difficult. In this single moment of my life where I feel charitable, I'll say that I appreciated the effort. One maze was made tougher by having a movement limit before you die (the best and most interesting one by far. I enjoyed mapping it (which is probably a first for a text adventure maze)). One maze was on the ocean so you couldn't drop items to indicate which rooms you had been in (this one I never mapped and just navigated it by feel since most of the islands lay in different compass directions. I'm still surprised, without mapping, that I found all the different islands). And one maze had you find an important item well before you find the central location which might make players think they'd searched the entire place. For a game that had you travel to a wide variety of places to do all twelve tasks, it was handled elegantly.
Graphics: This was a pure text adventure. The only graphics were when you died and the screen flipped out in concentric squares of various colors.
Concept: Come on! Any young nerd would have enjoyed taking on the role of a guy who murdered his wife and children and then turned to religion to make him feel better about it!
Fun Time: I keep forgetting to keep track of how many hours I spend on these games. Let's just say I spent too much time on this one, an hour or two a day over the course of a week. I really should have just used the walkthrough!