Manos: The Hands of Fate is well known as far as cult classic movies are concerned, but it’s a notoriously bad film. Most of its fame was gained from being featured on Mystery Science Theater. Until a few years ago I had never even heard of this movie, and then a game based on it was released for the iPhone. The developers behind this title fashioned it as a retro 8-bit style title, and that’s what caught my attention. Since then I’ve become a big fan of the movie. It’s obscure and somewhat abstract, and those are its best qualities. The game based upon it is my go-to mobile title when I’m looking for some quick and challenging platformer action. Manos: The Hands of Fate has the same spirit as the movie, and it’s actually really enjoyable.
In this game you play as a family man named Mike. He, along with his daughter, wife, and dog get lost in the desert and it’s up to our protagonist to make his way to a nearby motel called the Valley Lodge. You begin in a desert stage filled with snakes and horny teenagers throwing their beer cans from their parked car, but eventually Mike makes his way to the spooky resort and meets up with a shaky groundskeeper named Torgo. From here there’s not a lot of story revelations, but the game does follow the film fairly closely. That is, until the final area where Mike and Torgo take to the skies via airplanes and duke it out dogfight style. There are plenty of creative differences between the game and the movie, and that’s part of the charm here. Enemies are composed primarily of characters that had only a few seconds of screentime, but the references are memorable. Manos almost reminds me of old movie licensed games from the NES era, but the difference here is that the developers didn’t opt for a cheap cash in like so many did back then.
Manos is a typical side scrolling platformer game. Mike is a normal guy, but he can still jump as high as Mario, but his offensive capabilities revolve around firearms. His life bar is located on the top left side of the screen, and getting hit or even jumping on top of an enemy will cost him a notch on this. The virtual controls consist of left and right buttons as well as jump and shoot. You begin with a simple handgun that fires one horizontal shot straight ahead, but every level contains a shotgun power-up. This is not only more powerful, but shoots diagonally as well as forward which makes it extremely useful. When you are hit by an opponent you lose this ability and go back to the standard handgun. Each stage also contains at least one 1-up, and a ‘hand of fate’ that increases your life bar by one. These items are well hidden, but encourage exploration because the rewards are worth the risk. The secrets aren’t that difficult to uncover however.
The level design is a definite step up from most other platformers available on the app store. The game features smart enemy placement, and though their patterns generally consist of walking back and forth you will still need to rely on reflexes and timing. Platforming is generally very tricky and can be downright frustrating. This holds especially true when you’re dealing with flying enemies, and the problems that come from these encounters make for some frantic moments. You will be forced to jump, or even wait for monsters to get close enough in order to damage them. The game also has some really well designed boss encounters. The key to victory here, as with many of the early video games, is attack pattern memorization. Manos mixes things up a bit by making this a little more complex and I appreciated this a great deal. For a simple platforming title on the app store this game had a significant amount of thought put into it.
Manos: The Hands of Fate is one of those retro throwback titles with pixelated graphics. Everything looks a little blocky and abstract, but this is quite a beautiful game overall with a fun and vibrant color scheme. The enemy designs are generally cute, and many of the boss characters are impressive in scope and take up nearly the entire screen. This looks like a game that could easily have been released in the 80s, but in motion it’s clearly a step above anything you would see on the NES or Master System. This is because the developers didn’t retroactively add flicker and slowdown, and I’m thankful for that, but an option for it would have been nice. The backgrounds are my favorite part of this game’s graphics. They’re surprisingly detailed, and the developers pulled off some nice scenery using the pixel graphics. My favorite of these is the paintings of ‘the master’ that you see on the walls of his estate. Overall this is an excellent looking throwback title; the developers pulled the style off better than most others have managed to do.
The style transcends to even the soundtrack. Every composition here consists of simple bleeps and blips, and the music definitely sounds like something you would hear in a NES game. The composer did an excellent job of making moody songs that fit the action extremely well. My favorite of the bunch is the theme of the first stage, and Torgo’s theme is also very memorable, but everything overall is very well done. In many of these throwback titles the classic illusion is shattered with realistic sound effects, but that’s not the case here. This game uses the same bleeps and blips, and unlike many classic titles there isn’t anything that’s too high pitched or bad on the ears. They’re all charming, likable, and really hit home the retro feel of this one.
