Live the journey

Back when He-Man was just a flat cartoon on the small telly box, if you wanted to turn it into a live-action movie starring real, human actory type people - say in 1987 - you had to call it 'Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture' and show it in a theatre near you. Soon. That struck me as odd even back then since we'd had 'movies' as opposed to static slideshows since about 1900. Nevermind, there's a He-Man film! It entails Skeletor teleporting around Eternia getting up to mischief of the evil variety by virtue of Gwildor's miraculous cosmic key invention. Chiefly, his royal boniness kidnaps the Sorceress of Grayskull, obliging He-Man and co. to dash to her rescue before he can sap her supreme mystical energy to become an omnipotent scary nutjob. They all end up on earth, transposing the battle to cheaper sets, but I'll get to that in good time.

I'll never forget the catchy little ditty that 'synthesizer' emitted whenever it worked its transcendental magic. Which reminds me, there's also an accompanying computer game of the movie courtesy of Gremlin Graphics. Assuming the role of He-Man, it's our duty to track down eight chords required to activate the cosmic key and return safely to Eternia. Gremlin took the game design route more commonly associated with Ocean; throwing every feasible genre at the wall and hoping what sticks hangs together nicely. So MOTU is a top-down shooter, a hover-disc-mounted fly 'em up, a first-person targeting affair, and a beat 'em up.