Help!, despite the exclamatory title, is one of the more relaxed Hudson Soft games from this era. All you need to do is manage movement with the arrow keys, there is no action button. The idea is to knock off the snakes before they make it to the top of the tree. How do you do that without an action button? You touch them! It was so counter-intuitive at first I didn't trust it.

You touch most of them, anyway. Some are dangerous, and you need to avoid them. If the safe ones get by you, they stay on the branch of the tree and if enough get up there that they reach the apple, you're done for. The dangerous snakes, though, they aren't interested in hanging out on the top branch, so you are not penalized for letting them pass.

Mostly, I think this game is easy, at least up until stage 4 or however far I made it, as long as you're not greedy. There's a red striped snake that's worth 10x the safe snake, but it's fast. If you're careless trying to get him, a dangerous snake may come along for you.

More great Hudson Soft artwork from this era. It really brings an extra understanding to what's going on in-game.