Big Blue Disk 40/bbd40.zip/DESK.TXT

Text File | 1989-12-12 | 6KB | 104 lines

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^C^1ARCHIPELAGOS^0

    Have you ever played one of those "save the world"-type games? You know,
 the kind in which you fight endless hordes of slaughtering aliens, tanks, or
 bison? Well, this game is different!

    ARCHIPELAGOS, published by Fanfare, has no hordes of aliens, hopeless
 situations, or mindless destruction. It is an action-oriented, thinking man's
 game. In the game scenario, you find yourself in a hoversphere sometime in the
 distant future after earth has been destroyed by man. Your mission is to
 cleanse the land and make it habitable by mankind once again.

    As you travel in your hoversphere from one isolated region of land (or
 "archipelago") to another in this three-dimensional game, you experience a
 very real sensation of traveling smoothly 10 feet above the ground. A
 striking graphical difference of this game, as compared to other three-
 dimensional games, is that none of the shapes in the game are generated with
 the three-dimensional routines. You view all shapes as they should appear,
 instead of as the usual blocky, obtuse shapes found in most three-dimensional
 games.

    A stone tower obelisk in each archipelago is responsible for the infection
 in each land. Land parts that are infected appear in colors different from the
 normal, un-infected parts. (NOTE: Different graphic modes have different
 colors.) Viral trees which sink into the ground and rise again in different
 locations infect the land around them. Little eco-eggs provide you the energy
 to move around and dispatch disinfectant. Normal palm trees do not do anything
 except get in your way, like all the other kinds of trees on the landscapes.
 Of course, there are the Necromancer and the B-900 Banshee.

    ARCHIPELAGOS supports both the mouse and the keyboard, both of which are
 easy to use. If you choose to use the mouse, you will have to use the keyboard
 as well for a few things, such as pressing <F2> for viewing a map which
 will prove very useful to you in playing the game. This map allows you an
 overhead view of the entire archipelago and an enlarged view beside it giving
 you a representation of your exact position.

    Movement in ARCHIPELAGOS is as easy as controlling a crosshair on the
 screen and clicking on the square to which you wish to move. To turn (or
 rotate even as much as 360 degrees!) move the crosshair to the right or left
 edges of the playing area, and you will rotate slowly in the desired direc-
 tion. For ultra-quick rotation, press the right mouse button and move the
 mouse left and right.

    Your objective on each archipelago is to destroy the menacing obelisk.
 This feat is accomplished by destroying all the nodes that are land-linked to
 it. Most nodes will not be linked by land, so you will have to actually build
 land to link islands in order to destroy them.

    After all nodes have been destroyed, you have 90 seconds to get back to
 the obelisk and click on it to destroy it before moving on to the next archi-
 pelago. You will not find repetition within this game -- there are 1000
 archipelagos! Destroying the obelisks on some archipelagos requires more than
 10 minutes, so you'll get plenty of playing time out of this game!

    ARCHIPELAGOS is not copy-protected, but you must enter a code from the
 manual in order to access the game. It supports CGA, MCGA, TGA, EGA, and VGA
 monitors and requires 256K of memory. The EGA/VGA monitors require 384K.

^R -- John Romero

 ******

^C^1STARGLIDER II^0

    This game is amazing! It is representative of the vastly-improved three-
 dimensional games that seem to be appearing lately.

    The designers of STARGLIDER II have created a universe with a few local
 solar systems, each with their own group of orbiting planets. You can fly your
 spacecraft all over a planet, then straight up and out of its atmosphere
 and over to another planet or solar system -- all in realistic three-dimen-
 sional graphics!

    The game features arcade action with a real plot. A lot of things have
 happened since the Egron Empire has been taking over the galaxy: it is now
 building a Death Star-like base which you must destroy with a neutron bomb.
 Your first mission is to locate all the ingredients necessary -- including a
 learned professor -- to build the bomb, and then to use it to blast the bast
 into oblivion!

    Along the way, you must obliterate any and all Egron forces you encounter.
 You can access a network of tunnels within the planet where the surviving
 natives live in grey hangars by flying into domes and towers on the surface.
 Each time you locate one of these hangars, you will be rewarded with useful
 weapons or information.

    While playing the game, you will undoubtedly be bombarded by enemy forces
 whose weapons will take their toll upon your ship's shield. However, there are
 many ways you can regenerate your ship's energy and fuel, such as hover above
 a volcano, fly along an energy fence, or capture an energy node.

    STARGLIDER II runs on the IBM PC and its compatibles in CGA, EGA, VGA,
 Tandy, and Hercules modes with 512K memory. It supports keyboard, joystick,
 and mouse input devices and requires DOS 2.0 or higher.

^R -- John Romero

 *****