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- Product: DRAGCITY U.S.A. Version 3.0
-
- Your uncle died and has left you his dragster. Its not state of the
- art. In fact, its a manual 3 speed job with the engine in front of the
- driver. You've decided to cast good judgement aside and race it
- yourself.
-
- To drive, you need an accelerator and a clutch. If you have a mouse,
- the right button acts as the accelerator. When pressed, you accelerate
- otherwise you slow down. The left button is your clutch. Just tap it
- whenever you want to change gears (and initially to leave the starting
- line). If you don't use a mouse, the space bar can be used as an
- accelerator (pressing it once starts accelerating and pressing it again
- starts slowing you down). Also the ENTER key is the clutch (which works
- just like the left mouse button).
-
- The first thing you need to do is stage. (Note, before you begin the
- stage you can press ESC to activate the menu bar and choose gears to
- alter the gears as desired.) This is done by accelerating up to the
- starting line. As you enter the staging area, the upper yellow light
- will turn on. As you complete staging, the 2nd yellow light goes on.
- Once this occurs, the remainder of the lights will begin to cycle. You
- want to engage the clutch as soon as the bottom green light goes on. If
- you engage the clutch too soon, you "red light" and have to start over.
- You also need to adjust your engine speed (using the tachometer) to get
- a good start while not starting too slow, "going up in smoke", or
- blowing your engine. Your RPMs when you leave the starting line have a
- big influence on racing time.
-
- Once you have starting racing, you will change from the starting line
- view to the racing view. As you race, you will need to shift. Shifting
- too soon will result in lugging down the engine and a slower racing
- time. Shifting too late also slows the racing time. You'll have to get
- to know your car to determine the optimum points. If you rev your
- engine too high, it will break so be careful going above "red line". If
- you blow your engine while racing, the red light in the middle of the
- oil gauge will glow (you may be able to coast across the finish line if
- you are going fast enough).
-
- At the completion of the quarter mile, your reaction time, elapsed time,
- total time, and top speed are shown. If any value is in the top ten, it
- will be followed by an asterisk (*).
-
-
- TOURNAMENT PLAY
-
- When 2 or more racers are participating, you can use a tournament
- format. The players are randomly seated into 1 of 4 positions in the
- semi-finals. To advance to the next round of competition, the racers
- must win the round. If the player has a "solo" round, they must finish
- the race. Blown engines, red lights, etc, disqualify the racer from
- advancing. In 3 player games, one player is given a solo run in the
- semi-finals. In 2 player games, both players are given solo runs in the
- semi-finals.
-
- After the semi-final round, the winners advance to the finals. The
- player with the lowest elapsed time goes second (since lane choice is of
- no advantage the faster racer gets the advantage of seeing the run of
- the competitor and thus knows how good of a run is required to win).
-
- At the beginning and end of each round, the tournament board is
- displayed. This shows the racers that advanced as well as the racing
- times for all competitors. To return to racing, press any key (or click
- the mouse).
-
- By Richard G. Nikula
-