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Aggggh! Gosh, somebody better help us -- a horrible
steaming comet is hurtling towards our beautiful bluey-green
planet at a large rate of knots, and clinging to its
knobbly exterior are a whole bunch of revolting germs.
No, not Gerry the popular beatnik folk hero, these ones
are far more evil and if the comet crashes into our
planet, they'll infect everyone and certain people will
be jolly peeved that they closed down half the National
Health system because everyone's going to need a doctor
if this comet can't he stopped.
So,
a hero has to be found to fly a spaceship and intercept
the comet before it reaches Earth. That hero, dear reader,
is you. Needless to say you have to face all sorts of
heart-stopping dangers, five different ones to be precise,
before you reach your goal.
When
the game commences five monitors sit at the top of the
screen, and four more lurk along the bottom (but the
ones at the base of the screen are irrelevant to the
game). Normally the middle of the screen displays a
view from the window in the side of the space ship,
but when one of the monitors at the top of the screen
flashes, signifying that there is an ongoing emergency
situation, a scrolling message appears at the bottom
of the screen informing you what is going on and the
screen changes to show the relevant emergency game.
There
are five of these sub-games and they all have to be
survived to ensure that you reach the comet. The first
is a situation where the antenna dish on the top of
the spacecraft gets out of alignment and has to be realigned.
Moving the joystick left and right turns the antenna
and a signal sounds. When it's at its highest pitch
the dish is correctly aligned. The big problem is that
a timer swiftly counts down as you're performing the
manoeuvre and if it reaches zero before the dish is
aligned the game terminates, the mercy mission is a
failure, and just to rub it in the screen fills with
bananas to show you've slipped up. Ha!
The
second is el massivo problemo -- the coffee machine
has gone horribly wrong and you're just about to die
from lackofcoffeeitis! Well, if the pilot gets to the
planet, the more caffeine in his system, the better
his reactions . . . Nine icons are displayed on-screen
and using a cursor and the joystick fire button you
must switch the correct one off and on so that the right
amount of ingredients are put into the coffee machine.
Another emergency arises when the life support system
breaks down, and naturally if the situation isn't quickly
rectified you'll die of suffocation and get the banana
treatment. Getting the life support system fixed involves
shooting balls with a cursor. It sounds strange, but
apparently these balls are messing up the air duct by
bouncing around at high speed. Once again, there's a
time limit to complete this sub-game, or it's banana
time.
Next
the computer breaks down. The problem is that four of
its external LED's have turned renegade and are not
conforming to normal standards, ie: some are switched
on when they shouldn't be and vice-versa. The four little
lights are shown on the right hand side of the screen
and many wires trail from them. To make things all correct
and ticketty boo again, you have to switch them on or
off to restore the correct pattern on the display. This
is done by moving a cursor up and down the wires and
lighting/dousing the LEDs by switching the current on
or off with the fire button.
The
final emergency is just like Missile Command --
the onboard computer suddenly discovers that there are
a whole pack of missiles homing in towards the spaceship.
Luckily, though, you've got a cursor and an unlimited
supply of ABMs to fend off the incoming threat. When
you've destroyed enough missiles, the ship is declared
safe and the mission can continue.
Once
you've survived twenty emergencies (they happen randomly)
you reach the comet and finally get a crack at averting
the biggest threat to the human race since F111's flew
over Libya. Flying low over the comet you must destroy
the gruesome looking Germ Bags which sit on the surface.
Decontaminate the comet and it's back to earth as a
hero . . .
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