1
Elk Attack - the video game.
3
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Hahn
5
Elk Attack was written in 1987 as a last gasp attempt to sell a 2600
6
cartridge before the VCS market completely disappeared. The name Elk Attack
7
is an inside joke, way inside. Elk Attack was never released. What you are
8
playing is an almost finished prototype game. It has a few rough edges, but
9
is playable. Please don't send me complaints about bugs in the game, there
12
Elk Attack is shareware. You are free to copy the binary file and give
13
copies to friends, just please include this file which explains the rules. You
14
are not allowed to charge for copies of Elk Attack. If you wish to charge for
15
the distribution of Elk Attack, either in its binary form, or in a cartridge
16
please contact me about purchasing production rights to the game.
18
The rules below were written assuming you were using a cartridge.
19
Descriptions of using the joystick, etc. will not be right if you are running
20
Elk Attack on a 2600 emulator.
22
I can be reached by email at:
24
hahndo@teleport.com or hahntronix@aol.com
29
Insert the ELK ATTACK cartridge in your ATARI 2600 Video Computer
30
System (VCS). Turn the VCS on.
32
Plug a joystick into the left controller jack for a one player game,
33
insert another joystick into the right controller jack for a two player game.
35
Press the left joystick fire button to view the GAME OPTIONS screen.
36
Press the SELECT switch to choose a 1 PLAYER or a 2 PLAYER game. Use the
37
joystick to change the round number (1 is easiest, 10 is hardest). Push the
38
joystick up to increase the round number, pull it back to decrease the round
41
Press the left joystick fire button to start the game. During the game
42
you may press RESET or SELECT to return to the game options screen.
46
Your player is called the ROLLER. You start the game with 5 lives.
47
You loose lives by running into ELK (but not always). You gain an extra life
48
for every 20000 points you score. You score points by eating the blocks on the
49
screen. You eat a block by moving your joystick in the direction of a block.
50
The ROLLER will shoot a beam at the nearest block in that direction, it will
51
then roll into and eat that block. If not block is present in the direction
52
selected, the ROLLER will move one unit in that direction (the screen is 11
53
units wide by 8 units high, thus the maximum number of blocks on a screen is
54
88). The current round is over when you eat all the blocks on the screen.
58
On every screen, there are some special blocks called ENERGY blocks.
59
ENERGY blocks make the ROLLER invulnerable to ELK collisions. Normally when
60
you collide with an ELK, you die. If you have eaten an ENERGY block, you
61
become energized and can roll over ELK, stunning them (you also score 500
62
points for this). While you are energized, your ROLLER will be changing
63
colors, and there will be a background sound. Eventually the energy you get
64
from an ENERGY block runs out. As your energy runs down, the ROLLER's color
65
changing will slow down, and the background sound will lower in pitch.
68
For now you remain energized for about eight seconds. The color
69
changes do not slow down as your energy runs down.
71
THOSE DEADLY KILLER ELK
73
Your opponent in this game are heavily mutated killer ELK (they don't
74
even have antlers and feet anymore). As you move from round to round, the ELK
75
get faster and smarter. At higher levels they can sense when you are energized
76
and move away from you. As they become more intelligent, they hang around
77
remaining blocks, making it harder for you to remove all blocks from the
81
The ELK do not currently behave completely as described above. They
82
are pretty stupid and their speeds need to be changed (it's too easy at the
87
You score points in two ways. When you eat a block, you send out a
88
beam at it first. The longer the beam, the more points you get (it is takes
89
more nerve to shoot a long beam, because you are vulnerable to ELK attack
90
while rolling up to the selected block). You get 10 points for a beam up to 2
91
units long. You get 20 points for a beam up to 4 units long. You get 40 points
92
for a beam up to 8 units long. You get 80 points for all beams over 8 units
93
long. You also score points by rolling over ELK (500 points). Rolling over ELK
94
is a nervy way to score points, as you must be sure not to run out of energy,
99
When a player completes a round, the ROUND OVER screen is displayed.
100
The player is shown his score and the number of the round he is about to start.
101
To start the next round, the player presses his fire button or moves his
106
When a player has a fatal ROLLER-ELK collision, the DEAD ROLLER screen
107
is displayed. The player is shown his current round and is told he is next. If
108
the game is in two player mode, the other player will be shown his round
109
number and told to go next. The player resumes play by pressing the fire
114
Alas we all come to this screen sooner or later. High scores are
115
displayed here. If the player presses his fire button, he is returned to the
116
GAME OPTIONS screen. The round displayed will be the number of the highest
117
round the player finished. The player may thus continue playing at higher
118
levels of difficulty without having to mess with the easy early rounds.
121
There should be some extra reward for starting at a higher round
122
number, say 1000 points per round number. The player would collect this
123
reward after finishing his first selected round (e.g. if the player selects
124
round 10 and finishes it without blowing all his lives, he gets an extra 10000
125
points added to his score and some appropriate message is shown on the ROUND
130
In two player mode, players alternate each time one of them loses a
added
removed
games/docs/elk.doc
