HELTER SKELTER Monsters everywhere! Running around, falling from the sky, jumping from platforms. Monsters above, monsters below, monsters heading straight for you! Catch them if you can, and bounce on them while they're vulnerable - but be quick, because when the timer runs out your bouncing ball will burst. GETTING STARTED Helter Skelter is controlled using either the computer keyboard or a joystick, but keyboard control is generally easier. One or two can play - screens 61 to 70 are impossible unless two are playing, and so these screens are skipped when only one person is playing. Press F1 for a one-player game, or F2 for a two-player game, then indicate the control you are using by pressing the joystick fire button or the shift key. When you select keyboard control in a one-player game you must use the left shift key, together with the 4 and 6 keys on the numeric keybad; in a two-player game you can use the left shift key in conjuncation with the A and S keys, or the right shift key with the 4 and 6 keys. Before the game begins you can enter a password which will allow you to start the game on a screen other than the first. Of course, when you first play you won't know any passwords, so just press fire or shift to start the game. HOW TO PLAY You control a bouncing red ball (in a two-player game the second player controls a blue ball). Move the joystick left or right to propel the ball sideways, or press the fire button to make the ball jump in the air. Helter Skelter has 80 different screens for you to conquer. On each screen there are a number of monsters that wander around the screen along platforms and ledges. Sometimes monsters are trapped by walls, forced to remain on a particular ledge, but often they can roam from ledge to ledge, floating down to the ledge below whenever they fall of the edge. All you need to do is squash the monsters with the ball before the countdown timer reaches zero. It couldn't be easier - or could it? The problem is, only one of the monsters (indicated by an arrow) is vulnerable at a time. Hit the wrong monster and it splits into two smaller monsters, making your task even more difficult; hit the right monster and you'll be that much closer to your target. CONTROLLING THE BOUNCE When you press the fire button (or shift key) what actually happens is that the ball is subjected to a downward force. If the ball is on a ledge at the time this force squeezes the ball against the ledge, which means that it bounces up as soon as the force is removed. If the ball is in the air and travelling downwards at the time you press the fire button it will obviously bounce higher next time it lands. However, if the ball is travelling up when you press fire, the downward force acts to slow the ball down rather than speed it up. It's often important to be able to do this, but of course, you have to get the timing right. An experienced player can make the ball stop dead by pressing the fire button a fraction of a second after the ball bounces, but hit the button just too soon and the ball will bounce even higher! SCORING Each monster that you squash is worth between 500 and 8000 points. The first monster scores 500 points, but the next one is worth 1000 points, provided you don't hit a 'wrong' monster in between. The score keeps doubling so long as you don't hit a monster that splits into two, until the maximum of 8000 points is reached. If you complete the screen before the time runs out you score a bonus of 1000 points for each second remaining. There's another bonus, the skill bonus, which varies from screen to screen and halves every time you press the fire button. By using as few jumps as possible you can score thousands of points in bonuses. With practice you'll find that you don't need to jump nearly as often as you do when you first begin playing. Scoring 200,000 points awards an extra ball (you start with five); however, you cannot have more than ten balls remaining at any time. TOKENS Occasionally a spinning token will appear, bearing one of the letters E-X-T-R-A. Collect all five to earn a bonus ball - but beware, if you collect two letters the same they cancel each other out! Other tokens also appear from time to time. If you collect them you can earn extra time, or else gain a temporary advantage. One token makes the monsters stand still for a time; another makes them all vulnerable simultaneously; yet another freezes the countdown timer. There's even a token that will take you straight to the next screen! When you have squashed all the monsters on a screen the clock stops, allowing you to collect any remaining tokens before they disappear. Tokens collected after completing the screen score 1000 points each. PASSWORDS If you successfully complete the first ten screens a four letter password is revealed that allows you to start the game on screen 11 if you wish. Further passwords are revealsed every ten screens. The password for screen 81, the first user-defined screen, is user. When all the user-defined screens have been played the game restarts from screen 1, but with a difference! SCREEN DESIGNER One of the best features of Helter Skelter is the built-in screen designer, which allows you to create your own screens - devilishly difficult, subtly simple, wonderfully weird - you name it, you can do it! To enter the screen designer press F10 when the title screen or high score screen is displayed. Although the screen designer is best controlled with a mouse, you can also use the cursor keys to move and the F1 and F2 keys instead of the mouse buttons (hold down shift to increase the speed of the pointer). Move the pointer to the option you require, and press the left button or F1 to select it. For example, the first stage in designing a screen is to draw the platforms - each screen can have up to 64 platforms, each of which can be either horizontal or vertical (more complicated shapes must be built-up from several platforms). When you select Platform the options Add Platform and Delete Platform are displayed; to add a platform select that option, then position the pointer where you want one end of the platform to be and press the left button. Now move the pointer to where you want the other end of the platform to be, remembering that it must be either vertical or horizontal, and press the button again. Note the coordinates displayed at the top left - these are relative to the center of the screen, and range from -158 to +158 in the horizontal direction, and -82 to +82 in the vertical direction. To cancel a partly-drawn platform press the right button, otherwise select the Delete Platform option. Once you have drawn the polatforms, the next step is to decide how many monsters you want of each type, where they should start from, their initial direction, and their speed of movement. Select the Monsters option, then Add Monster. MOve the pointer to the appropriate platform and press the left button; a monster will appear at the left end of the platform. Press the right button or F2 to change the monster t ype, then move the monster to the required starting position. Finally choose whether the monster should begin moving left or right, then select a speed (0 is the slowest, 7 the fastest). Once you have positioned all the monsters for the screen (there can be up to 8), you can change the order in which they must be squashed - normally the order in which you positioned them. The order you choose can make an enormous difference to the difficulty of a screen. The starting position of the ball is important too: Start Positions allows you to fix the start positions for each ball. Finally select Parameters which allows you to set the time allowed for either a one player or two player game, the probability that monsters will make random changes in direction, and the starting value of the skill bonus (this bust be a round number, and is entered as so many hundreds, e.g. 100 for 10,000). Whenever you are entering numbers you must use the numeric keys on the main keyboard, not the keypad. Screen Select allows you to move to any of the 48 user-defined screens (81 - 128). To coipy a screen move first to the screen you wish to copy to, and select Copy Screen. Then move to the screen you wish to copy and choose either Select to effect the copy, or Abort if you have made a mistake. Delete will delete the currently displayed screen, moving all higher-numbered screens down one, whilst Insert works in reverse, creating a blank screen and pushing higher-numbered screens up on (screen 128 will be lost). When you are playing user-defined screens the + and - keys on the numeric keybad can be used to step through the screens. This makes it easier to test a specific screen. There's quite an art to designing screens - as you will discover, many of the built-in screens have ingenious solutions, and there's no reason why your screens should not be at least as much fun to play. Once you have designed your own screens remember to save them to disk. You can save them on any formatted disk in the currently-logged drive, but the file will always be saved under the name HELTERE.DAT (EGA version) or HELTERC.DAT (CGA version).