Albert Baggetta P.O. Box 351 Feeding Hills, MA 01030-0351 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Baggetta Shareware If you obtain a copy of this program please send $3 to the above address. Registration will entitle you to: -- Update information -- Information about other Shareware products -- Claim that you are supporting Atari developers -- A clear conscience ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Letter Bomber By Albert Baggetta (Version 1.0) "Letter Bomber" is a letter recognition exercise for young children or adults, in an arcade shoot-em-up format. The game emphasizes hand-eye coordination, concentration and alphabet recognition. GAME OBJECTIVE The object of "Letter Bomber" is to discover the ten letters hidden behind the brick wall. You only get to see the tops and bottoms of the letters. Firing a missile at the wall will blast it and reveal whether your guess is right or wrong. You can get anywhere from 0 to 10 letters correct, but your real objective is to guess all 10 correctly before the timer reaches zero. STARTING THE GAME If you are new to the Atari ST computer and its desktop format, consult your manual before trying this or any other game. It is helpful if you are familiar with the ST gem procedures. This is a low resolution game that requires a color monitor. Click on LETTER.PRG from the pull down menu (assuming you are working off drive A). The playing screen will be set, and you will see a prompt that tells you to press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to begin playing the game. Before doing this, let's take a look around the screen. At the top there is a title bar. Below this is the "brick wall" that will hide the letters from full view. At the bottom of the screen there is a row of ten missiles, each will correspond with a letter's position. You will be able to fire these by clicking on the with the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. Below these destruction bombs is an information bar. This bar contains two windows and a FORCE box which will be explained shortly. The window on the left will tell you how many letters you correctly guess in the game. The window on the right will show the progress of the timer. The timer starts at 10 and slowly ticks down to zero, while you are frantically trying to decipher the letters. Press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON now to see the screen come "alive." After you press the mouse button, the missiles become activated, the letters fade in behind the wall and another window opens in the center of the information bar. This window will have a letter in it, that changes every few seconds. This is the letter you must match with one of the ten behind the wall. When you think you have a letter that corresponds with one in hiding, click on the bomb aimed at that section of the wall. It will blast the wall (have the monitor sound turned up for some unusual sound effects) crashing into the title bar and revealing the hidden letter. The program will announce your success or failure. Notice: to get credit for the hit you must have fired the missile while the letter was displayed in the information bar. This brings us to the FORCE box. Sometimes the letters change too slowly in the window, especially as you use up the missiles. You can force them to change more rapidly by clicking on the FORCE box any time. Be careful, though, this box has a hair trigger, so holding down the mouse button too long will skim right by an important letter, causing you to lose valuable time. When all of the missiles have been used up or the timer has run down, a screen will be displayed that shows your current score compared to your last score (or the score of an opponent). To restart the game press on the keyboard. If you would like to quit the game, you may do so any time after activatin ghe missiles, by pressing on the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. Be careful when playing a game because this will return you to the desktop. This is a simple game to play, but the action is fast and several activities are going on at the same time. So study your alphabet carefully and start shooting.