__ __ _ ______ ______ _ _____ | \ / | / \ | __ \| __ \| | | ___| | \ / | / \ | |__| || | _| || | | |___ | |\ \/ /| | / /_\ \ | || /| ||_ < | | | ___| | | \ / | |/ __|\ \| | \ \ | |__| || |___ | |___ |_| \/ |_||_/ |_||_| \_\|_|____/|_____||_____| __ __ _ ______ __ _ _____ ______ ______ | \ / | / \ | __ \ | \ | || ___|/ ____>/ ____> | \ / | / \ | | \ \| \| || |___ | |____ | |____ | |\ \/ /| | / /_\ \ | | | || |\ || ___|\____ \\____ \ | | \ / | |/ __|\ \| | _/ /| | \ || |___ ____| | ____| | |_| \/ |_||_/ |_||_||___/ |_| \_||_____|<______/<______/ TM T H E G A M E HOW TO PLAY THE GAME The game, on side A of the cassette, contains 30 playing screens and is loaded as follows: 1. Place the cassette in your player and make sure that it is rewound to the start. 2. Hold down the CTRL key and press the small ENTER key. 3. Press PLAY on the tape deck. 4. The game will now load and run automatically. 5. In the most unlikely event of a genuine fault, please return the complete package to Melbourne House Publishers. We will gladly replace it. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN IT TO THE PLACE OF PURCHASE. (This notice does not affect your statutory rights.) Once the program has loaded, hit any key to move from the title screen to the options menu. The Construction Set loads in a similar manner, full instructions for its use are included on a separate instruction leaflet. The Game options menu shows: 0 - PLAY GAME 1 - DEFINE KEYS If you have a joystick connected, then this can be used without defining any keys, just press "0" to start the game. Initially the keys are set for: <- - Left -> - Right ^ - Up v - Down To set new keys simply press each key in turn. When the correct keys are indicated press SPACE to return to the options menu. PLAYING THE GAME The object of the game is to guide your marble to the bottom of each of thirty screens as quickly as possible. Extra points can be obtained by passing over jumping "bonus" numbers on some screens. You must avoid anything else on the screen which moves, and naturally avoid falling into holes or off the paths. It is possible to travel up screens - even up steep ramps, but it is not possible to pass from say screen 2 back to screen 1. Your marble will bounce off the edges of the screen, except when it gets to the bottom, where it will advance you to the next screen. The game is played within a time limit, displayed on each screen, which increases if you complete a screen quickly. When this time limit is reached, the program will return to the options menu where your score and the current high score are displayed. When you have completed all the screens, or if you find them too hard, turn the tape over and load the Construction Set on side B of the tape. This allows you to design your own screens, which can be as difficult as you like. Marble Madness (TM) Copyright © 1984, Atari Games. All rights reserved, licensed to Melbourne House. Marble Madness is a trade mark of Atari Games. Program copyright © 1987, John F Cain. Music by Consult Computer Systems. Cover artwork by Bill Scolding. Published by: MELBOURNE HOUSE (PUBLISHERS) LTD 60 High Street Hampton Street Hampton Wick Kingston upon Thames KT1 4DB United Kingdom WARNING: Infringement of copyright is a criminal offence. Copying, lending, hiring, public broadcasting, transmission or distribution are prohibited without express written permission from Melbourne House (Publishers) Ltd. All Melbourne House products are sold subject to our terms and conditions of sale, copies of which are available on request. __ __ _ ______ ______ _ _____ | \ / | / \ | __ \| __ \| | | ___| | \ / | / \ | |__| || | _| || | | |___ | |\ \/ /| | / /_\ \ | || /| ||_ < | | | ___| | | \ / | |/ __|\ \| | \ \ | |__| || |___ | |___ |_| \/ |_||_/ |_||_| \_\|_|____/|_____||_____| __ __ _ ______ __ _ _____ ______ ______ | \ / | / \ | __ \ | \ | || ___|/ ____>/ ____> | \ / | / \ | | \ \| \| || |___ | |____ | |____ | |\ \/ /| | / /_\ \ | | | || |\ || ___|\____ \\____ \ | | \ / | |/ __|\ \| | _/ /| | \ || |___ ____| | ____| | |_| \/ |_||_/ |_||_||___/ |_| \_||_____|<______/<______/ TM ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ | || || || || || || || || || || || | | || || | | C || O || N || S || T || R || U || C || T || I || O || N | | S || E || T | |___||___||___||___||___||___||___||___||___||___||___||___| |___||___||___| INTRODUCTION The unique feature of the Marble Madness (TM) Construction Set is the ability to design and build your own Marble Madness arenas complete with many of the authentic ingredients of the arcade classic. Not only can you play a different game every time you load up, but you can compete with others in creating - and then negotiating - obstacle courses of hideous complexity. LOADING INSTRUCTIONS 1. Place the cassette in the tape deck and ensure it is fully rewound. 2. Press the CTRL key and the small ENTER key simultaneously. 3. Press PLAY on the tape deck. 4. The game will now load and run automatically. 5. In the unlikely event of a loading error, please rewind the tape slightly and press play. If errors persist your tape deck may need realigning. 6. In the most unlikely event of a genuine fault, please return the complete package to Melbourne House Publishers, we will gladly replace it. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN IT TO THE PLACE OF PURCHASE. (This does not affect your statutory rights.) THE OPTIONS MENU Once the program has loaded, hit any key to move from the title screen to the options menu. The options are: 0 - PLAY GAME 1 - DEFINE KEYS 2 - LOAD DATA FILE 3 - EDITOR DEFINE KEYS Pressing the "1" option allows you to redefine the keys to those you prefer. Initially the keys are set for: <- - Left -> - Right ^ - Up v - Down COPY - Fire To set the new keys simply press each key in turn. PLAYING THE GAME Press 0 to start the game. The screen will go blank and the first screen will appear. The object of the game is to guide your marble to the bottom of the screen as quickly as possible. Extra points can be gained by passing over the jumping "bonus" numbers on some screens. You must avoid anything else on the screen which moves, and naturally avoid falling into holes or off the paths. You control your marble with the left, right, up and down keys (or joystick) - the "fire" key or buttion is not used, it is for editing screens as described later. It is possible to travel up screens - even up steep ramps, but it is not possible to pass from say screen 2 back to screen 1. Your marble will bounce off the edges of the screen, except when it gets to the bottom, where it will advance you to the next screen. When your time runs out, the program will return to the options menu where your score and the current high score are displayed. DESIGNING YOUR OWN SCREENS Selecting option "3" puts the program into edit mode, where you can redesign the screens, or create your own. The icon driven editing system relies on the small arrow cursor which can be moved around the screen. When the cursor passes over an object on the screen, then the object switches colours to identify exactly which object the cursor is referring to. Pressing the fire button deletes the object from the arena. DEFINING SLABS The various slab shapes are shown down the right hand side of the screen. To position a slab on the screen, move the cursor to the shape required and press the fire button. The slab selected will appear from the bottom of the arena, and will be inverse to identify it. This slab can now be moved around the arena to its desired position, and once in place, pressing the fire button will print it on the screen in its normal colours and revert you to control of the cursor. If you accidentally select a slab you do not wish to use, you could print it on the screen, and then use the cursor to delete it, but a better method would be to move the slab to off the bottom or right hand side of the arena completely and press the fire button. The way in which marbles are shown falling depend on whether the slab is placed behind a HOLE or a WALL, pressing fire when one of these words is selected switches to the other word. Slabs can be positioned half on and half off the screen, at the sides and the bottom, but not the top. Any slabs which overhang the bottom of a screen, will automatically be printed at the top of the next, to allow continuity when passing between screens. Slabs are not allowed to overlap each other and their meeting edges should match. Once you have completed your design for screen 1, moving the cursor onto "SCREEN 1" and pressing the fire button, will transfer you to screen 2. Any slabs which overhang the bottom of screen 1 will be printed at the top of screen 2. If no slabs are present, then it will be impossible to pass from one screen to the next when playing the game, as no link between the screens will exist. Moving the cursor to "CLEAR" and pressing the fire button will clear the current screen of everything except any overhanging slabs. There is no "NEW" command for clearing everything, to avoid its accidental use, and to clear all the screens and start afresh involves "CLEAR"ing each screen in turn. [Diagram showing slabs located in "HOLE" and "WALL" modes - see MarbleMadnessConstructionSet_Diagram.jpg] HOW MANY SCREENS? The number of screens you can design for one game is only determined by the amount of free memory available, which in turn is governed by the number of objects on each screen. When moving to the next screen, the editor will always present you with another blank screen after the one you have just designed in case you wish to keep going. If you decline to put any further objects on that screen, and move to the next screen, then the editor will restore you to screen 1, which could now be altered as you wish, or you could step through to any of the next screens. The blank screen will always be there in case you wish to extend your design at a later date. HAZARDS AND BONUSES At the bottom of the screen are the various hazards and bonuses you can introduce into the game. They can be positioned on the screen in exactly the same way as slabs within certain limitations. The program only reserves a certain amount of memory for use during the game for each type of hazard. To avoid overflowing the memory, the editor will only allow you to place four of each type on any one screen. You are also limited to a total of eight such objects on a screen. Naturally, with many objects on the screen at a time, your computer will have much more work to do when running the program, and subsequently the program will slow down according to the number of moving objects you define. Some hazards can be placed anywhere on the screen, as they simply float about, but the other hazards should be placed on a slab as they are intended to roll around the pathways. If you find that these other hazards are floating about aimlessly, it is because they were not positioned on a slab correctly in the first place. The bonus points, 100, 300 and 500 can be placed anywhere on the screen, but to be of use naturally the player's marble should be able to reach them. COLOURS Four colours can be defined for each new screen by selecting a number 1 to 4 and pressing the fire button. This will step through the colours available including the paper and ink being the same colour, in which case the screen will appear blank! You can have different colour combinations on each of your screens if you wish, and are not limited to one throughout the game. SCORE The player's score is not shown on the screen during the game, but at the end on the options menu, together with the high score. If you wish the score to be displayed, then it can be located on the screen anywhere you wish by selecting the "SCORE" icon and positioning it on the screen in exactly the same way as a slab. The score, hazards, bonuses etc. can be deleted from the screen in exactly the same way as the slabs, however the program will take a second or so to delete these as it has much more work to do. Also, if you wish to delete a slab which has another object on top of it you will find that you will have to delete the offending object first, before the cursor will recognise the slab underneath. TESTING You can test each screen as you design it by moving the cursor to "TEST" and pressing the fire button. If you wish to quit the screen before losing your life then pressing the "space" key has the same effect. The start position of your marble in test mode is at the centre top of the screen. If your screen has no slabs at this position then you can select the marble icon to the right of the hazards, and position it on the screen wherever you wish. If you leave the marble icon there and play the game it will be ignored on all screens but the first. When your marble passes from one screen to the next, it will appear at the top of the new screen, at the position it left the previous one, and will still be travelling at the same speed. A choice of two marbles is given, the smaller one is slightly quicker than the larger one, and is easier to manoeuvre around narrow paths. If you decline to define a marble start position on screen one then the game will begin with the large marble at the centre top of the screen. SAVING AND LOADING Positioning the cursor over "SAVE" and pressing the fire button will save your screen design on your cassette recorder. This function does not work in the same way as normal in that the saving starts as soon as your press fire. No "Press REC and PLAY then any key" message appears, so you should start your recorder before pressing the fire button. It is recommended to save your design several times to ensure that you have a good copy. You can load a data file created this way either from the editor, or from the options menu. If a load error occurs then there will be no screen data at all in the memory, and you will have to try again. If you accidentally select 'LOAD" and do not have a data tape available, pressing ESCAPE will return you to the program, and the screen data that was in memory will still be there. QUIT Positioning the cursor over "QUIT" and pressing the fire button will return you to the options menu from where you can play the game. Marble Madness (TM) Copyright© 1984, Atari Games. All rights reserved, licensed to Melbourne House. Marble Madness is a trade mark of Atari Games. Program © John F Cain 1986. Music by Consult Computer Systems. Cover artwork by Bill Scolding. Published by:- MELBOURNE HOUSE 60 High Street Hampton Wick Kingston-upon-Thames Surrey KT1 4DB United Kingdom Distributed in Australia by:- Software Licensing & Marketing (Aust) Pty Ltd. 96-100 Tope Street South Melbourne 3205 Victoria Australia WARNING:- Infringement of copyright is a criminal offence. Copying, lending, hiring, public broadcasting, transmission or distribution other than in the original packaging are prohibted without express written permission from Melbourne House (Publishers) Ltd All Melbourne House products are sold subject to our terms and conditions of sale, copies of which are available on request.