ALICE IN VIDEOLAND by John Fitzpatrick Introduction Alice in Videoland is a revolutionary new type of game incorporating some of the finest graphics ever seen on any home computer, accompanied by a charming musical score. It was written especially for Audiogenic by John Fitzpatrick, author of our best selling 'Motor Mania'. It took John over a year to write the nearly 90K of machine code that goes to make up Alice in Videoland. Because the program is so large there will be a short interval between scenes while your 64 loads the next scene. Loading Before you start loading the program, make sure your joystick is plugged into joystick port 2. Also make sure that the heads on your cassette deck are clean and demagnetised, and correctly aligned. Put the Alice cassette into the deck with the side labelled Side 1 uppermost. Rewind it if necessary, then press SHIFT and RUN/STOP together, and press the PLAY key on the cassette deck. Alice in Videoland incorporates a fast loading system, but because it is such a big program, it will still take a few minutes to load. When it has loaded it will RUN itself automatically. When it has loaded, there is a short display which gives you details of keys you can press during the next title display. Then it happens - the famous animated Alice Landscape title display! While this is running you can use the f1 key to set the number of players, enter their initials and set the difficulty level to a number from 0 to 9. When you are ready to start playing, press the joystick FIRE button when Alice is standing at the edge of the rabbit's hole. She will then jump down into the rabbit's warren. Scene One Part 1 - Alice falls down the rabbit's hole into a large room inside the warren. You can tell where the room begins because you can see the coloured wallpaper! As soon as Alice starts falling through the room you can control her with the joystick. Move her up, down, left or right to catch the objects that float by as she falls. There are keys, bottles and cakes, but in order to keep more than one item she must first catch a basket. Watch out for the paintings as they will cause Alice to bump around and prevent her from catching anything. Also, if Alice touches any of the lamps on the wall she will drop everything! Part 2 - When Alice puts her feet down it means that she has stopped falling. Now she must search for doors to pass through. She can only get through a door if during the previous part she managed to catch a key of the same colour as the door - keys may be used over and over - and if she is the right size for the door. This is where the bottles and cakes collected in the first part can be used to change her size. Cakes may be used to make her bigger by pressing the f3 key, and bottles to make her smaller by pressing the f5 key. Bottles and cakes may only be used once. There are also obstacles in the form of tables that Alice cannot walk through. During this portion of the game other objects will fly by - the white key, the rabbit's fan, the clock, and more cakes and bottles. If Alice is struck by a white key then she gains access to the next door that she fits regardless of its colour. This key is good for one door only, but it means that you can still go exploring even if you didn't catch anything, or dropped it all, in the first part! The cakes and bottles will take effect on impact, changing Alice's size. The rabbit's fan will make her too big to go through any door, and if the clock hits her then time is up - and that will be the end of the scene! PLEASE NOTE - When all the players have completed Scene 1, then it's time for Scene 2 to load in. Scenes 2, 3 and 4 are all on Side 2 of the tape, so press the STOP key on the cassette deck, turn the tape over to the side labelled Side 2, and press PLAY. The Scene 2 will load in and display a "Press Fire Button" message. The Scoreboard This is probably a good time to tell you about the scoreboard. You can view it at any time during any scene by pressing the f7 key. If there is more than one player, you can press the f5 key to get the score of the next player. Press RETURN to get back to the game exactly where you left off. Scene Two Press the FIRE button to start. The Cheshire Cat looks on as the Caterpillar sits on a giant toadstool smoking his exotic pipe and blowing smoke rings. Bread-and-butterflies and rocking-horse flies flutter by and three rather nasty flowers spit out seeds. Use the joystick to move Alice left and right, and press the FIRE button to make her jump. If she is moving left or right when you make her jump, she will jump to the left or right. She must catch the bread- and-butterflies for 10 points and the rocking-horse flies for 100 points. When she catches a rocking-horse fly she must jump down to the ground and let it go. It will then turn into a ball and roll away. These balls are important because they are used as bonus balls in scene four, so the more you can catch, the better! The difficulty level advances each time a rocking-horse fly is caught. Alice can jump onto the mushrooms to gain height, but she can only jump onto the centre mushroom from one of the other two mushrooms. She must avoid being hit by either the seeds that the flowers spit out, or the smoke-ring from the caterpillar because they will make her small and unable to jump. In order to get back to her right size she must go over to the extreme right hand side to eat one of the small mushrooms that grow underneath the giant toadstool. You will see one of them disappear as she regains her size. If Alice becomes small and there are no more small mushrooms left, then the scene is over. Scene Three The object of this scene is to use the White Knights to escort Alice across the chessboard against the onslaught of the Jabberwocky (the Black Queen) and Tweedledum and Tweedledee (the Black Bishops). Alice here is a pawn, and moves forward very slowly. One could well imagine her speaking in that rather scolding tone of voice that she uses often in the books, insisting that she "really ought to be a Queen, you know!", and so she is able to move sideways with relative ease. The Jabberwocky will wait for the Knight to take his turn only so much. He plays by the Queen of Hearts' rules and will move anyway if the Knight is too long in making his move. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are engaged in their infamous battle, mindless of the surrounding drama, but as they so aptly put it, "I swing at everything I can see", said Tweedledee. "And I swing at everything, whether I can see it or not", said Tweedledum. Press the FIRE button to begin when prompted. Alice is on the lowest rank with her two Knights, facing the Jabberwocky, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The object is to get Alice to the other side of the board, while earning points for skilful use of the Knight. Alice earns points for crossing to a new rank, with the ranks increasing in points value from 10 to 250 points. A bonus of 1000 points is given if Alice manages to reach the top of the board. The Tweedle brothers will make this very difficult to do as they will bump Alice downwards when they are on the same square as she is on. (Alice is on the square that her feet touch). The Jabberwocky will home in first on the Knights, and then, when the Knights are captured, on Alice. Alice will block the Jabberwocky from getting the Knight if she is between them. When he is about to move, the Jabberwocky will flap his wings. The player must move the Knight (only one Knight can be used at a time) to avoid or capture the Jabberwocky as follows: To activate the Knight, press the FIRE button. A shimmering cursor will appear under the Knight. By moving the joystick you can position the cursor on the square that you want the Knight to move onto. Press the FIRE button again and the Knight will move there. Since Alice cannot move while you are moving the Knight, it is a good idea to plan the Knight's move while moving Alice. Then when the Jabberwocky begins to flap there should be enough time to move the Knight one or more times before the Jabberwocky moves. It is also a good idea to move Alice left and right in order to avoid the Tweedle brothers. But a better strategy, when it doesn't excessively threaten the Knight's safety, is to capture them by landing the Knight on the square that one of them is on. Then that Tweedle must go and stand in the corner for a while. This gives Alice some relief from being bounced backwards. The Jabberwocky may also be similarly banished for a time, earning 100 points. While the Jabberwocky is banished, the Knight may move without causing the Jabberwocky to begin flapping. The difficulty level advances each time the Jabberwocky is banished. If Alice reaches the seventh rank with one or both Knights still in play, she may wish to remain there until additional points are earned by the Knight. If the player keeps the Jabberwocky and the Tweedles in check, Alice may safely wait there. When the Jabberwocky finally gets the Knights, Alice should still have time to reach the top of the board. But if you're not careful, Alice could be bumped down the board by a Tweedle, putting the top of the board and the 1000 points out of her reach! When both Knights are gone, the Tweedles become excited and move about faster, homing in on Alice's square. If Alice does not reach the top of the board, the scene is over when the Jabberwocky catches her. Scene Four The Queen of Hearts has built her croquet field on the side of a hill, and waits at the bottom to remove balls from play which stray her way. She does this in a rather novel fashion, as you will see! Alice's rather bizarre croquet mallet is, in fact, a flamingo which flies beside her wherever she goes. By pressing the FIRE button, she will strike at the ball. Points are scored by bouncing the ball against the bushes and the fence, and by putting a ball through one of the card-soldier hoops. This will usually require that you have been able to get the ball to bounce above the fence, and strike it through the hoop at the top of a bounce. This earns 500 points and an extra ball. You start off with one ball plus any balls you earned in scene two. At lower levels, Alice is free to recover balls which fall down on the left side of the bottom of the screen. In higher levels, the Queen of Hearts has the full width of the bottom of the screen. The difficulty increases with every 1000 points, as will be heard in the upward modulation of the note that sounds when the ball bounces off the bushes, and will sometimes be accompanied by an increase in the steepness of the hill (the gravity on the ball). When you have no further balls left, the game is over. When prompted, you can press the f7 key to see your final score; press f5 to see the other player's scores. Starting a New Game If you have just finished a game and you want to have another, just rewind the cassette back to the beginning of Side 2, and press RETURN. The tape will then be ready for when Scene 2 needs to be loaded. Of course, if you have switched your computer off since playing Alice, then you'll have to load the whole lot again, starting with Side 1. Just repeat the instructions given above. Other Controls The game may be restarted at any time by pressing the CTRL and RESTORE keys together. This will return you to the title page. Depending on where you left off, you may need to rewind the tape to the beginning of Side 2 as soon as Scene 1 finishes. Pressing the SPACE bar will freeze the action. Press RETURN to carry on. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY PLAYING ALICE IN VIDEOLAND! copyright 1984 Audiogenic Ltd.