ON DISK!

START ARCADE

3 Games in One

On this issue's disk, START presents a special treat: three fast-action arcade games wrapped up in one! In Cheese Munchers you must guard your cheese from pesky mice; in Immunity you have to save your patient's life by destroying the bad germs and protecting the good ones; and in Skeet you get to practice a little indoor sharp-shooting. A color monitor and a megabyte of memory are required.

Triple your pleasure, triple your fun. File ARCADE.ARC on your START Disk.

START Arcade gives you three games that test your hand/eye coordination to its fullest. Zap mice as they try to steal your cheese, blast germs as they invade your patient's body and shoot skeets as they fly across the sky. All three games were written in GFA BASIC.

	The START Arcade is really three games in one. At the main menu, select the game you want to play. When you're done with that game, you'll return to this menu. Select Quit to return to the Desktop.

To get started, copy the files ARCADE.ARC and ARCX.TTP onto a blank, formatted disk and un-ARC the file, following the Disk Instructions elsewhere in this issue. Set the computer to low resolution and double-click on ARCADE.PRG. You must have a megabyte of memory to run START Arcade. The START Arcade menu lets you choose which game to play, either Cheese Munchers, Immunity or Skeet. When you're finished playing a game, you'll be returned to the START Arcade menu. Here you can either play the game again, play another game or quit the program and return to the Desktop.

CHEESE MUNCHERS

by Raymond Pompon

The Cheese Munchers are ravenous, gluttonous and relentless! You're Greyham the Cat, and your job is to stop those monstrous mice from taking all the cheese. Unfortunately, as Greyham you're a rather lazy and cowardly cat, so you'd rather not confront the mice directly. Instead, you zap the Munchers with your Acme Neutron Mouse Zapper.

The Acme Neutron Mouse Zapper is a sophisticated anti-Muncher weapon. It will blast a Muncher, but will not harm the cheese that he's carrying. The Zapper must be reloaded each time it's fired. A red lightning bolt sits in the middle of the playfield. Use the ST mouse to grab the bolt by passing over it with your paw--there's certainly no kinship between the ST mouse and those cheese-snatching varmints. Your cursor will change to cross-hairs. All you need to do then is position the cross-hairs over some Munchers and click. If a Muncher is carrying a piece of cheese when you blast it, the cheese will fall down at that spot and stay put.

	In Cheese Munchers, you play a lazy cat assigned to guard the cheese from a house full of mice. Grab the Zap by passing over it, then squash the lit- tle critters.

At first, the Munchers will creep meekly across the screen and snatch the cheese. However, as you blast more and more Munchers, the rest will descend as a horde, getting faster and cleverer as they get hungrier. The Munchers have an insatiable appetite; as soon as they drag a hunk of cheese home, they'll eat it and immediately come back for more.

Three difficulty levels can be chosen from Cheese Munchers' main menu. The default setting is Normal, and points are adjusted for different levels. The higher the level, the more points you'll earn. Your score and a remark on your gameplay will be displayed in an alert box at the end of the game.

Now, go get those Munchers!

SKEET

by Richard R. Betson

For those who like to shoot skeet but live in the city, relief can be found with Skeet and your ST. Now you can enjoy the fun of blowing up little clay discs and not disturb the neighbors.

	Who needs the great outdoors, fresh air and exer- cise? Play Skeet for indoor target prac- tice any time! As your skill increases, change the speed of the skeets or your choke size for a big- ger challenge.

At the START Arcade main menu, click on Skeet to enter the game. Under the Game menu you can begin play or quit the game altogether. I developed Skeet to come as close to the real thing as possible. When shooting real skeet, you lead your target just a little before firing; my game is no different. In real skeet you yell "pull!" to let someone know you want the skeet launched; again, my game is no different.

The Options menu lets you adjust different aspects of the game. The first option adjusts your choke size. If you were using a real shotgun you could choose different sizes of chokes. Skeet also lets you choose your choke size: Open, Modified or Full. The wider or more open your choke is, the wider the spread of the shot will be. The narrower or more closed the choke is, the narrower or more confined the shot will be. Note: the narrower the choke, the higher the point value.

Under the Options menu, click on Speed to adjust the speed the skeet will travel. There are three settings: Novice (slow), Sharpshooter (medium) and Marksman (fast). The first two settings change the speed only. The third setting (Marksman) increases the speed and makes the skeet smaller. The last two menus let you turn the sound on or off, or look at the last score recorded or the high score of the day. Good luck!

IMMUNITY

by Richard R Betson

When I was a child my dad explained colds or flu this way: "Son, the good germs are fighting with the bad germs." This left me with the feeling that World War III was going on in my body. So, with this in mind I wrote Immunity.

At the START Arcade main menu, click on Immunity to enter the game. The "battlefield" is a board consisting of nine squares, set three across and three down. Popping into these squares are viruses (the bad germs) and red and white blood cells and bacteria (the good germs), which are constantly changing positions. With the latest technology in virus extermination, you're mission is to destroy all the bad germs.

	Squash the "bad germs" while pro- tecting the "good germs" from viruses with Immunity! Your patient is depend- ing on your hand -eye coordination . . . be careful not to kill any smiling faces!

Before you begin gameplay, choose the difficulty level from under the menu title LEVEL. Your choices are: Nurse (slow), Intern (fast) and Doctor (faster). You get extra points for starting at a higher level.

Gameplay is easy, but demanding. On the right side of the screen is a gauge that monitors your patient's life signs. The higher the gauge reads, the better your patient is doing.

Whenever you see a bad germ on the gameboard (characterized by a frowning face) move your mouse cursor to that square and click. If you're fast enough, you'll destroy that germ and it will be replaced by a dazed face. If you let too many viruses get through or zap too many blood cells or bacteria, your patient's status will drop and the game will end. Each time you complete a round, you move up to the next round, which is a little faster.

The Good Germs; the Bad Germs

Your red and white blood cells help carry oxygen and nutrients throughout your body. If your body's own immune system started attacking these blood cells you probably wouldn't last that long. If you attack these same cells in Immunity you're patient won't last long either. The same principle goes for some bacteria. They're beneficial and should not be destroyed. You can identify the blood cells and bacteria by their smiling faces. If you do hit a blood cell or bacteria you'll see its expression change from happy to astonished.

In the real world, viruses are very tricky. They'll try to pass themselves off as a blood cell or bacterium. It's no different in Immunity. The viruses come in the same colors as the blood cells and bacteria, but you can tell who the viruses are by the expressions on their faces. They're spotted and covered with spiky hairs on their cell-like bodies--not a pretty sight. Exterminate as many viruses as you can, and remember that for every virus that gets through, your patient suffers.

Raymond Pompon studies computers and communications at the University of Hawaii. Cheese Munchers is his first program for START. Richard Betson is a computer programmer who lives in San Marcos, California. Skeet and Immunity are his first programs for START.