MOLE ATTACK

By MASAHIRO MORI

A way for young beginning typists to practice finding letters while having fun. The BASIC program runs on all Atari computers and of all memory configurations. Antic Disk subscribers RUN"D:MOLE BAS"

The moles are attacking!  Get ready to type!  This educational program, designed for 'one-finger-wizards,' lets you practice touch typing random letters while vanquishing the enemy moles.  Best-selling commercial programs like Type Attack and Master Type can provide more advanced drillwork.
   Type in the program, check it with TYPO, and save an extra copy on disk or cassette.  Now RUN it.
   First you'll see the title screen, followed by a flashing screen as the program loads.  When the program is ready to start, it will play a snatch of "Oh Susannah," then ask you what level to play at.  Type in a number from 1 (hardest) to 10 (easiest), then press [RETURN].  Next, enter the game length in seconds, and press [RETURN] again.  The first time you play, try 20 seconds.  Finally, you'll see five letters, which are chosen at random for each new game (for instance, G,Z,I,P,K), on the screen.  Type each letter in order to begin the game.
   The game's object is simply to hit the mole on the head with a hammer every time he pops up near a letter.  Do this by pressing the corresponding letter key as soon as you see a mole.  For each successful hit, you receive one point.  The higher the difficulty, the harder the mole is to catch.  When your time is up, you'll receive a progress report and get an opportunity to try again.

Masabiro Mori, one of Antic's youngest regular contributors, is 14 years old and attends Morrison Christian Academy in Taiwan.  He is particularly interested in programming Atari Player/Missile Graphics and redefined character sets.

Listing: MOLE.BAS Download