MISSION DOSSIER
Mission of vital importance to national and global security. Operations to begin immediately. Utmost urgency.
During the past three days, key military computer installations of every major world power have reported security failures. In each case, someone gained access to a primary missile attack computer. Only one person is capable of computer tampering on this scale: Professor Elvin Atombender. We believe Elvin is working to break the computers' launch codes. When he succeeds, he plans to trigger a missile attack that will destroy the world.
You must penetrate Elvin's underground stronghold and stop him. Our computers estimate he will break the launch codes in exactly six hours. Your only weapons are your keen analytical mind and your M1A9366B pocket computer. Good luck. The world is depending on you.
The Stronghold
Elvin's stronghold consists of 32 rooms connected by eight elevator shafts. As you explore, your pocket computer (at the bottom of the elevator screen) maps the shafts, corridors, and rooms you have visited.
Controls
- Arrow keys — run left/right; ride elevators and lifting platforms up/down while standing on them.
- Shift, Space, or Ctrl — the fire button: a somersaulting jump in the rooms (with or without a running start), and the pocket computer switch while standing in an elevator.
- Up — search the furniture you are standing in front of, log into a security terminal, or play the organ console in the code rooms.
- P — pause.
Searching for Codes
Elvin hides his passwords in his furniture. Stand directly in front of any object and hold up: a box shows the word "searching" and a shrinking progress bar. Keep holding until the bar disappears. If you let go, you can resume where you left off — but leaving the room restarts the search.
When a search completes, one of four things appears:
- "Nothing here." — the object then disappears.
-
A lift init password — resets a room's lifting
platforms from a terminal.
-
A snooze password — temporarily deactivates the
robots in a room.
-
A puzzle piece — part of the control room
password, filed automatically into your pocket computer.
Security Terminals
Stand in front of a terminal and press up to log in. Select a function with up/down and confirm with fire: reset the room's lifting platforms (spends a lift init), disable the room's robots for a while (spends a snooze), or log off. Your pocket computer shows how many of each you hold.
The Code Rooms
Two music rooms let you earn extra passwords. Stand at the organ console and press up. Squares flash on the checkerboard, each playing a note; use the glove to touch them in ascending order, low to high. Each success grants a snooze or a lift init — and the next sequence grows longer. Touch below the board to walk away.
The Pocket Computer
Press fire while standing in an elevator to switch the map for the puzzle desktop. Use the glove (arrow keys; fire to click) to pick pieces from the memory window, drop them on the desktop, and stack them: pieces of the same puzzle in the same color and orientation will merge. The buttons, left to right: memory scroll arrows and the phone on the left; vertical flip, horizontal flip, trash, OFF, undo, pause, and the three color keys on the right.
- Pieces are often upside down or backwards — flip them.
- Pieces must match in color — recolor them.
- A completed puzzle is a solid punch card of four pieces, right side up. Each one adds a letter to Elvin's password on the status line.
- Nine puzzles solved = the full nine-letter password.
The Phone
The phone key dials the agency's computer for help: it can correct the orientation of the two pieces in the memory window, or tell you whether the upper piece's puzzle is solvable with what you hold. Every call costs two minutes on the clock.
The Control Room
The door to Elvin's control room is in one of the bedrooms. With the completed password, stand in front of the door and push up. The door will open — and you'll finally have the last laugh.
Time and Scoring
The clock starts at 12:00 and the game ends at 6:00. Falling off the bottom of the screen or being zapped by a robot or the floating orb costs ten minutes; each phone call costs two. When the game ends: 1 point per second remaining, 100 per puzzle piece found, 100 per snooze or lift init found, 500 per puzzle solved, and 1000 for completing the mission.
Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!
