                                DEFENDER II

Typed by MEGADRIVE of SCOOPEX U.K.  Edited by PARASITE.


GAME OPTIONS
There are six options  available from the main title screen. Each option is
represented by a box on screen; Use the mouse to move the pointer and click
in the box representing your choice. (if the music is playing, press SPACE
to get the pointer). Selecting  any of the Begin Game options will lead you
to a further screen, at which you can choose to begin a one - two player
game.   In Two-player games, players take alternate turns, play passing
whenever a player's ship is destroyed. If you click on the illuminated
pyramid, you can enter a Sector Code, allowing experienced to begin play at
an advanced level.

DEFENDER
You control a small  but agile spaceship which flies at will through a
horizontally-scrolling. At the bottom of the gamespace appear a variety of
hostile enemies. Your priorty targets are the Landers. These ships are
fairly slow-moving and at first not unduly aggressive, but they must be
dealt with urgently, as their mission is to cruse above the mountains
looking out for Humanoids yo abduct. With increasing frequency, Landers will
swoop down and grab hold of one of your Humanoids, causing him to emit a
frightened squeal. This is your cue to streak to the rescue. The Lander
tries to drag your Humanoid up to the top of the screen. If you can get
there and blow away the Lander, the Humanoid will drop off and fall back to
the planet surface. The Humanoid can survive falls of a short distance, but
if he falls too far, he will die. The only neat thing to do is catch the
falling Humanoid by running into him with your ship. Once you've got him,
you can take him anyware; unless you put him back down on the planet, he'll
just dangle there taking in the view. He cannot be shot while you've got
him. You can carry any number of Humanoids underneath your ship. When you
decide to replace your Humanoids on the planet surface, you get a bonus for
each one. Of course, you are far from defencelles in the face of all this
naughtiness. You have a rapid-fire sheet-laser cannon in your ship which
never runs out of ammunition or energy (it also slits Humanoids up a treat,
so watch it). And you have limited stocks of the most powerful weapon in
video history, the Smart Bomb. Trigger a smart bomb and every enemy on the
screen is instantly transformed into tiny pieces. You also have a further
tactical aid at your disposial: your scanner. This is a small radar screen
located above the main display. The scanner maps the whole of gamespace,
displaying the position of each occupant, hostile or friendly, as a coloured
blip. Use the scanner to grasp in an instant the situation as it evolves and
plan an effective response.

STAR GATE
Williams followed up the original Defender arcade game with the sequel
STARGATE. This new game introduced extra enemies and a couple of twists to
the gameplay and increased the overall game difficulty. Stargate gave the
player one extra weapon, called Inviso. This weapon  permits the player to
cause his ship to become invincible and invisible, whilst leaving all the
weapons fully opertioal. With inviso on, the player can kill enemies by
ramming and cannot be shot (very useful for tricky Humanoid rescues). The
main game feature was the eponymous stargate. This portal hovers above the
planetoid and the player can fly in at any time. Usually, the stargate will
warp the player instantly to the other side of the gamespace. The stargate
also has two more important functions: if you fly in while a Humanoid
abduction is taking place anywhere on the planetoid, the stargate will warp
you straight there, ready to exact retribution. And if you gather up four or
more Humanoids and enter, you can warp ahead by three levels, copping a fat
bonus for so doing.

GATE STRUCTURE - DEFENDER AND STARGATE
Defender consists of a single mission - protecting your Humanoids - repeated
endlessly, with more and nastier versions of the enemies on each successive
level. If you lose your planet, it is restored, with a full complement of
Humanoids, at each fifth level - so, if you lost your planet on level eight,
you'd get it back with ten new Humanoids at level ten. Stargate has a
similar structure, but with two new missions added. The new missions are
the Yllabian Dodfight, which takes place in free space on Level Five, and
the Firebomber Showdown, which occurs over the usual planetoid but with no
Landers, at Level Ten. Your Humanoids and planetoid are restored after each
of these special missions. The missions alternate at every five levels, so
you get the Yllabian Dogfight again at 15, Showdown at 20 etc.

DEFENDER II: GAME STRUCTURE AND OVERVIEW
Defender II retains many of the gameplay elements from Defender and Stargate
whilst adding a variety of different missions and enemies. The game is
structured as a series of 4-wave zones. Each zone consists of a Mission or
Theme Wave followed by three Defender waves played out over the usuall
planetoid. There are eight distinct Missions Waves, during which the player
is required to achieve some objective specified at the start of the wave;
and eight Theme Waves, in which a plague of a particular enemy species is
encountered. The player is equipped with the usual laser and Smart Bombs,
plus the following items of extra ordnance:

TOOTHPASTE LASER - A fat, powerful weapon, useful for destroying targets
which might otherwise require a lot of shots from the usual laser.

BOMB POD - Allows the player to shoot a stream of bombs at ground-based
targets.

UPSHOOTER - Covers the player with shots which issue on an upward diagonal.

AL DRONE - The most useful all-round weapon, and the defult issue. The drone
accompanies your ship, looking for and aiming at enemies, and despatching
them with a powerful beam laser.

The player has a limited supply of power for these weapons; when that power
is gone, they  cannot be fired. New power is given out at every 10,000
points, along with an extra ship and Smart Bomb. The most awesome weapon in
the new armoury is the SMART LASER. When triggered, the Smart Laser lashes
out in the form of lightning bolts all round your ship, destroying all
enemies within range. Like the other weapons, Smart Laser draws power from
your supply and cannot be activated when that power is drained. The ship's
laser, Smart Bombs and Smart Laser, plus one of the special weapons, are
available at any one time. You can select any of the special weapons at any
time; there is no restriction as long as you have the power to fire them!
There is a Star Gate, which may be used for Humanoid rescues and Warping
just like its predecessor. The gameplay progresses through 16 distinct
4-wave sectors, with new enemies being introduced each sector. In all, you
may expect to encounter some sixty alien types, armed with eighteen
different kinds of weapon, on your journey through the game! Some missions
require the use of the ship's tractor beam, which drains all the power
usually reserved for the weapons systems... Humanoids and planetoid are
restored after each Mission/Theme wave. When your game is over, you are
given a Sector Code. On subsequent games, you can enter this code and begin
play at the start of that sector, copping a positively obese Start Bonus for
surviving the initial wave of the sector.

DEFENDER II CONTROLS
The recommended and defult control method for Defender II uses a combination
of mouse and keyboard controls. Ship flight controls are assigned to mouse,
weapon systems to keyboard. With practise, the mouse provides an intuitive,
fast and accurate flight control, and all weapons are easily activated
without having to move your hand around the keyboard.

MOUSE UP/DOWN:             Move ship vertically
LEFT MOUSE:                THRUST (Accelerate ship in direction it is
                           pointing)
RIGHT MOUSE:               REVERSE (Turn ship around)
LEFT SHIFT:                FIRE (Hold down for continuous rapid fire)
CONTROL:                   Smart Bomb (Press once to trigger a Bomb)
ALTERNATE:                 Inviso/Smart Laser (Hold down for as long as you
                           require Inviso of Smart Laser)
SPACEBAR:                  Weapon Select (Press once to select next special
                           weapon in Defender II)
There is an alternate keyboard control method available for those who can't
handel the mouse controls. Use the Options screen to select keyboard
controls. The keys are deployed as follows:
CONTROL:    UP
LEFT SHIFT: DOWN
ALTERNATE:  REVERSE
RETURN:     THRUST
#:          FIRE
RIGHT SHIFT:SMART BOMB
CAPS LOCK:  INVISO/SMART LASER
TAB:        WEAPON SELECT
To help you learn the Mouse controls, use the Trainer option from the title
screen. This gives you a free hand to take a pop at a few baddies and try
out the starbuggy before going into battle.

HIGH SCORES
If you make it into the top Ten scores on any of the games, you will be
asked to enter three initials for the highscore lists. When asked to enter
the initials, use left/right mouse motions to select the correct letter, and
press the left button to enter your selection. The score table is displayed
with your entry added after you have entered the last letter. The three
score tables (for Defender, Startgate and Def II) are displayed in rotation
during games Attract Mode. You can check the scores at any time by clicking
on the appropriate Game Start icon with the Right Mouse button on the main
title screen. Hold down the right RIGHT mouse button while the table is
displayed to hold it for as long as you require. If you complete a game and
you forgot to check your score while Game Over was happening, you can just
leave the controls alone and watch the Attract Mode. The last player
one/player two scores are displayed when the game is demonstrated.

USING SECTOR CODES
At the start of a game of Defender II, you can click on the illminated
pyramid to enter a valid Sector Code and gain access to higher levels of the
game. The current Sector Code is displayed beneath the pyramid. Clicking on
the pyramid replaces the code with dashes, allowing you to enter a valid
code. Use the same mouse motions as for highscore initial entry. If the code
is accepted, the new starting is displayed at the bottom left of the screen,
along with the Starting Bonus for that level. Play now begins at that level,
and when the first wave is successfully completed, the Starting Bonus will
be added to your score. Clicking the RIGHT Mouse button on the pyramid will
rest the game to the Start Sector.

CONVENIENCE CONTROL
Usually just the lock on the door, the seat and the flush handel. Seriously
though, these controls are available during a game for the convenience of
the player. The following keys do the following funky stuff:
P   Pause Game (press u for unpause to resume the action)
X   Exit/Restart quits the current game and goes back to the title screen
S   Samples On/Off allows you to turn off the in-game sound effects. This is
fine if you are the sort of dude who plays their Defender in a darkened room
with loud rock blasting.

End.
