THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE ESCAPE FROM KRAKATOA PUBLISHER Abbex AUTHOR Paul W. Reynolds YEAR 1984 DESCRIPTION Escape from Krakatoa is a scrolling arcade game, with strategy overtones, similar to Choplifter (in the same way that Turbo Esprit is similar to Chase HQ). CONTROLS You must use the keyboard for this game. The controls are also given in the game. Forwards Up Down Turn around Rope up Rope down Machine gun Mine INSTRUCTIONS There are several thing you must do in this game. Your general objective is to keep everybody and everything safe from the volcano and the periodical air strikes. And the submarine. Starting on the left hand side of the playing area, the first island is your base. This is where you start from, and if your helicopter gets damaged, landing here will repair it. You can also refuel from here as well. Should you also rescue any people, this is where you must drop them of to gain the points. Rescuing is done by lowering the rope and flying the end of it into the men. Depending on how much rope you lower, you can carry up to 5 people at once. When dropping them off, be careful that you just lower the bottom person on the rope to level with the ground - they will automatically climb off. If you go down too low you will kill them. Next along the map is the tanker. This can substain quite a lot of damage, but everytime it is hit, another person will jump of the ship and into the water, waiting to be rescued. Once the tanker has been damaged too much it wil sink. Should the tanker sink then it is game over. In the same stretch of water as the tanker is the yellow submarine. This appears periodically, shooting torpedo's through the water which may or may not hit the tanker. The only way to destroy this is to hit it with a mine. Next along the map is the island of Krakatoa itself. The first big hill is the actual volcano, which erupts periodically (or when/if you drop any mines into it) sending debris everywhere. When it does so, people will appear outside the three houses demanding to be rescued. You must run the gauntlet of flying lava and try and rescue them and take them back to base before they are hit. Getting hit by the lava will damage your helicopter. There is nothing else on the map of note, except from the far right (off the map), which is where the air strikes appear from. They appear in groups periodically, and depending on where they land, they will either crash into the sea or into the tanker, damaging it even more. You must shoot these down using your machine gun. Should the helicopter become damaged, it will be affected in various ways, depending on which sections have been hit (indicated on the dashboard). The control panel, including radar, may start to flicker, the helicopter may start to act erratically, or it may just crash altogether. THE SCREEN DISPLAY The two graphs on either side of the screen are your fuel and ammo. The pairs of letters are your damage warning lights. In the centre of the control panel is your scanner which shows all major features in the map. CHEATS SEQUELS/PREQUELS None. INLAY CARD TEXT SCORES RECEIVED URL GENERAL FACTS In case you did not know, this game is based on a real-life Krakatoa island complete with active volcano. NOTES One of the great things about this game is the amount of things you can do. As well as the normal objectives, you can also drop mines into the volcano to try and set it of. You can play a simple game of Defender with the air strikes. It is a challenge to juggle all the objectives and can get quite frenetic.