Welcome to the start of a journey that will take you from the realities of mainland Britain, across the ocean to the dangers and mysteries of the island of prehistoric life! At Stonehenge the Old Man awaits an adventurer worthy enough to share his 'Elixir of Eternal Youth'. You assume the role of Ohio, the Brave Adventurer, who has accepted the challenge to bring back the legendary Amaranth Fruit which the Old Man can brew to replenish his exhausted supply of the Elixir. But your quest is thwart by puzzles and perils including the mighty prehistoric creatures that roam the Island - supposing you even reach the Island... LOADING THE GAME Type LOAD "" and hit the ENTER key. The title page is displayed whilst the game is loading (approximately 4 minutes) after which it clears and awaits your first command. HOW TO PLAY Your first location is Stonehenge. Each location is well described and contains clues that will help you progress in your adventure. Explain what it is you want Ohio to do by entering simple English type commands in the form of verb noun. For example, walk west and take shovel. 'Prehistoric' has the powerful ability of understanding alternative logical ways of entering commands. For instance, enter restaurant, enter bar, go in, walk inside are just some of the ways of entering the restaurant. Avoid poor English. For example, do not use 'bar in' or 'go bar'. KEYING IN The EDIT key can be used to retrieve the last command and can be modified by the DELETE and cursor keys. The keyboard 'beep' can be turned on/off by pressing the ':' key. Upper or lower case can be used. WORD RECOGNITION (THE PREPROCESSOR) Your commands are analysed for recognition and logic. For example, entering follow car will respond with follow what? because follow is known but car is not. The response try again means both words are known but are not in the logical verb noun format. Some commands can be shortened, e.g. just take will apply to the first object, go west can be entered as west or just w. IMPORTANT WORDS inventory or inv - lists objects in your possession look - describes your location in full score - your score out of 300 : obtained by solving problems help - given at 3 levels, depending on your progress quit - will end the game : load your position nickname or name - most animals and objects have a nickname, eg nickname allosaurus, will respond with ally. This will avoid typing some tricky words. Two more important words are save and load. SAVING YOUR POSITION 'Prehistoric' is complex and may take you days or even weeks to solve. So you will find it useful to save your current position on tape and return to it another time. To save your position use a blank tape and type save followed by a name you can easily remember. A good idea is to call it after part of the game. For example, if you have found the Old Man's map then you could type save map. The name may be up to 10 characters long, upper and lower letters and hyphen only. Saving will take about 15 seconds and will automatically do an 'Instant Save' (see below). The BREAK key can be used safely to abort saving. LOADING YOUR POSITION You may load a saved position at any time whilst you are playing the game. To load a saved position type load followed by the name of the saved position on tape. Saved positions found on tape are displayed to remind you what you have on tape. The position with the correct name will be loaded and you will be in exactly the same situation as when you saved it. The position stonehenge has been saved on cassette after the game. Save and load do not alter your total number of moves. The BREAK key can be used safely to abort loading at any time. 'INSTANT SAVE AND LOAD' Prehistoric has a unique advantage of an Instant Save/Load facility to RAM. Instead of saving to tape your position is saved directly to your Spectrum's memory which makes it fast and easy to use. To use, simply type save or load without a name afterwards. Use the Instant Save facility if you suspect danger immediately ahead of you. NOTE: Load will load the last position saved/loaded to RAM/tape. If you save your position after you have been killed or used quit then you must load from tape. HINTS AND CLUES Read the descriptions and messages carefully; all the clues you need are contained within them. You will quickly get lost if you do not draw a map of the locations that you have been to. In particular, if two locations appear to be the same then leave something in one to differentiate between them. As rule of thumb, most objects that you may pick up need to be carried to be used. There are no invisible objects or exits. There are many messages to help you even when you have gone wrong. If you are stuck, clues may be gained from deliberately entering a command that you think is wrong. If, however, you do become really stuck then as a last resor there is a three level clue sheet available from the address below. Remember, don't give up it CAN be solved! Good Luck GRADINGS When you finish the game you are graded by the number of moves it took you MASTER Adventurer - only the very best will manage this Honourable Adventurer - very good rating, experts only Gifted Adventurer - good, this is typical Weekend Adventurer - Well...Hmm, at least you finished! There is a further grade for anyone who can beat the Crusader Computing's own Master Adventurer the 'Impossible' grade: Magic Adventurer. COPYRIGHT No part of the recording and packaging of Prehistoric Adventure may be reproduced, hired, lent, transmitted, modified or distributed in any form without the written permission of Crusader Computing. Crusader Computing address: 18 Henley Wood Road Earley, Reading Berks. RG6 2EE © Crusader Computing 1986 [Typed by Alessandro Grussu in May 2011 from a scan of the original inlay card.]