AARDVARK A game for the Atari VCS / 2600 by Óscar Toledo G., Thomas Jentzsch and Nathan Strum. Welcome to nature! Guide Oscar the Aardvark in his quest for tasty ant eggs and the most delicious ants hidden deep below ground. But be careful with your tongue, you could get an unexpected bite! GETTING STARTED 1. Connect your video game system following the manufacturer's instructions. 2. Plug the Joystick Controller into the left joystick port (only the left Joystick is used). 3. With power OFF, plug in game cartridge. 4. Turn power ON. If no picture appears, check the connections of your game system to your TV, then repeat steps 1-3. GAME OPTIONS * When you power ON, the Title screen is displayed. * Press the FIRE button to advance to the Options screen. * The Options Screen allows you to select different predefined game modes or to define your own custom options. The default mode NORMAL is a good mode to start playing. Press the FIRE button to start the game. * The predefined modes are NOVICE, EASY, NORMAL, HARD, EXPERT, WILD 1, WILD 2 and WILD 3. Each mode presets the starting HILL, starting number of LIVES and the score for earning EACH bonus life; and the game becomes more difficult in later modes. * Move the joystick left/right to select a mode and up/down to choose an option to change. With an option select, move the joystick left/right to change the option. * Press the FIRE button to start the game. * Pressing SELECT will return to the Options Screen. * Pressing RESET will return to the Title Screen. * TV TYPE (Color/B&W) is used for pausing the game. * The difficulty switches are not used. GAMEPLAY Oscar will enter the scene and put his tongue down the anthill. Move the Joystick left, right, down or up to move his tongue tip and eat all the eggs (10 points each). Press the fire button to quickly retract the tongue. Oscar cannot completely remove his tongue until the level is cleared. Once all eggs in the anthill are eaten, Oscar will move to the next, more dangerous hill. Watch the sun moving across the sky. It will eventually set and night will fall, which will bring out the most deadly enemy, so you better hurry! BONUS SCREEN Whenever Oscar moves to the next hill or looses a life, the Bonus Screen is shown. Here the worms eaten multiply the bonus score for each ant eaten. Press fire to exit the Bonus Screen. ENEMIES AND OBSTACLES * Ant (100 points): These are the most common enemies. Oscar can eat them with the tip of his tongue. But if they touch any other part of his tongue, he will lose one life! * Red Ant and Caterpillar (150 points): Both usually appear only deeper in the anthill. Like the normal ants, Oscar can eat them with the tip of his tongue only and must avoid them touching any other part of his tongue. But beware - they can suddenly reverse direction, too! * Worm (200 points): The Worm can only be eaten from its back because its head is poisonous! * Queen (1000 points): The Queens hide at the bottom of the anthill. They will eliminate all other enemies on the screen when eaten. Use them wisely! * Spider (200 points): The spider will only appear at night. This is the most dangerous enemy, because Oscar cannot eat it! It will slowly travel down Oscar's tongue and kill him when it reaches the tip. The only way to kill the spider is eating a queen, but it will reappear very soon after again! * Rocks: In WILD modes, the ants have dragged rocks into the tunnels. The rocks are harmless, but they will block Oscar's tongue, often forcing him to find more dangerous paths down into the hill. SPECIAL FEATURES The WILD modes add obstacles which can block your path, and changes are also made to enemy behavior. Try the fun of discovery! TIPS FOR AARDVARK * Try to keep the tongue close to the middle, so that you have more time to react when a new enemy appears above. * Your tongue moves at a particular speed, so learn to time it carefully. Remember that retracting your tongue is faster than trying to move backwards. * Watch the speed of ants, some are faster than others, and some can turn around at unexpected times! * It's better to finish the anthill before night falls or the spider's wrath will come over you. * An ant will loop around to the other side of its current tunnel, but if you eat one then some time will pass before a new one appears. * Eating a queen ant is better when all enemies are in screen, but you need to be daring to attempt this. A HISTORY OF THIS GAME Hi! I'm Óscar Toledo G. and after Space Raid (my first Atari 2600 game) I wanted to improve my abilities in Atari graphics, and I was looking for a game that could help me on this. I discovered there were screenshots for an unreleased prototype of Anteater and I decided to create a game from scratch that could look like it. I published my own "protos" as I was developing it, and in Dec/04/2016 I published a ROM in Atariage that showed a working core with all enemies running in the screen, the Aardvark walking and able to move its tongue. Two days later I published another allowing the aardvark to eat eggs and included a score indicator. Six days after I managed to integrate enemy behavior and made the aardvark able to eat the enemies. It took me then more than one month to integrate music and sound effects, and the game was essentially complete in its core. A testament to my effort is that the music and sound effects are very well done and have changed very little since 2017. Not having a video of the original 2600 prototype, I took a look to the arcade and added several things that the prototype didn't have, like: the arcade music, a sun in the sky (it was a counter in the prototype), eggs in the tunnels, and spider and enemy behaviors like the arcade. One year passed and Albert Yarusso asked me to prepare a version for PRGE 2017, also he suggested that I collaborate with Thomas Jentzsch and Nathan Strum. I did and I passed many months integrating a new display kernel by Thomas that allowed very surprising graphics (multiple animations, big Aardvark sprite, mountains, sky, clouds, moon, sun), including some cool Aardvark animations by Nathan (you need to watch how it walks and eats!), and we tuned the gameplay, difficulty and options. A detail that I'm very proud is the tongue being able to go through anywhere in the maze. I even coded a small AI to compose a Boogie-Woogie tune for the title screen! At the end it resulted in a game that is 500% better than original, and even I would prefer it to the arcade because of the nice graphics! I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed programming it. CREDITS A game originally written by Óscar Toledo G. (nanochess) Display kernel and gameplay adjustments by Thomas Jentzsch. Graphics, animation and label artwork by Nathan Strum. Music and sound effects by Oscar Toledo G. Beta-testers: * Alessandro Ciceri (alex_79) * Nathan Strum * John W. Champeau Special Thanks: * Albert Yarusso * James Earl O'Brien and ZeroPage Homebrew * Don Switzer * Brian Matherne, keebs, Mike Haas, sramirez2008, r_type2600, Darrell Spice, Jr., groundtrooper, Kosmic Stardust, chavert, NostAlgae37, The Maxx, eshu, Kiwi and Carlsson Copyright (C) 2019 Óscar Toledo G. LEGAL This game is freeware, but copyrighted; it may be freely distributed, but it **must** be always accompanied by this documentation file. This program may be included on websites and shareware or freeware compilations. You **cannot** distribute Aardvart on Atari 2600 cartridges without our **explicit** permission.