Ghost Encounters For Atari Tina Halcomb
Ghost Encounters, by J. V. Software, is a realtime graphic adventure game. It requires an Atari 400 or 800, at least 16K of memory, and one joystick. Ghost Encounters is available on diskette and cassette.
You begin your quest in a base room which contains the doors leading to each additional room (for that particular level). As you complete each task, or exit a room for whatever reason, you are returned to the base room from which you can decide your next challenge. Upon entering a room which contains a treasure, you hear four bell tones. What you must do is tag the prize and exit the room without being destroyed.
Agile Monsters
You can be destroyed in a couple of ways - by monsters or by the timer. Several different monsters will hunt you. Being touched by one of them will cost you one life, and you are promptly returned to the base room for whatever level you are playing. The various monsters seem to be much more agile than you (the ghost). You can move north, south, east, west and four diagonal directions, but you are limited - you can't move through walls.
The ghost begins its treasure hunt in
Ghost Encounters
The enemy can go through walls and in most cases moves much faster than the ghost. Dodging these creatures can be very risky. You can run from them, or you can shoot at them. If you are a real marksman you can do both, but you had better be quick. In order to shoot at an object, you must move in the direction of that object, because the bullets are aimed in the direction you were moving immediately prior to releasing the fire button. so, to shoot at something that is chasing you, you must stop running and fire before your enemy closes in on you.
Puzzles
Not all rooms have monsters in them. In some, you must solve a puzzle to gain passage to your prize. The ghost can transform into eight different shapes which assist in solving the puzzles.
No matter what your opposition in each room, you must beat the timer. The countdown rate is different from room to room. Each time the timer counts to zero, you lose one life. You may restore the timer any time by passing through a door.
Treasure Hunt
The object of the game is to collect as many prizes as you can before you lose your ten lives. Once you capture all the prizes for any level, you are automatically promoted to the next level, and the game continues. The faster you capture the prizes, the better your score will be.
The game responds a bit slowly to the constantly changing joystick position. Also a feature which would allow the game to be saved would be resumed at another time would be nice.
This game has qualities that are similar to those of the arcade games and other charac teristics in common with adventure games. All in all, it's very entertaining.
Ghost Encounters
J. V. Software, Inc.
3090 Mark Avenue
Santa Clara, CA 95051
$29.95