Impossiball!

By Jon Cartwright

LOADING - type CLOADM and press ENTER. The game will start automatically.

As the title would suggest, you are a ball. Mathematically speaking you are a sphere (despite PMODE3 graphics). The idea of the game is to navigate yourself through 10 different levels. The levels are made up of different coloured tiles…

PURPLE
These tiles are not really tiles at all. They are, in fact, holes. As you might imagine these no not do you any good at all.

GREEN
Sticky dudes these. Well they must be, they make you go slow. You simply CANNOT travel fast on them.
RED
These do not do very much for you I'm afraid. However you can travel either fast or slow when you're on them, so I suppose they have their uses.
BLUE
On these tiles you can ONLY travel fast. Guesses as to WHY include them being covered in water or invisible banana skins to make you slip.
YELLOW
Yellow tiles make you jump, whether you like it or not.

Holes are pretty deadly. However, as if by magic, you may fall down up to five per course. This is because you have five lives, unlike cats which have nine. The number of lives you have is displayed as a number of lines under your score.

You can jump whenever you want to by depressing the fire button. You only have five jumps per course, and the number of jumps left is shown as a single digit on the right hand side of the screen.

Near to the number of jumps is a three digit number - the TIMER. This number starts at 999 and decreases rather radiply. If this reaches 000 then you are dead and the game will end. However, if you reach the end of the level without being killed then you get a bonus depending on the time remaining.

As well as the time bonus, you get a bonus for each life and jump you have left at the end of the screen. Amazingly, there is one further way of getting a score: Simply by moving - the faster you move, the more your score. Consequently the idea is to try and move as fast as you can at all times.

The level indicator on the left hand side means you can gloat to your friends about which level you reached.

I'm going to leave it to you to work out how to control the ball, but here's a subtle hint: you use a joystick, but not the left one. THIS GAME REQUIRES A COLOUR DISPLAY.


Tandy Colour Computer 32K

Type "CLOADM". The game will start automatically.