CENTURION
by JEFF GREENWAY
Imagine yourself as the commander of a small, intergalactic scout ship. You have just arrived at the entrance of a planetoid that harbors within it the mother ship of your enemy's forces. Your mission is to penetrate the defenses and destroy the mother ship.
The defenses consist of a twisting tunnel blocked in places by deadly force fields. Your blasters have no effect on the force fields, but you can blast through the "air locks" of the fields, if you can get a head-on shot at them.
Your forward progress is inexorable while you try to avoid the walls and force fields. Occasionally this will be impossible so your one hope is to jump into hyperspace by pushing forward on the joystick. This five-second burst wilI carry you safely beyond a force field, but you must emerge in the tunnel beyond (not in a wall) or you will crash. Hyperspace travel exhausts your precious fuel at a prodigious rate, so only use it when you must.
With each of your three "lives" in a game, your fuel tank is refilled. Fuel pods in the tunnel replenish your supply if you can manage to shoot them. This is a crucial skill to master if you ever hope to get as far as the mother ship. The fuel tanks are place at random the tunnel and are worth 150 points, not to mention their fuel. Blasting through an airlock is good for 50 points.
The tunnel is very long, but if you finally do come upon the inner base, you will see four glowing reactors. Each must be blasted away to destroy the mother ship. A reactor is worth 500 points; the mother ship is worth 5,000. Meanwhile, you will be approaching the base -- so be careful not to run into it! Move to the other edge, blast through one of the five airlocks, and escape into outer space.
Soon you wilI enter the tunnel again. Each time you navigate the tunnel the number of force fields increases and the mother ship moves faster. A score of 10,000 is very good.
Jeff Greenway, 14, from Ontario, Canada, not only programmed this challenging game, but drew the art and headline. When he contacted us last year, he was despondent that no one wanted to publish his work. We saw Centurion as a natural for this International Issue. We hope it was worth the wait. -- ANTIC ED
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