THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE QUAZATRON PUBLISHER Hewson Consultants AUTHORS Graftgold Ltd (Steve Turner/Andrew Braybrook) YEAR 1986 DESCRIPTION Quazatron is a 3D arcade strategy game. CONTROLS Keyboard, Cursor, Kempston. Left/up - A, S, D, F, G Left/down - B, N, M, symbol shift Right/up - H, J, K, L Right/down - Z, X, C, V, caps shift Fire - ENTER Autofire - W (toggle) Pause - P (except in Grapple mode) INSTRUCTIONS You control KLP-2 (Klepto), a droid assigned to deactivate the hostile alien droids of Quazatron, which basically means destroy all the robots on each level. This can be done by laser fire, by pushing them to destruction, by ramming them or by grappling with them using your experimental Grapple Device. This allows you to dismantle the droid and use their parts to increase your own power and facilities. You can fire your weapons by using the fire button or by pressing W to activate autofire. Weapons fire in the direction KLP-2 is facing. There are many different weapons which can be taken from enemy droids. The weapons can only be used while KLP-2 is moving. To grapple and enemy droid, make KLP-2 stop moving and press fire until the yellow message at the bottom left shows GRAPPLE and the G light flashes. Then you can ram the enemy droid to dismantle it. To turn off GRAPPLE mode, press fire again while stationary. To successfully grapple you must overcome the enemy droid's security circuit. The idea is to turn as many lights your colour as possible by shooting the pulses at them. You have a few seconds to move left or right to select the side of the circuit which you wish to use. Your target uses the opposite side to fight back. Move your pulsers up and down the wires and activate them with the fire button. The channel of the pulses is affected by any hardware on the tracks. If you succeed in interfacing, the status of the enemy droid's Drive, Power, Weapon, Chassis and Devices are displayed. You can then take any of these parts for your own use by selecting them with up/down and pressing fire. Damaged elements are unusable. The more lights that you made your own colour, the less parts will be damaged. You must make sure when choosing parts that they are suitable. For example, you will need a strong power unit to power and strong weapons or drive units that you may have. To change levels, find a lift square and press fire. A side view of the city is shown. Move up/down to the required level and left/right to exit the lift. To use a console, move up to it and press fire. Use left/right to select an icon and press fire. You will see four icons: 1. Robot - Return to game 2. Diamond shape - 3D map of current level 3. Side view - side elevation of citadel 4. Query robot - droid data library Use left/right or up/down to move to the next screen. Press fire to exit. You can only view data on droids of a similar or lower security class to your current class. To improve your status you must grapple successfully with a higher class of droid. The first screen displayed shows your current status including data on Weapon, Drive, Power, Chassis and Devices. Your energy is shown by the rotation speed of the head of KLP-2. KLP-2's expression changes from happy to upset as he runs out of energy. Energy may be replace from energy points on some levels but your maximum energy allowed continuously falls as your power unit burns out under the burden of your Grapple Device. Replace power units for longer life. Extra equipment affects the rate at which your energy is consumed. The light on the right of the lower panel is the alert status monitor. Disabling droids in quick succesion causes the alert status to go to red and more points can be scored. When the last droid on a level is destroyed the citadel lights automatically go out. CHEATS The alien droids are classified from A-1 (the highest and toughest) to X-9 (the lowest and weakest). The higher classes tend to have the best parts. The droids' identifiers are stamped on their breast plates. A table of all the different droids was printed in an issue of Sinclair User, around 1986, so if anybody has an ASCII version of it, or would like to type it out, please contact me at stevo@jonlan.demon.co.uk. SEQUELS/PREQUELS Quazatron was followed up by a slightly similar game called Magnetron. It was a flip-screen version, and had a different grapple game. INLAY CARD TEXT QUAZATRON for the 48K ZX Spectrum, Spectrum Plus and Spectrum 128K You control KLP-2 (Klepto) a wayward Meknotech droid assigned to deactivate hostile alien droids which inhabit the underground city of Quazatron on the planet Quartech. You must destroy the alien droids by laser fire, by pushing them off their pro- grammed routes to destruction, or by ramming them (provided you are stronger than they are). KLP-2 has a prototype Grapple device enabling the alien robots to be stopped and dismantled. The parts recovered from the aliens can be added to KLP-2 to extend his facilities and endurance. The alien computer system can be tapped to provide maps of the various levels and obtain data on the alien droids and their constituent parts. LOADING THE TAPE If you have a joystick then plug it into the edge con- nector at the rear of your Spectrum. Connect your cassette player to the Spectrum in the usual way. Place the cassette in the cassette player, rewind it if necessary and press the PLAY button. If you have a Spectrum 128K make sure it is in 48K mode. Type LOAD " " on the Spectrum keyboard and press the ENTER key. Wait a few minutes for the game to load and the keyboard/joystick selection menu to be displayed. HOW TO PLAY Quazatron is played diagonally except when in Grapple mode. ------------------------------------------------ TO MOVE LEFT AND UP TO MOVE RIGHT AND UP A, S, D, F or G H, J, K or L or joystick left or joystick up TO MOVE LEFT AND DOWN TO MOVE RIGHT AND DOWN B, N, M or s/s Z, X, C, V or c/s or joystick down or joystick right TO FIRE ENTER key or joystick fire AUTO FIRE ON Press W key (repeat to turn off) PAUSE (except in Grapple mode) Press P key (press fire to restart) If you use a joystick it may help to rotate it 45 degrees clockwise. WEAPON SYSTEMS These can be activated using the fire button or by pressing W to select auto-fire. Weapons fire in the direction KLP-2 is facing. Many different weapons can be taken from enemy droids and the data library contains hints on which weapons are most useful. The weapons can only be used while KLP-2 is moving. GRAPPLING WITH A DROID Decide on your target droid, centre the joystick (or take your hands off the keyborad) and press fire until the yellow message at the bottom left shows "GRAPPLE" and the "G" light flashes. Then you can --------------------------------------------------------ram the enemy droid to dismantle it. If you wish to turn off "GRAPPLE" mode and switch back to weapon mode press fire again. To successfully grapple with a droid you must engage its security circuit. You must use your Pulsers to turn at least 7 of the 12 rectangles on the central bar to your colour. You have a few seconds to move left or right to select the side of the circuit which you wish to use. Your target uses the opposite side to fight back. Move your Pulsers up and down the wires and acti- vate them with the fire button. Try to avoid Ter- minators, Joiners and Colour Switchers. Aim instead for Splitters and Auto Pulsers. If the Grapple action is successful the status report of the control elements Drive, Power, Weapon, Chassis and Devices of the target droid is displayed. If you wish to remove one or more of these elements for your own use make your selection using up/ down and pressing fire. Some of the elements may be damaged and therefore unusable. If you win the Grapple action overwhelmingly, the elements of the alien robot are less likely to be dam- aged. In all circumstances you should select ele- ments wisely. A weak power unit for example will be drained uncomfortably quickly by heavy weaponry. Similarly a poor drive unit will not support substan- tial shields. Each alien droid is classified from 1 (the most sophisticated and difficult to beat) to 9 (the most menial). The higher classes of droids tend to have better elements for you to win in a Grapple action. A preceding letter distinguishes between different droids within the same class. The identifying letter ------------------------------------------------------- and number are stamped on each droid's breast plate. CHANGING LEVELS Find a lift square and press fire. A side view of the city is shown. Move up/down to the required level and left or right to exit the lift. CONSOLE ACCESS Find a console and press fire. Use left/right to select an icon and press fire. Your robot symbol - return to game Diamond shape - 3D map of current level Side view - side elevation of citadel Query robot - droid data library DROID DATA LIBRARY Use left/right or up/down to move to next screen. Press fire to exit. You can only view data on droids of a similar or lower security class to your current class. To improve your status you must Grapple successfully with a higher class of droid. The first screen displayed shows your current status including data on Weapon, Drive, Power, Chassis and Devices. ENERGY Your energy is shown by the rotation speed of the head of the KLP-2. KLP-2's expression changes from happy to upset as he runs out of energy. Energy may be replaced from energy points on some levels but your maximum energy allowed continuously falls as your power unit burns out. Exchange power units for longer life. Extra equipment affects the rate at which your energy is consumed. ------------------------------------------------------- ALERT STATUS The light on the right of the lower panel is the alert status. Disabling droids in quick succession causes the alert status to rise to red and more points can be scored. POWER DOWN When the last droid on a level is destroyed the citadel lights automatically go out. C Hewson Consultants Ltd 1986 and Graftgold Ltd 1986 Made in Great Britain The program and data are copyright and may not be reproduced either in part or in total by any means without the written permission of Hewson Consultants Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Unauthorised hiring or lending is strictly prohibited. No responsibility is accepted for any errors. Our policy is one of constant improvement, there- fore we reserve the right to modify any product with- out notice. Gameplay based on Paradroid for the C64 by Andrew Braybrook. Hewson Consultants Ltd Hewson House 56B Milton Trading Estate Milton Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RX URL ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/q/quazatrn.zip SCORES RECEIVED Crash gave it 94% in June 1986. It got 5/5 in Sinclair User, and a Sinclair User Classic. GENERAL FACTS Quazatron was based on a similar C64 game called Paradroid, written by Andrew Braybrook, also of Graftgold. NOTES Look out for the programmer's own "pet" droid, the A-B Andrewoid.