Air Raiders: The Definitive FAQ c. 2002 D. Dodge Silver V1.0 I. Game Concepts II. Take off! III. Engaging the Enemy IV. Landing I. Game Concepts A. The story. You are a pilot of a non-descript plane engaging non-descript enemy planes. For some reason, Air Raiders always makes me think of WWII era planes, but it could be really any time period. Feel free to imagine yourself taking part in aerial combat in your favorite war. (Note: There was no aerial combat in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Mexican-American War, or the Spanish-American War. Those of you who are citizens of countries that are not the United States, please consult your local library regarding armed conflicts in your nation's history that did and did not involve aerial combat. Don't say you didn't learn something today!) B. Objective Take off, engage enemy aircraft, and land safely before running out of fuel. Upon landing, you will be given ammunition equal to the number of enemies you shot down. If you shot down more than ten, you will be allowed to take off again for another sortie. (Fun "Air Raiders" Fact: "Sortie" is a military term for a mission, in this case, a mission to shoot down the enemy aircraft. "Sortie" comes from the French word "sortir", which means "to go out". I'll bet you had no idea you'd be learning history and foreign language skills by playing Atari games. Mention that to your mom when she complains about you wasting your time with "those silly games.") C. Controls Those of you familiar with flight simulator games should feel right at home. Once airborne, down will cause your aircraft to climb, and up will send you into a dive. Left and right bank in their respective directions. In a surprising depth of control for the Atari 2600, you also have the ability to bank while climbing or diving, using the appropriate diagonal control combinations. The button is used to fire your gun during the airborne sequences, and to start your taxi down the runway during the take off sequence. II. Take off! This is probably the easiest thing to handle in Air Raiders. To take off, press the fire button and wait a few seconds while your aircraft gains ground momentum. When you are going fast enough, pull back (down) on the joystick, and your aircraft will begin to climb. III. Engaging the Enemy Once you are in the air, you will want to engage the enemy. At this stage in the game, you will have a gun sight on the screen. The green below represents the land, and the blue represents the sky. Below that, you have indicators for altitude (your distance above the ground, in 1000s of feet), hits (the number of enemy aircraft shot down), and ammo (the number of bullets remaining). Below that, a fuel gauge that goes from blue to pink as you consume fuel. Finally, a black bar with a red center. This indicates your position in the air left to right. The red center area is the area most heavily guarded with flak cannons. More on those later. Your aircraft has the ability to climb to 40,000 feet. However, you won't find many planes at that height. Look around 20-30000 feet for the enemy formations. They fly in what I like to call a "profile formation", meaning you see them from the side, and they fly in a three man pyramid formation. When you see one of these formations, fire your gun. If you hit any of the planes, you'll get a "hit credit" on your hit indicator below, and the remaining planes in the formation will "scramble", or break formation. Try to pick off the remaining aircraft, then hunt for a new formation. Now, this is "Air Raiders", not a turkey shoot. The enemy has some defenses for their seemingly unarmed planes that your are mercilessly shooting down. These defenses come in the form of flak cannons. Flak appears as black splotches that may make you think of bugs hitting your windshield. If one of these splotches hits near your sight, you will go into an uncontrolled dive for anywhere from 5- 15 feet. Needless to say, flak can be deadly at low altitudes. Your only defense against flak is to go into a climb when it starts. Climb up until the flak stops, then dive back down after more enemies. Your rate of fuel consumption doubles when you climb, so keep an eye on that gauge. So, you've taken off, you've shot up the bad guys, and you're starting to run low on gas. What do you do now? Well, I'll tell you. IV. Landing. Landing is a bit trickier, and probably the most difficult aspect of "Air Raiders". What you need to do is descend to 0 feet. Do this slowly, taking the last 3000 feet one at a time. Cruise at 0 feet for a few seconds and your see the runway. Now do the most counter-intuitive move in a flight sim video game ever. Push the joystick into a dive (up), until almost the whole windshield is filled with horizon. Then release it. You have landed. You will be given ammunition equal to the number of "hits" you had this sortie, and if it exceeds 10, you will be allowed to take off again. Go back to section II if you still need help. V. The Extra Bits For those of you who do not have the benefit of the "Air Raiders" manual, here are the ratings for the various scores. Rating First Time Up Entire Game Student Pilot 0-10 0-10 Novice 10-20 10-30 Fighter Pilot 20-30 30-50 Ace Pilot 30-45 50-70 Double Ace 45-65 70-90 Triple Ace 65+ 90+ Well, that concludes the "Air Raiders" FAQ. Hope it helped you out. VI. The Legal Stuff Any reproduction, rebroadcast, or retransmission of this FAQ without the express written consent of Major League Baseball...oh, wait...wrong disclaimer. Please don't rip off my "Air Raiders" FAQ. If you desperately need to use it for something, let me know, I'll probably be cool with it, as long as it's not something like, "The White Supremacists Guide to Atari 2600 Games." Copyright 2002. D. Dodge Silver.