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                              MINE ALERT 2
                  The Quest for the Lost Scientists
                for the ZX Spectrum 128K, +2, +2A and +3
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  Original game .......... Ramon Gallastegui, 1987 (in SPECTRUM BASIC)
  Mine Alert 2 ........... namco/nexgen, 2026

  Mine Alert was a type-in listing by Ramon Gallastegui, published in
  MicroHobby issues 146 and 147 in October 1987: a lost mine, three
  bombs, a time limit, and a brave pilot in a small ship who had to
  disable them all before they went off. I typed it in and played it a
  lot back then, lovely game.

  Mine Alert 2 is a tribute and a sequel. It is written from scratch in
  Z80 machine code (the ship's flight, the rooms, the enemies) and has a
  new theme. Thank you, Ramon for the huge inspiration.

  Because i am not a graphic artist and my "pixel-skills" are pretty
  limited, i chose to use assets from other type-ins and a few more
  from games available back then. Some were drawn by myself.

  They are listed here:
  - Thanos, a 1988 MicroHobby type-in game by Jose Luis Jimenez &
    Vicente Javier Jimenez
  - Abu Simbel Profanation by Dinamic
  - Equinox by Mikro-Gen
  - Jack the Nipper 2 by Gremlin Graphics


THE STORY
---------
  The first mission was a success, and the crew went home as heroes.
  Months later, a call came from Egypt.

  A team of five scientists had gone deep into a forgotten pyramid,
  looking for the tomb of a lost king. Then the pyramid woke up. Doors
  sealed behind them, traps sprang from the walls, and things that
  should not move began to crawl.

  Only a small ship can fly through its narrow halls and chambers. Find
  the five scientists, bring them back to where you took off.


REQUIREMENTS
------------
  A ZX Spectrum 128K, +2, +2A or +3. Mine Alert 2 uses all of the 128K
  memory and the AY sound chip. On a 48K Spectrum it says so and returns
  to BASIC.


LOADING
-------
  Choose "Tape Loader" from the 128 menu, or type in 128 BASIC:

      LOAD ""

  and start the tape. The loading screen appears first, then the rest
  of the game loads. The intro starts on its own when the loading is
  done.


THE INTRO
---------
  The story scrolls up under a framed picture, with music.

      ENTER (held) ..... scrolls text faster
      SPACE or FIRE .... skips to the main menu

  You can watch the intro again from the main menu.


THE MAIN MENU
-------------
  Move the ship up and down the options with your UP and DOWN controls,
  the joystick or cursor keys, and select with FIRE or ENTER.

      START GAME ....... choose how hard (see DIFFICULTY), then off
                         you go
      REDEFINE KEYS .... press a key for each control in turn. A key
                         already taken beeps and is refused.
      JOYSTICK ......... changes the joystick: KEMPSTON, SINCLAIR
                         (the +2's joystick 1, keys 6-0) or CURSOR
                         (keys 5-8, 0 fire). The keyboard always works
                         too.
      WATCH INTRO ...... Watch the story once again

  The keys, the joystick and the difficulty are kept until you switch
  off your Speccy.


DIFFICULTY
----------
  START GAME first asks how hard you want the game to be. Choose with
  UP and DOWN, start with FIRE or ENTER, or press SPACE to go back to
  the menu. The page opens on the difficulty you played last.

  The game is tough, but rest assured it IS possible to complete it,
  i have tested it several times. Don't be scared, it's not THAT hard
  but it is challenging and requires some skill at times.

  TOO YOUNG TO DIE ("Help me Mommy, I can't play.")
      - You are given 5 lives;
      - Thrusting burns half the fuel, shooting half the ammo;
      - The enemies move at half speed, shoot half as often, and
        their shots are slower; homing missiles are slower too.

  Are you really going to play like that?

  HURT ME PLENTY ("The mission, as it was meant to be.")
      - The game as it was designed: Everything in this manual
        describes this level of difficulty.

  I AM GOD ON EARTH ("For the tough crowd. I mean it.")
      - You start with 2 lives;
      - A pickup or a boss reward gives 20% instead of 25%;
      - The boss shows up far more often, and moves twice as fast;
      - The enemies shoot more often and their shots are faster;
      - Homing missiles are faster too.

  Drops, darts, spikes, the scientists and the way the ship handles
  are the same at every level.


KEYS
----
  Q ............ up                 A ............ down
  O ............ left               P ............ right
  M ............ fire               H ............ pause / go on
  BREAK ........ (while paused) back to the main menu

  All seven can be redefined from the main menu.


THE SHIP
--------
  The ship floats. It speeds up while you hold a direction and slowly
  drifts to a stop when you let go, so plan your braking in tight
  places. There is no gravity: left alone, it stays where it is.
  Diagonals work.

  Walls just stop it. What kills it is anything deadly: spikes, enemies,
  their shots, and the boss.

  It shoots straight ahead, left or right, the way it last flew. Hold
  FIRE for a steady stream, up to three shots in the air.

  Fly off the edge of a room where there is an opening to reach the
  next room.


THE PANEL
---------
  The panel at the bottom of the screen shows, from left to right:

  LIVES        The ship and a digit: your spare lives. You start with
               3 lives (see DIFFICULTY), so the digit reads 2. When it
               reads 0, the next loss ends the game.

  OBJECTS      Two slots for the objects you carry.

  AMMO         The top bar (the pistol). Every shot takes a pixel
               off it. When it is empty, FIRE does nothing.

  FUEL         The lower bar. Fuel burns only while you thrust:
               coasting and shooting are free. A full tank is about a
               minute and a half of thrust. An empty tank costs a life.

  SCIENTISTS   Five figures. Each one turns green when you rescue that
               scientist.

  Both bars change colour from green to yellow to red as they run low.


LOSING A LIFE
-------------
  The ship explodes, then comes back where it came into that room, with
  a full tank. The ammo does NOT refill, and the objects you carry and
  the scientists you rescued are kept. After the last life: GAME OVER.


PICKUPS
-------
  Fuel barrel ...... +25% fuel (glug, glug)
  Bullet ........... +25% ammo (click-clack)
  Small ship ....... +1 life (9 spare lives at most)

  Each one is there once per game: once taken, it is gone.


OBJECTS
-------
  Fly into an object to take it. You can carry two. Taking a third
  leaves your older object where the new one was (fly off and back on
  to take it again).

  An object is used by flying into what it opens, and it is used up:

  Keys ............. open the door of their own colour
  Necklaces ........ free the chained skeleton of their own colour
  Access card ...... switches off the force fields. Beware: taking it
                     may wake the boss.
  Shield ........... radiation protection (see below). It is not used
                     up.

  Some switches on the walls are worked by shooting them.

  Watch out for decorations in plain cyan: an idol, a skull, a vase.
  Fly into one and it goes, and something happens: it may have been
  hiding an object, or opened a way somewhere else.

  When something opens or closes, the game stops for a moment so you
  can watch the stones slide. If it happened in another room, you only
  hear a rumble: something moved somewhere.


RADIATION
---------
  A yellow and black radiation sign warns of a contaminated area. In
  there the fuel drains fast, thrusting or not, and the fuel bar
  flashes. Turn back with fuel to spare, or carry the shield.


ENEMIES
-------
  Snakes ........... Slither along the floors and ledges. Two hits to kill.
  Owls ............. Fly across, and shoot at you.
  Bats ............. They bounce off the walls, and shoot at you. They take
                     three hits. You WILL learn to hate them, oh you will.
  Scarabs .......... These crawl after you wherever you go. Two hits.
  Spiders .......... Drop down on their threads and climb back up.
  Homing missiles .. These hunt you down. One shot stops them.

  These cannot be shot, only avoided:

  Drops ............ These fall from the ceilings, again and again.
  Darts ............ Fly out of the walls in the worst possible places.
  Spikes ........... Rising from the floor, but only kill when fully out.

  An enemy you shoot comes back about 20 seconds later, wherever you
  are. Enemy shots are aimed at you and they have a tendency to never
  miss...


THE BOSS
--------
  In some rooms of the pyramid, now and then, the boss appears. It
  blinks in (it cannot hurt you yet) and every other enemy in the
  room explodes, and force fields seal the exits: you cannot leave
  until it is dead.

  It roams the room, often towards you. Every few seconds it stops and
  charges with flashing colours, then fires a beam across the room
  towards your side just like the Death Star. The beam goes through
  walls, so better get above or below it, or else.

  It takes 15 hits. When it dies it leaves fuel, ammo, or a bundle of
  dynamite. The dynamite cannot be shot or taken: it blows up three
  seconds later, and anything too close by goes with it.
  Run! I mean, Fly!

  The boss can come back again and again, whenever it feels like
  annoying you some more, but it's not that common.


THE SCIENTISTS
--------------
  The five scientists are trapped all over the pyramid: behind doors,
  past force fields, in chains, or just lost in the halls. Nothing can
  hurt them. Fly into one to rescue them; their figure on the panel
  turns green.


WINNING
-------
  Rescue all five scientists, then fly back and land where you took
  off. Then sit back and enjoy the ending.


HINTS
-----
  - Fuel is your clock. Don't fly about without a reason.
  - Ammo doesn't come back when you lose a life. Shoot what is in your
    way, not everything that moves.
  - A swapped object stays where you left it. Nothing is lost for good.
  - Some gaps might seem impossible to fit your ship in, but they're not.

AI DISCLAIMER
-------------
  An AI agent was used to produce tooling to aid in the development of
  this game. A level designer, graphic converters, help with the AY sound
  driver and debugging support.
  
==========================================================================
  Mine Alert 2 by namco/nexgen in 2026. Original game by Ramon
  Gallastegui, MicroHobby 1987. Assets from Thanos, Profanation, Equinox
  and Jack the Nipper 2.
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