CRISIS CENTER: 1 Player, Joystick and Keyboard. This is a 54-minute real-time simulation that takes place in one of 3 cities. The object of the game is to resolve emergencies that arise by sending the appropriate equipment needed to handle the situation. For example, there might be a hotel burning somewhere. You have ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and SWAT teams at your disposal. Crowd control could become a real problem, so you had better send some police cars along with the fire trucks. And, of course, you'll need some ambulances. If you have the right combination and number of vechicles to handle the situation, the people will be saved. On the other hand, if you don't get the right combination in time, you'll lose points for lives lost! If enough lives are lost, you'll be fired and the game will end. The more serious emergencies are worth more points. Therefore, you should try to resolve the most critical situations before handling the lesser emergencies. плаыинг═тхе═гаме: After pressing START, you'll be asked to choose a city. Each city has its own level of difficulty based on crime rate and population. Dallas is the easiest, followed by L.A., and New York. When you have made your selection, a map of your city will appear at the top of the screen and the game will begin. The top section of the screen also contains a status display that is continually updated during the game. The status screen displays readouts of how many of each vehicle are currently available at headquarters, an emergency counter which shows how many crisis situations are currently ongoing, your current score and a real-time clock. The game begins at 12:30 P.M., and will end at 1:39 unless your score falls below zero, in which case the game is ended. You have two communication links at headquarters. The primary communication system is a half-duplex system. To gain control of this communication system, you must wait until any message you are receiving is finished and then press the joystick button to obtain sending priority. Once you have communication control, you'll see a command screen. The other communication link is the emergency phone which is explained in the following Command Section. цоммандс: Select one of the four commands by moving the joystick in the designated direction. сенд: This allows you to dispatch vehicles to crisis locations. After selecting the send command, another stick diagram appears. Choose which type of vehicle to send. Then the locations are given in a stick diagram with the choice 'MORE' at the bottom. If the location you wish to send a vehicle does not appear on the menu, select the 'MORE' option until you find it. You'll be asked how many units you want to send. Type the number and press RETURN. You'll hear the units leave Command Headqurters. рецалл: You'll be prompted for which type of unit you wish to recall and from what location. If you attempt to recall more units from a ftion than there actually are, no units at all will be returned and you'll have to try again. статус: This command is included in case you forget where your emergency teams are located. For instance, if all your fire trucks are off-station, you must recall them before they can be sent out again. Select which type of vehicle you need a status report on, and all ten locations will be displayed with how many of that unit type are there. пхоне: Throughout the game the emergency phone will ring. It rings more often in the higher difficulty games. You must select the 'ANSWER PHONE' command to find out what emergency is being phoned in. If you do not answer the phone in two or three minutes from when the phone first starts ringing, that emergency will have deterioated to the point of disaster, and an unanswered phone message will appear that describes the result. The value of that particular emergency will be deducted from your score. The phone emergency could be one of small point value, like a simple traffic accident. On the other hand, it could be worth lots of points, so you should stop working on your current emergency and answer the phone if you wish to avoid losing points. You begin the game with 200 points. If your score falls below zero, the game ends and you'll be fired from your position. The simulation is designed to be a test of endurance, recall and common sense. The situations have been worded to enhance the sense of realism. There is no 'PAUSE' feature since you should never leave your station unattended. However, if you must pause the game, you should select the status command and choose a vehicle. The status screen will stay up until you press the fire button. Though the clock will appear not to change during the break, it's still running. So if the phone was ringing when you took a break, and you're gone long, when you come back you'll lose some points. хинт: Up to four (4) emergencies may be on-going at the same time. One limitation the program has is that it can only solve one emergency at a time, so it only checks for the correct situation after a send command. If you have two emergencies occurring at the same location and feel you have sent enough equipment to resolve both emergencies, then after you receive points for one of them, send another unit to get the points for the other emergency.