RACING DESTRUCTION SET. By Rick Koenig and Connie Goldman. Distributed by Electronic Arts. How to drive... The red car uses the top window and is always under joystick control. The yellow car uses the bottom window and is under computer control in one-player games and joystick control in two-player ones. Moving the stick forward is like stepping on the gas. Moving it back is like stepping on the brake. Moving it to the right points the car toward the in-car driver's right, and moving to the left points the car toward the driver's left. If a lane exists on the side the car is pointing toward, the car will move into that lane. Think of the track as a slot racing set. As long as you steer straight ahead, your car will stay in its slot unless you try to go to fast through a turn or across certain jumps, or until you are interfered with by another car. Practice controlling the car at first without worrying about wrecks. At the "Normal" difficulty level setting, and with the "Racing/Destruction" option set on "Racing", wrecks will have no effect on a car's performance. Take advantage of this safety net to learn how to drive and how to memorize the track. Choosing different levels and options. Selecting "Set Options and Level" from the racing menu produces a new menu. The options if contains allow you to set the difficulty and complexity of the game and to choose among 4 different background graphic sets. Use the joystick to move the highlight up and down from option group to option group in the left column and back and forth among the options within each group. When you have the settings you want, move the highlight up to "Exit" and press the button. WHAT EACH "DIFFICULTY LEVEL" MEANS... NORMAL -> The vehicles are invulnerable in regular races and very durable even in destruction contests. This is the level the program begins with each time you start it up. ADVANCED -> The vehicles are much less durable. Running into the sides of the track or into other vehicles reduce power and speed. Vehicles can be damaged so badly that they will no longer run. If one car ceases to run, the other is declared the winner as soon as it crosses the finish line, regardless of what lap it is on, if neither car is able to do even this, press the key. SEVERE -> The tracks have no safety walls. Enter a turn or take a jump too fast and you'll leave the track-permanently. At this level, you can literally run your opponent off the track. And land mines are always fatal. COMPUTER VEHICLE handicapping. At the PRO level, the computer will always drive the straight-aways at the top speed of its vehicle. At the EXPERT level, the computer will drive 10 miles and hour less than this speed. At the Novice level, the computer will drive at 20 miles/hour below its top speed. RULES CHOICE... Racing -> The goal is to complete the number of laps before your opponent. Destruction -> The goal is the same, however you can really put a crimp in your opponents style, You can have cars with armor, crushing ability, landmines, and gallons of oil to make oil slicks. The oil slicks and land mines will be dropped on any level surface each time you press the joystick button. (Until you run out of course.) GRAVITY... There are 14 possible levels of gravity settings ranging from the 1/6 strength of the Moon to 2 1/2 G's of Jupiter's gravity. Move the joystick left and right to choose your level. On light gravity you will be able to make very long jumps and avoid bad terrain or landmines etc. with heavy gravity you will find you need practice so as not to roll your vehicle on a jump. LAPS... Choose any number from 1 to 9. Keep in mind that on tough tracks against a tough opponent you may find it impossible to finish a long race. BACKGROUND GRAPHICS... You can choose between any of 4 different types of terrain that will scroll along with your chosen race. Any combination of track/graphics/vehicles is perfectly OK. CHOOSE/CUSTOMIZE... You can choose between 10 different vehicles with different body/tire/engines. As you use your joystick to choose among the different possibilities you should keep an eye on the numbers showing traction, acceleration, and weight. Using the ability to create better or lesser equipped vehicles will allow a finer handi-capping for mis- matched drivers, keeping the race interesting. You can also choose such things as armor, crushing ability, oil, and landmines, for use in the destruction sequences. Armor will help keep down the destruction caused by your opponent and crushing will increase the damage you do if you ram your opponent. Remember the added weight of these things will slow your acceleration potential. If you drop an landmine you better remember where you dropped it because if you hit it its just as deadly as if the other guy dropped it. You can save each car or track you create to a new data disk. (Created using the "FORMAT" option.) Just follow the prompts. If you decide to create your own track or modify an existing one you will see a small overview of the entire track and various types of track pieces. Move the cursor to any section of track or any piece and you will see a large blow-up of the piece chosen. You can then choose to set the piece on the track or to modify the characteristics of the piece. (Each selection is chosen using the joystick and its trigger.) If you try to exit this option you will be told if any conflicts exist in your track set-up. Each track section must have matching end pieces each must be at the same height and width. To erase a track section choose a blank section and put it on top of the old one. When you load or save a section of track it will contain information on background and gravity as well as the track shapes. There are 50 different track layouts on the back of the destruction set.