How to play Flash Gordon online
- Fly your ship through the tunnels: arrow keys
- Fire: Space bar
- Start a game (leave the demo): F12 (the consoleās Reset switch) or Space
- Pause and resume: F2 (the consoleās Colour/B-W switch)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0ā9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0ā9 loads it
The Select and difficulty switches are not used. There is one game mode.
Gameplay
Spider City is a network of tunnels. The map in the lower half of the screen shows your ship as a short horizontal line, the hatching pods as vertical lines and the disrupters as crosses. The city wraps around: fly out of one side of the map and you come back in on the other. The upper half shows a close-up of the tunnel you are in.
You conquer a city by getting rid of all its hatching pods. When you touch a pod it hatches, and young spider warriors try to fly away. Shoot five from the same hatching and you get a shield for a short time. While it lasts you can destroy enemies by ramming them, and two beeps tell you when it is about to run out. Patrol ships roam the tunnels and will destroy you on contact. Disrupters cannot be destroyed: inside one you are surrounded by deadly debris, and the only help is to shoot its generator, which freezes it for a while. Stranded spacemen are rescued by flying into them. Never shoot them.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Debris | 10 |
| Patrol ship | 25 |
| Rescued spaceman | 70 |
| Disrupter generator | 100 |
| Spider warriors from one hatching | 100, 200, 300 and so on |
| Shooting a spaceman | minus 1,000 |
Each conquered city gives you an extra ship and a bonus: 10 points for every spaceman your current ship rescued, multiplied by the number of cities you have conquered. Lose that ship first and the bonus is gone. A replacement ship starts with a short shield. Every new city is harder, and the game has no set end.
Tips
- Chain your shields. As soon as you are shielded, fly to the next pod and ram the warriors as they hatch. Lubarās own advice in the manual is to stay shielded as much as you can.
- Navigate by the map. The close-up view shows very little of the city. Plan your route to the pods on the lower screen.
- Shoot the generator, then leave. In later cities the disrupters move faster, and freezing one is often the only safe way through.
- Rescue spacemen before you clear the last pod. Rescues raise the bonus for the city, and the bonus grows with every city you have conquered.
The story behind Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon began as a newspaper comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate. The gameās manual also carries a 1980 Universal copyright and a picture of the poster from the 1980 film. The game itself does not retell the film. It is an original tunnel shooter. Sirius Software made several 2600 cartridges for Fox, including Fantastic Voyage, Worm War I and Fast Eddie.
Lubar went on making games for other systems into the 1990s, and later became best known as an author of childrenās and young-adult books. In Canada the same game was sold by the Zellers department store chain under the title Space Adventure.
