How to play Towering Inferno online
- Move your fireman: arrow keys
- Spray water / pick up survivors: Space bar
- Second player: T, F, G, H to move, A to spray
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a game variation: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Hidden or visible flames: F4 (Player 1) and F9 (Player 2) toggle the difficulty switches
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Emulator databases note that this cartridge reads the two joystick ports the other way round. If your fireman does not respond to the arrow keys, try the Player 2 keys instead.
Gameplay
Each floor is a maze of walls. Your fireman enters at the bottom of the screen and has to reach the white window at the top, where the survivors are hiding. Press the button there to pick them up, then get out through the passage at the bottom right. A helicopter then flies everyone down to the ground, and you move on to the next floor.
Two kinds of fire block the way. A small Flameoid goes out with one squirt. A Wall of Fire breaks up into smaller Flameoids when you hit it, and you must put them all out to pass. Your water never runs out, but your time does: four survivors wait on each floor, and as the clock runs the meter drops to three, two, then one, with a loud beep when the last is about to be lost.
You have four firemen per floor, and touching a flame costs one. The game ends when a floor runs out of survivors or you lose all four firemen. There are nine buildings of nine floors each, and every floor has its own layout.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Putting out a flame | 1 |
| Rescuing a survivor | 25 |
Variations and switches
- Games 1–3 (one player): game 1 is the standard game, game 2 lets you carry on from the same floor with your score kept, and game 3 is practice with floor repetition.
- Game 4 (two players): players take turns, and a player is out after failing a floor.
- Games 5–7 (two players, continuous): a player who fails restarts at building one (game 5) or repeats the floor (game 6); in game 7 both move on if either clears the floor.
The difficulty switch controls fire inside the walls: in position B (easy) you can see it coming, and in position A (hard) it stays hidden.
Tips
- Learn on the easy setting. With the switch on B you can watch flames move inside the walls, and game 3 lets you repeat a hard floor.
- Go round a Wall of Fire if you can. Breaking one leaves several small flames to deal with.
- Speed beats clearing every fire. A flame is worth 1 point, a survivor 25.
The story behind Towering Inferno
U.S. Games, the video game label of Quaker Oats, licensed the name from Twentieth Century-Fox and released the cartridge in autumn 1982. Reviewers at the time liked that it was exciting without any violence, though some found it repetitive; Videogaming Illustrated recommended it highly. In Europe it was also sold as Infernal Tower. Paul Allen Newell also programmed Scramble for the Vectrex and worked on the maze algorithm of Entombed, another U.S. Games cartridge.
Similar games to play next
- Fire Fighter – Imagic’s firefighting game, with a ladder and a hose on a burning warehouse
- Crazy Climber – scale a skyscraper floor by floor
- Keystone Kapers – race through a department store against the clock
- Entombed – a U.S. Games maze game whose maze algorithm Paul Allen Newell worked on