Aliens are attacking. Kill 'em all. Save Earth.
- "First 256B game I have even played."
- "playable! beep beep!"
- "cool game. playable with dosbox when you lower cpu cycles."
As with any other MS-DOS application, on modern OS you need to run it inside DOSBox. Download TIE.COM and copy it to the DOSBox-mounted folder.
Tweak CPU speed with CTRL-11 and CTRL-12 until it is playable.
- LEFT and RIGHT SHIFT - move player
- ALT - fire rocket
If you have sound on, you'll be blasted by the roar of the player rocket launch. There is even a brief explosion if you get killed!
Watch out for invisible alien ships! Search for an air-raid shelter if action gets too wild.
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Game uses undocumented "wait retrace" in one of the BIOS routines for accurate timing (as much as possible) and to prevent screen tearing.
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If you slow CPU too much, you will easily figure out how zig-zag alien movement is implemented.
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Sound FX is just random garbage (missile Y position) sent to the speaker port.
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In the upper-left corner missile and bomb appears (whenever there is no player missile), aka "the minefield".
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Player can go out of the screen and shoot from there, so there is even a "cheat mode" !
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Every time player shoots, "invisible alien ship" drops bomb (undefined SI value).
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Upper-left alien is getting killed in "the minefield", due to shape of the formation this is not obvious.
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Bombs don't appear always exactly below alien.
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Coded January 2-8 1997.
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Won '256 bytes' compo at YALP '97 held in Belgrade, RS. Check the official report in the TXT file.
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Norton Disk Doctor restored source code after sudden blackout. 1990s were tough.
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Tnx: Bambino, Branko, Glide (RIP), Imperator, Kisa, Darko, Neutron, Skokovic, Tut, Pop, Lemi, Andrej and Zorana.