How to play PING 2000 PING 2000 is played either with the joystick or the new Atari joypads. You can play with both at the same time, no need to change parameters. You start PING 2000 by clicking PING2000.TOS twice after you have copied the disks into the same sub-directory on your harddisk. After some time the music starts and the title screen appears. Press fire (joypad button A) to continue. You now enter the selection screen. You can choose between PING 2000, PING DUEL, PING CLASSIC and Quit to GEM. Pressing on the selection screen clears the saved games and beasty mode setting. The proces is irreversible so be careful when you press it. Pressing during game play returns you to the selection screen. PING 2000 starts a one player game of you against the compu- ter. You play the right bat. You are presented with a selec- tion screen with saved starting points and a ºjust startº option. Just start will take you to the first level. Other options bring you to the designated level. After that the information screen has come up, you can press fire button, and wait for the main game. As it starts the ball is hanging at the upper end of the stage. You can move it left and right, or release it by pressing the fire button. If you release it the ball will fall towards a central ob- ject, on which it will bounce to your side! So be prepared by mo- ving up and down to position your bat. After this youºre on your own. The ball will bounce against all non-moving obstacles. It will also bounce back from the front of your own and the computerºs bat, but it will bounce up or down if you try to get it on the top or bottom of your bat. Be quick: react! If the ball bounces against the nasty companion or the litt- le diamond, it will be altered in its path in quite a random way, so watch out if the ball is heading towards one. The gas cloud in itself is neutral: it might harm you, or protect you; it might harm the computer or protect it. The diamonds are power-ups or power-downs. You can enable most power-ups by hitting it with the ball AND being the last bat actually touching the ball. If the computer touches the ball last most of the power-ups will be cancelled. In all cases the next power-up will be released to drift into the stage. The black diamond gives your bat greater speed. This can be positive as you can get the ball easier, or negative because the speed you are used to is altered. The blue diamond slows your bat down. If you had taken the black diamond speed is back to normal, otherwise you have just become a little slow. The green diamond gives you an extra life. Extra lives will appear in the next round. The bright green diamond creates a very fast ball. The ball will automatically change it's direction towards the enemy, but if the enemy bounces it or the ball bounces against something diffe- rent, youºd better have lighting reflexes or expect hell to pay. The red diamond creates a slow ball. If you just had a fast ball then the ball will return to normal speed, if not then the ball is just going a little bit slower, although this doesn't mean it's neccesary easier! The bright red diamond wil make the ball fall. If the ball falls on the enemiesº side you're saved and are off to the next test, but if it's on your side doom is your fate. If the ball touches either the left or the right side it will fall. If it's the left side you win and move on to the next test. if it's the right side: pity but you have lost a life and must try again. Lives left are displayed at the right upper corner. For every three tests made an extra life is awarded. PING DUEL is in all respects the same as PING 2000, except for the small detail that you'll need a friend to play. It's one on one in the Ping arena. All power-ups automatically fall to the one whose bat last touched the ball. Ball out is randomly distributed be- tween the two players. It also bounces randomly from the central object. You can play it until one player lost his last life after which victory and (almost) everlasting glory goes to the other player. PING CLASSIC gives you the traditional ping game and let you play against the computer. If you win the computer gets a little bet- ter, if you lose the computer gets a little slower. A life is awarded for every three wins. Quit to GEM quits the game, as the name suggests and returns to the desktop from which you launched PING2000.PRG. Screen reso- lution and colours are restored. Sound setting. Before running ping2000.prg you can set the sound level with the Sound Setup in the Control Panel. PING 2000 has been set up to not blow your boxes if you set sound level to 15.