The game starts with a screen full of people who are definitely NOT on your team. You score points by getting these people to join your team.
It's not easy to score points. The people on the screen don't WANT to be on your team, so you have to "charm" them. Then you have to teach them how to be a member of your team. No matter how hard you try, you can't get ALL of the people to join your team. Many of them LEAVE the screen, never to be seen again.
Where do these people GO when they disappear from the screen? Someone told me there's a little bowling alley somewhere in the game, and many of the people hang out there. Once people have left the main screen, it's almost impossible to get 'em back into play. The good news is SOME of the people who leave the screen show up LATER in the game, on a higher level.
My game cartridge might be defective. The first time I played a game on the brand-new cartridge, thousands of people were on the the opening screen. But every time you start a new game, the screen has fewer people than before.
With enough patience, you can finally get all the remaining people on the screen to join your team. The object of the game suddenly CHANGES. Now your job is to RUN OFF all the people and CLEAR the screen.
There are many ways to clear the screen. For example, the people prefer to line up in familiar formations. If you have enough skill, you can put them into STRANGE formations. Every time you do this, you score bonus points and some of the people disappear. But, the ones who remain become even STRONGER.
Eventually you can clear ALL the people off the screen. Then you have to start over, on a NEW level. Each level has fewer people than the level before it, but the ones who ARE there can be VERY difficult to control. Luckily, with each higher level you gain more and more "power".
I've never seen the TOP level of the game. I've heard that after you conquer a level, you can score bonus points by going back to lower levels and gathering up more people for your team.
This game features TWO-PLAYER MODE. According to the instruction book, at first you're supposed to HELP the other player learn the game. When the other player appears capable of playing the game, then you COMPETE with the other player. Whoever gets the most people on their team scores the most points.
For variety, you can fight with the other player, steal from the other player, or prove that you have more skills than the other player. I have a hunch that several undocumented strategies exist. Instead of trying to DESTROY the other player, what would happen if you decided to HELP the other player? Maybe the other player would then help YOU if you ever got in a bind. Or maybe the other player would merely get stronger and score more points than you.
IF you have played this video game before, what strategies did you try? Which ones seem to work, and which ones seem to backfire? By sharing hints and techniques, we can ALL become better at playing this video game.
Nasser "joystick jockey" Shukayr