Sorcerer 's Apprentice

In Sorcerer's Apprentice, you've got to survive a big, big mistake until the boss gets back. Antic's September Game of the Month is a BASIC program that works with all Atari 8-bit computers having at least 32K memory, disk or cassette.

Your parents apprenticed you to the dark sorcerer Nymonn. It's not all that much fun because Nymonn uses you as a guinea pig for all his new spells, turning you into unspeakable things!

Eventually the day comes where you decide you've been turned into an over-ripe radish just once too often. It's payback time!

So you count the hours until Nymonn leaves for the Darkside Sorcerers' Convention. Then you sneak into his study and brush the dust off his spellbook-"1001 Spells for Every Occasion," published by Daemon, Alchemy & Newt. Now, you know that Nymonn has strictly forbidden you to touch his spellbook. But you don't care- you've got fire in your eyes.

After many hours in very bad candlelight, you finally find exactly the right enchantment: Ye Spell of Summoning! "That should do nicely," you mutter to yourself. "I'll just summon up some mighty spirit to deal with the old goat once and for all!"

You read over the spell very, very carefully. When you feel fully prepared, you cast the spell... The magical chamber, with its mysteriously looming demonic statue, is suddenly suffused with an eerie red glow as an energy ball materializes above the pentagram on the floor. With a blinding flash, it disappears, and in its place floats aglowing blue apparition.

The blue wraith darts around the room, spewing deadly gobs of green ectoplasmic ghost goop everywhere. This can't be right! You hurriedly refer back to "1001 Spells" for a fireball spell, which you hastily cast at the apparition. It screams and disappears.

But then another apparition appears right away. You cast another fireball at it. Same thing: It disappears and another apparition takes its place! This is far from what you have in mind, and one simple thought zings through your fevered, fatigued mind:

"Oops, I'm in deep ectoplasm now!"

All you can do is keep fireballing those apparitions and hope for the Sorcerers' Convention to end soon so Nymonn can bail you out.

Use the joystick to move the apprentice left or right across the bottom of the screen. The death-dealing ectoplasm spatters when it hits the floor, so watch out. To cast a fireball, press the joystick button. You get 75 points for every apparition you destroy Your apprentice has four lives.

GETIING STARTED

But before anything else, type in Listing 1, SORCERER.BAS, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy before you RUN it.

If you have trouble typing the special characters in lines 340-560 and 916-934, don't type them in. Instead, type Listing 2, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy. When you RUN Listing 2, it creates these hard-to-type lines and stores them in a file called LINES.LST

To merge the two programs, disk users LOAD "D:SORCERER.BAS" and then ENTER "D:LINES.LST" Cassette users: CLOAD Listing 1, then insert the separate cassette used for Listing 2 and ENTER "C:". Remember to SAVE the completed program before you RUN it.

Listing1: SORCERER.BAS Download

Listing 2: LINES.BAS(not needed)