Copyright: Copyright ©


Basics

LOGON PLEASE:

What’s going on here?  Who are these guys?  What are they doing?  What am I doing?

In Hacker, it’s up to you to figure it out.  We can’t tell you.  We won’t tell you.

For as every hacker knows, there just aren’t any instructions for this kind of thing...


Commands

Shortcut Keys

Menu Options

File

Settings


Commodore History

Birth of a Legend

Commodore International Limited was founded in 1958 by Jack Tramiel, a typewriter repairman from the Bronx, New York. It received much of its financing from Canada’s Atlantic Acceptance Corporation and quickly grew to include typewriter manufacturing. However, Atlantic went bankrupt in 1965, threatening to take Commodore with it.

To save his company, Tramiel began hunting for a new source of funds. He found it in Irving Gould, a Canadian venture capitalist, who supplied the ailing company with $400,000 in exchange for 17% of the company and Tramiel’s pledge of all the receivables.

Price War and the Lean Years

By the 1970’s, Commodore Business Machines had grown further, branching into calculators and other office machinery. Business boomed until Commodore lost in a brutal price war with Texas Instruments. Commodore had been assembling pocket calculators with TI microprocessors. The chips cost Commodore about $50 per calculator, and the final product sold for about $100 each. In response, TI came out with a competing calculator of its own manufacture using the same chip that sold for only $49. Commodore lost $4 million on sales of $56 million and nearly sank.

Tramiel learned a valuable lesson. In 1976, Commodore bought MOS technologies, a failing semiconductor manufacturer, for $800,000, ensuring that it would no longer be dependent on outside vendors for needed parts.

Growth

Under Tramiel’s deliberate guidance, Commodore grew into a $1 billion company, growing sevenfold from 1981 to 1984. It was one of the largest suppliers of home computers in the world.

Commodore 64 Era

By early 1982, Commodore had five new products in development, one of them being the infamous Commodore 64. Believing he had a winner, Tramiel took a gamble. He sidelined the other products and built up massive inventories of the C64. Then, he flew in the face of the computer industry by enlisting the same mass merchandisers (K-Mart, Toys “R” Us, Target, and others) that sold the Vic-20 to market the C64. By doing so, he proved that computer buyers didn’t need to rely on the hand-holding of an elite class of computer-literate salespeople and their specialty store prices.

The C64 was rushed to market with haste bordering on recklessness, and about 1/4 of the machines shipped didn’t work. Commodore’s solution was a no-questions-asked policy on the exchange of defective machines. After several months, the defect rate had been whittled down to a more acceptable 4-5%.

By 1984, about 4 million Commodore computers were in use around the world, and 300,000 more were being sold per month. However, Commodore’s leadership believed that market saturation was still a long way off, since only about 6% of U.S. households owned computers. This was far less than the 20-25% that owned video game players during the peak of the home video game craze.

Tramiel Leaves

Tramiel had been known for his iron-fisted style of management. He was involved with every aspect of the company and anything or anyone he didn’t like was changed or removed. This led to a class action suit in November of 1983, which charged that Commodore failed to disclose information about its operations and did not build a strong management team.

According to a statement released in January of 1984, Tramiel said,  “personal reasons prevent my continuing on a full-time basis with Commodore.” Gould recruited Marshall F. Smith from Thyssen-Bornemisza NV, a conglomerate based in the Netherlands Antilles, to replace Tramiel.

At the time of Tramiel’s departure, the home computer market was failing, causing Mattel and Coleco to leave the business. Another company that decided to leave the industry was Warner Communications, which sold Atari to the newly unemployed Tramiel for a pittance. Shortly thereafter, a stream of Commodore executives followed him.

Smith

In an effort to make Commodore profitable, Smith took to downsizing, cutting the payroll by more than 45%. Though the company had an impressive $339 million in 1985 holiday revenues, it made only $1 million for the quarter after paying off about 1/4 of its bank debt.

Commodore suffered through Fiscal Year 1985, losing $237 million, and getting into trouble with its creditors. The banks granted a much-needed one-month extension on Commodore’s loans, and, with the success of the company’s second-best Christmas sales ever behind them, Commodore defied the Gods of Bankruptcy yet again.

The Rattigan Years

In March 1986, Thomas J. Rattigan replaced Smith as Commodore’s CEO. Rattigan was hired in April of 1985 with the understanding that he would replace Smith, who remained on as a director. Rattigan’s objective during the first few months of his leadership was clear - cut costs in order to stabilize Commodore’s position, allowing it to rebuild. Once again, the payroll was trimmed from top to bottom, and three plants were closed in five months. New controls were added in the finance department to prevent the sloppy reporting that had undermined Smith’s leadership.

Commodore continued to sell respectable numbers of its $150 C64 throughout 1986. The Commodore 128, a successor to and more powerful machine than the C64, was selling for $300 at the time, also helping to keep the company afloat.

Rattigan’s policies worked. By March of 1987, Commodore had caught up on its loans and posted a $22 million earning in the quarter ending December 1986. It also had $46 million in the bank, the most cash since 1983, its most profitable year.

Amiga

Commodore’s next move was to release the Amiga line of home computers. Code-named ‘Lorraine’ during development, Amiga was quickly dubbed the “save-the-company machine.” The Amiga was packed with computing power. At its center was a Motorola 68000, the same chip that powered Apple’s original Macintosh. The Amiga had an additional set of three custom-designed chips, one to handle stereo sound, one for graphics and one for animation. The Amiga was also one of the first computers to multi-task, performing several different computing jobs at once - such as word processing and game playing.

The Post-Rattigan Years

On April 22, 1987, Rattigan was replaced by Chairman Irving Gould, the venture capitalist who had been involved with Commodore for over 20 years. It is unclear as to why Rattigan was replaced after turning the company around and posting $28 million in profits over the four quarters ending in March 1987. Rattigan himself claimed that he was forced out by Chairman Gould due to personality conflicts and that Gould was upset about Rattigan getting credit for the company’s turnaround. Gould argued that the comeback in the U.S. was insufficient compared to its rebound in overseas markets, which accounted for 70% of its sales. In fact, despite its profitability, Commodore’s U.S. revenues had declined by 54% in the same four quarters.

According to Gould’s ideology, the North American operation was to be a sales and marketing extension of the company, rather than the unwieldy, semi-independent entity it had become. For the third time in Commodore history, a new leader began his term at the helm by drastically downsizing. Under Gould’s reign, the payroll was cut from 4,700 to 3,100, including half the North American headquarters’ corporate staff, and five plants were closed.

Current

On April 29, 1994, Commodore International announced that it had been unable to renegotiate terms of its outstanding loans and was closing down the business. The liquidation process lasted for months, owing largely to the far-reaching size of the corporation. In addition, the fact that the company was incorporated in the Bahamas while a large share of the creditors were from the United States made legal proceeding tense and drawn out. On April 20, 1995, almost a full year later, Commodore was sold to the German company ESCOM for approximately 10 to 12.5 million dollars.


Contents

General Description

How To Play

Commands

Scoring

Hall of Fame

Hints

Outside World

Game History

Commodore History

Credits

Troubleshooting


Credits

Activision

Associate Producers:	Tony Grant and Murali Tegulapalle

Production Coordinator:	Aaron Cammarata

Documentation Manager:	Mike Rivera

Creative Director:	Ron Gould

Package Design:	Ayzenberg Design and Ron Graening

Writer:	Veronica Milito

Audio Manager:	Michael Schwartz

Legal Counsel:	Larry Goldberg and Richard Hopkins

QA/CS Director:	Jon Doellstedt

QA Manager:	Dave Arnspiger

CS Manager:	Jameson Wang

Senior QA Information Specialist:	Sean Lally

Lead Tester:	Greg Borrud

Testers:	Christopher Crowder, David King, Tyler Scott, Curtis Shenton, Marty Stratton and Chris Strompolis

Digital Eclipse

President:	Andrew Ayre

Programmer:	Jeff Vavasour

Special Thanks

Jill Anusavice, Steve Cartwright, David Crane, Stephen Crane, Alex DeMeo, John Dusenberry, Maria Flagg, Brad Fregger, Alan Gershenfeld, Matt Hubbard, Lisa Labon, Russell Lieblich, Tom Loughry, Howard Marks, Tom McWilliams, Pat Moller, Sam Nelson, Scott Orr, Dave Rolfe, Tom Sloper, Rob Swigart, Dan Thompson, Mark Turmell, Henry Yu, Bare Bones Software, Centsible Software, Commodore Country, Computer Bargain Store, Daltronix, EMS Computer Services, Games Plus and Strategic Simulations Inc.


File

Pause (Pause)

To temporarily suspend the action in the game, press the Pause key. Caution: If you leave the game without pausing, the game will continue playing in the background, possibly costing you valuable lives!

Restart Game (Shift + F9)

Restarts the game currently being played. Note: This will start the game over from the beginning, not from the most recently saved point. To revert to a saved game, use the Open Saved Game... command.

New Window (Control + F9)

Opens a new emulator window. Select the game you wish to play from the splash screen. These windows run independently of one another and can be paused, played and switched between at will.

Open Saved Game... (F9)

Opens a previously saved game.

Save Game (F10)

Press F10 to save your place in the current game, using the default save filename. If the game you are playing has no default save filename (i.e. it has not been saved yet), you will be prompted to enter one.

Save Game As... (Shift + F10)

Press Shift + F10 to save your place in the current game, using a new filename. The name entered will become the new default save filename for the current game.

Hall of Fame...

Lists the highest scores for every game. See the Scoring section for score method/values for each game. See the Hall of Fame section for more information on recording high scores

Exit (Alt + F4)

Closes the 15 Pack.


Game History

Brad Fregger, Producer

“The original inspiration for Hacker was this: one day there were a bunch of us sitting around talking about how hackers work. The people who worked with computers knew that hacking was just boring number-crunching and very tedious work.  Of course, this was at the time when hackers were just starting to appear in the media, if not before, and the people who were not into computers had this really romantic idea of what a hacker does - cracking codes, getting all these nifty passwords, and so on.  So Steve [Cartwright] said ‘Hey, that’s a great idea - let’s base a game on that romantic idea’.  He started plugging away, and before we knew it, we had Hacker.”

Management was very different in those days.  The relationship between a programmer and a producer was more like that between an athlete and his or her trainer than one of employee to boss.  “I was a producer, a manager, but not a programmer. I was sort of a ‘Creative Manager’, who helped things happen, who would keep management off the ‘creative element’s back, but each programmer was responsible for their own project.”

Steve Cartwright, Designer

"Most games designed back then evolved out of little more than an excuse to move objects on the screen.  Hacker, for example, started out as a robot delivering mail through underground tunnels.  That, of course, was not very exciting. What it really needed was a more interesting story."

"At the time, David Crane was working on Ghostbusters.  Part of the gameplay of Ghostbusters involved 'creating a user account'.  Knowing virtually nothing about computer networks at the time, I was really intrigued by people who could 'Log on' to computers remotely.  So I took that element of Ghostbusters and made it the front end of Hacker.  Next,  we needed a story to explain why this robot was going around the world.  We hired a writer to come up with the plot.  The title itself was the last thing put on the game.  At the end of its development, Brad [Fregger], the game's producer, said 'Let's call the game Hacker'.  I was against it, because that word itself meant nothing to me at that time.  Brad, of course, prevailed, and by sheer luck, the release of Hacker coincided with the news of hackers breaking into Universities and secret government computer systems.  The whole thing was very lucky."

To promote it, Steve went on a very interesting press tour.  The idea was to promote the dark and mysterious aspect of the game.  "We called in computer experts to tour with us  to verify that the game was safe to play and was indeed just good clean fun."

"The first time the game was shown to the press, though, I pulled a fast one that even fooled the people on the press tour with me.  In the middle of a room full of reporters, I announced that I was going to log on to Activision's computer to download the latest copy of the game.  Of course, I DID have the latest version.  So when I pretended to dial up Activision and was presented with the now-famous 'Logon please:', nobody suspected that what seemed to be a hacker at work was really just a game."

Disclaimer:  This program simulates the experience of being a computer hacker and is intended solely for entertainment purposes.  Activision in no way endorses or condones any activities associated with gaining illegal entry to computer networks or files.


Game Options

This dialog box allows you to set your preferences for 15 Pack games. The settings available are as follows.

Controller 1 and Controller 2

Use these areas to set the input mode for the game controllers. The choices for each controller are Keyboard, Joystick 1, Joystick 2, or None.

The Keyboard mode can be used when no joysticks are available, or if you prefer to use the keyboard to control the game. To use, select Keyboard mode for the appropriate controller, and use the keys listed to move up, down, left, right, or to press the joystick button.

To change the settings for either controller, click on the joystick function you wish to change, and press the keyboard button you wish to assign to that joystick function. For example, to make Controller 1’s “left” be the letter “H”, select Keyboard from the pull-down menu under Controller 1. Then, press the button next to Left is, and press “H” to assign it.

The Joystick settings will use the default Windows® 95 joysticks 1 and 2. To change the settings for these joysticks, pull down the Windows Start menu, then select Settings and Control Panel. Double-click on the Joystick icon and use the pull-down selection boxes to change your joystick selections.

Selecting None for either controller is the equivalent of unplugging the joystick from the Commodore 64. This can be useful if the keys that are mapped to that controller’s commands are needed in the game. This is necessary because a keyboard key cannot be used as both a controller direction and the key at the same time. For example, if the “A” key was mapped to Controller 2’s “left” direction, and you needed to type the letter “A” in the game, you would need to either a) temporarily select None for Controller 2, or b) change the mapping for Controller 2 so that “A” is not used.

The defaults for Controller 1 are:

Fire Button	Keypad 0

Up	Keypad 8

Down	Keypad 2

Left	Keypad 4

Right	Keypad 6

The defaults for Controller 2 are:

Fire Button	“T”

Up	“U”

Down	“J”

Left	“H”

Right	“K”

Animation

Allows you to set the speed at which new frames get redrawn on the screen. To make the gameplay as close to the original Commodore 64 version as possible, move the slider to Smoothest. If your system plays too slowly with this setting, move the slider to the right, towards Fastest. The drawback to Fastest is that frames may drop out occasionally when your computer cannot keep up, resulting in a jumpy look to the game.

Volume

Allows you to set the volume for the game and Outside World sounds in the 15 Pack. To make the sounds louder, move the slider to the right. To make them softer, slide it to the left.

Enable sounds

When the box next to Enable sounds is checked, sound will be heard. To turn off sound in the 15 Pack, click once on the checkbox to deselect. To turn the sounds back on, click on the checkbox again. The default is checked (sound is on). Note that turning sounds off includes the Outside World sounds.


General Description

Temptation.

To stumble into someone else’s computer system.  To be someplace you’re really not supposed to be.  And to get the strange feeling that it really does matter.

“LOGON PLEASE:” is all you get to start with.  That’s it.  From there, it’s up to you.  If you’re clever enough and smart enough, you could discover a world you’ve never before experienced on your computer.

Very tempting...


Hall of Fame

You can use this dialog box to manually record your high score for each game. You may also enter timed scores. These Top Scores are saved on the hard drive until you uninstall 15 Pack.


Hints

If we WERE going to give instructions, do you REALLY think we’d put them here?


How To Play

Basics

Keyboard

Joystick


Joystick

We said no instructions...and we weren’t kidding!


Keyboard

We told you, there are NO instructions...

We do, however, recommend that you read the Game Options section for help on configuring your keyboard for use as a joystick, as the alphanumeric keys are needed to finish the game.


Outside World

Remember...

Remember staying up all night to finish that one game that had you stumped...

Remember the thrill of getting one level farther than you ever got before...

Remember the days and nights spent in front of your beloved Commodore...

And remember all those annoying interruptions!!!

Pesky little brothers; bossy older sisters; Moms; Dads; friends; alarm clocks; dates gone sour.

Just when you thought it was safe to play your favorite C64 games again, the Outside World that refused to leave you alone years ago has come back to haunt you on the 15 Pack. For details on configuring (or turning off!) these interruptions, see the Settings section of this help file.


Scoring

Nope.  No instructions here, either.  Nice try, though...


Settings

Sound (F12)

This toggles the game and Outside World sounds on or off. It serves the same function as the Enable sounds checkbox on the Game Options... dialog box.

Game Options...

This dialog box allows you to set your preferences for 15 Pack games. The settings available are as follows.

Controller 1 and Controller 2

Use these areas to set the input mode for the game controllers. The choices for each controller are Keyboard, Joystick 1, Joystick 2, or None.

The Keyboard mode can be used when no joysticks are available, or if you prefer to use the keyboard to control the game. To use, select Keyboard mode for the appropriate controller, and use the keys listed to move up, down, left, right, or to press the joystick button.

To change the settings for either controller, click on the joystick function you wish to change, and press the keyboard button you wish to assign to that joystick function. For example, to make Controller 1’s “left” be the letter “H”, select Keyboard from the pull-down menu under Controller 1. Then, press the button next to Left is, and press “H” to assign it.

The Joystick settings will use the default Windows® 95 joysticks 1 and 2. To change the settings for these joysticks, pull down the Windows Start menu, then select Settings and Control Panel. Double-click on the Joystick icon and use the pull-down selection boxes to change your joystick selections.

Selecting None for either controller is the equivalent of unplugging the joystick from the Commodore 64. This can be useful if the keys that are mapped to that controller’s commands are needed in the game. This is necessary because a keyboard key cannot be used as both a controller direction and the key at the same time. For example, if the “A” key was mapped to Controller 2’s “left” direction, and you needed to type the letter “A” in the game, you would need to either a) temporarily select None for Controller 2, or b) change the mapping for Controller 2 so that “A” is not used.

The defaults for Controller 1 are:

Fire Button	Keypad 0

Up	Keypad 8

Down	Keypad 2

Left	Keypad 4

Right	Keypad 6

The defaults for Controller 2 are:

Fire Button	“T”

Up	“U”

Down	“J”

Left	“H”

Right	“K”

Animation

Allows you to set the speed at which new frames get redrawn on the screen. To make the gameplay as close to the original Commodore 64 version as possible, move the slider to Smoothest. If your system plays too slowly with this setting, move the slider to the right, towards Fastest. The drawback to Fastest is that frames may drop out occasionally when your computer cannot keep up, resulting in a jumpy look to the game.

Volume

Allows you to set the volume for the game and Outside World sounds in the 15 Pack. To make the sounds louder, move the slider to the right. To make them softer, slide it to the left.

Enable sounds

When the box next to Enable sounds is checked, sound will be heard. To turn off sound in the 15 Pack, click once on the checkbox to deselect. To turn the sounds back on, click on the checkbox again. The default is checked (sound is on). Note that turning sounds off includes the Outside World sounds.

Outside World...

Use the Nag Factor slider to increase or decrease the frequency with which the Outside World sounds play. Shifting the slider completely to the left makes the interruptions less frequent; to the right makes them play more frequently. Each tick on the slider represents 30 seconds between interruptions. That is, when the slider is all the way to the Frequently direction, a sound will play every 30 seconds. Similarly, when the slider is completely to the Rarely side, you will only be interrupted every 10 minutes.

To turn the Outside World sounds off completely, click on the Outside World Active button to deselect it. To turn them back on, click on the Outside World Active button again. The door to your room will be open or closed based on the status of the Outside World sounds - open to allow sounds, closed to shut them out.


Shortcut Keys

Pause	Pause

Shift + F9	Restart Game

Control + F9	New Window

F9	Open Saved Game...

F10	Save Game

Shift + F10	Save Game As...

F11	Help

F12	Toggle Sound

Alt + F1	Panic Button

Description of Shortcut Keys

Pause = Pause

To temporarily suspend the action in the game, press the Pause key. Caution: If you leave the game without pausing, the game will continue playing in the background, possibly costing you valuable lives!

Shift + F9 = Restart Game

Restarts the game currently being played. Note: This will start the game over from the beginning, not from the most recently saved point. To revert to a saved game, use the Open Saved Game... command.

Control + F9 = New Window

Opens a new emulator window. Select the game you wish to play from the splash screen. These windows run independently of one another and can be paused, played and switched between at will.

F9 = Open Saved Game...

Opens a previously saved game.

F10 = Save Game

Press F10 to save your place in the current game, using the default save filename. If the game you are playing has no default save filename (i.e. it has not been saved yet), you will be prompted to enter one.

Shift + F10 = Save Game As...

Press Shift + F10 to save your place in the current game, using a new filename. The name entered will become the new default save filename for the current game.

F11 = Help

Press F11 to see the Contents of the Help menu.

F12 = Toggle Sound

Press F12 to turn the game and Outside World sounds off and on.

Alt + F1 = Panic Button

Press Alt + F1 to quickly hide the 15 Pack - useful when the boss walks by.


Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting (Hacker)

How to Start

Sorry.

Hacker Game Specific Notes

Near the end of the game, you will need to use sound to help you through, so make sure your sound card is working and turned up. In addition, to hear all of the sounds, keep the setting of the Animation slider one setting above Smoothest. If you are having problems with sound, check No Sound below for advice on getting it working.

Also, if you have trouble printing at the end of the game, press the Print Screen button on your keyboard to take a snapshot of the screen, then open Microsoft Paint or other bitmap editor, and select Edit - Paste. Then, use Paint to print a copy of the picture.

No Sound

1.	There must be a 100% Windows® 95-compatible sound card in your computer.

2.	Make sure your speakers are plugged in correctly, turned on and the volume is turned up to an audible level.

3.	Open the Windows® 95 Volume Control program and verify that none of the various channels are muted or turned all the way down. You can do this by double-clicking on the Speaker icon next to the clock on your taskbar or by selecting Programs - Accessories - Multimedia - Volume Control from the Start menu.

4.	Make sure that Sound under the Settings menu is checked and that Enable Sounds in the Game Options section under the Settings menu is checked.

5.	Adjust the volume setting in the Game Options section screen to the desired sound level.

6.	Close all other applications. Applications that run in the background may not release Windows® 95 sound resources.

7.   Your sound drivers for Windows® 95 may require updating. Check your audio card's installation and its setup parameters within the Device Manager of Windows® 95 to determine if this is the case. To do this, perform the following steps:

1) Open the Control Panel and double-click on the System icon.

2) Click on the tab labeled Device Manager.

3) Click on the plus sign next to the Sound, Video and Game Controllers icon.

4) Highlight your sound card, then click on the Properties button.

5) If there are any conflicts they will be listed here with instructions on how to fix it.

8.   Make sure that your sound card is mapped for MIDI sound. You can do this by performing the following steps:

1) Open the Control Panel and double-click on the Multimedia icon.

2) Click on the tab labeled MIDI.

3) Select single instrument from the top and select the sound cards installed in your system. If you are not sure, consult you computer manuals or try the different options until you hear sound in the game.

4) Click OK.

For additional help, please refer to your sound card manual and your Windows® 95 manual.

Partial Sound

1.	Adjust the Volume bar in the Game Options section under the Settings menu until a desired sound level is achieved.

2.	Make sure you are using the latest sound driver for your sound card.

3.	Open the Windows Volume Control program and verify that the Wave and MIDI (or Synthesizer) channels are not muted or turned all the way down.

4.	Some sound card companies do not manufacture drivers that take full advantage of Windows® 95 functions. As a result, these drivers will not play all of the original game sounds. There have been particular problems with the compatibility of the Sonic Sound Card Prometheus Aria drivers, Cannon combination cards and Gravis Ultrasound drivers.

Outside World Sounds Are Too Loud

If the outside worlds are too loud it could be that the Wave volume is higher than your MIDI Volume. To fix this problem, go to the Volume Control program. This can be accessed by double clicking on the speaker icon located on your taskbar or by selecting the Volume Control program from the Start menu - Programs - Accessories - Multimedia. Adjust the Wave volume setting down until it is at a level that is satisfactory.

Video Problems

15 Pack requires a Super VGA (SVGA) display at a minimum resolution of 640x480. If you run at a lower or higher resolution than this, you may run into problems. In addition, 15 Pack has been optimized to run with 256 colors. If you run in 16-color mode, the colors in the games will be wrong and you might not be able to see all of the graphics. If you run in modes higher than 256-color, the colors will look fine but you may run into performance problems with your system. We recommend that all computers less than a Pentium run in 256-color mode. You can see what color mode you are in by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting Properties. Select the Settings tab and your present color mode is listed under Color palette.

If you experience video problems while using this program, you should first make sure you have the latest Windows® 95 drivers for your video card. The Windows® 95 drivers are found on the diskette that came with your video card. If you purchased your video card before Windows® 95 was made available, updated drivers may be obtained in a variety of places. The dealer who sold you your hardware should have access to the most recent video drivers. Most video card manufacturers maintain a BBS containing the latest drivers for free downloading. Drivers are also available on CompuServe, America Online, The Microsoft Network and other popular online services. We have provided a list of video card manufacturers, containing Technical Support and BBS numbers at the end of this document. Please make every effort to install the latest video drivers before calling Activision Customer Support.

Game Colors are Faded in Appearance

1.	Make sure that the video driver you are using supports at least 256 colors. A 16-color driver will produce colors unlike the original games.

Controls Do Not Work

1. 	Check the Game Options section under the Settings menu and make sure you are using the correct keyboard setup or joystick controller (in other words, make sure the computer is assigned to the controller that you wish to use).

2. 	When choosing a keyboard setup, make sure you have assigned the game controls in the Game Options section under the Settings menu to the keys you are using.

3.   If your joystick control is not working see the Joystick Does Not Work section below.

Joystick Does Not Work

1.	Make sure it is securely plugged into the correct game card. If you have questions on how to do this, please see the documentation supplied with your sound and/or game card.

2.	Use the Windows® 95 joystick calibration program to make sure that your joystick is calibrated properly. To do this, go to the Control Panel and click on the Joystick icon. Select the joystick you are using from the menu and select Calibrate to set it. Follow the steps and then exit the Control Panel.

3.   If you do not see a Joystick icon in the Control Panel, make sure you have a driver installed. To do so, go to the Control Panel and select System. Select the Device Manager tab and click on the plus sign next to Sound, Video and Game Controllers. Your joystick driver should be listed here. Click Properties to ensure that there are no conflicts. If you do not have a joystick driver installed, or you do not see a plus sign, follow these steps to install a joystick driver:

1)  Go to the Control Panel and double-click on Install New Hardware and then click Next.

2)  Select No and press Next.

3)  From the list select Sound, Video and Game Controllers and press Next.

4)  From Manufacturers select Microsoft, and from Models select Gameport Joystick, then click Next.

5)  Follow the directions to complete the installation of your joystick driver. You will have to restart your computer and then the Joystick icon will be added to the Control Panel.

Game Too Slow

1.	If your computer has a turbo button, make sure it is on (or set to the highest MHz possible).

2.	Make sure you are running the 15 Pack on a 486 DX2/66 or higher system. A 486/33 or lower system usually will not perform at a comparable speed to the original Commodore 64.

3.	Make sure your video driver is running in 640x480 resolution and 256-color mode. A higher resolution with more colors may slow down the games. (You should not run the game in less than 256 colors.)

4.	Move the Animation slide bar toward Fastest in the Game Options section under the Settings menu. This will speed up the gameplay, but will drop out some of the frames so the game graphics may flicker, and it may cause some collision detection problems.

5.	Use a smaller-sized window to run the games.

Game Too Fast

1.	If your computer has a turbo button, turn it off (or set it to the lowest MHz possible).

2.	Move the Animation slide bar to Smoothest in the Game Options section under the Settings menu.

3.	Use the maximized window to run the games.

Game Objects Blink or Disappear

Some original Commodore 64 games included objects that would blink rapidly to overcome limits of the platform. If blinking becomes apparent, setting the Animation slider bar towards Smoothest should improve the graphics performance.

You Press The Pause Button And A Menu Comes Up On The Bottom Of Your Screen

This will occur with some Packard Bell model computers. It is a feature that Packard Bell has built into their system. There are two resolutions to this problem. First, you can pause a game by selecting Pause from the File menu in each game. You can turn the pause off by clicking on Pause again. Secondly, you can disable this feature. To do so, follow these steps:

1. 	Click on the Start button and select Find and then click Files and Folders.

2. 	Type the filename "Fmedia.ini" and click Find Now.

3. 	Double-click on the the file which is located in the Windows directory or in a submenu of the Windows directory. This will open up Notepad with the file displayed.

4. 	Look for the line that says "PAUSE_KEY_ENABLE=1". Change the 1 to a 0.

5. 	Click on Save from the File menu and then exit.

6. 	Reboot your computer.

This will disable the Packard Bell menu option and allow you to use the Pause key during the game. To restore the use of the Pause, repeat the steps above and change the 0 to a 1. Reboot your computer and the menu feature will be enabled.

The Taskbar Hides a Portion of the Game Window

This can happen if your taskbar is always on top. You can hide the taskbar by right clicking on it and selecting Properties. Click Auto hide and then OK. The taskbar will hide off the screen until you bring your cursor to the edge of the screen and then it will reappear.