home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- It's Pong!
-
- It's Mortal Kombat!
-
- IT'S...
-
- P O N G K O M B A T !
- (C) 1994 Gagne Software
-
- A VERY Silly Combat Paddle Game Parody.
-
- Dedicated to Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)
- I think he would have approved
-
-
- Version 1.0 (If I find any deadly bugs or get better music code,
- be on the look out for PONGKOM2.ZIP)
-
- UP FRONT REQUIREMENTS : 386/16 with VGA, optional SoundBlaster(tm)
- or compatable.
-
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction...................................................1
- Story..........................................................2
- Instructions...................................................2
- Secrets........................................................3
- Techie Mayhem..................................................4
- Registration...................................................5
- Credits........................................................5
- Bibliography...................................................6
-
-
-
- INTRODUCTION---------------------------------------------------
-
- Two games you'd never think would go together... the hottest
- new game at the arcades and a black-and-white game from ancient
- times, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
-
- It evolved out of a quick joke someone told during 7th
- period computer class... I have no idea who told it originally.
- Then we kicked around silly ideas for a mix of Pong and MK. I
- figured I'd try it, since my then-current project (a multimedia
- comic book) was down in the dumps.
-
- The pong-physics took a weekend to do inbetween PEZ breaks.
- Then followed three weeks of intense coding, drawing, and
- rendering, the hardest, longest period of programming I had
- undergone since Inertia 3 four years ago.
-
- End result : Pong Kombat. Pong with a zesty dash of gore.
-
- Before you get down to business, please realize this is a
- PARODY. I haven't plagarized any work... Mortal Kombat is
- copyrighted by Midway and Pong by Atari Corp (I think). It's
- meant for fun, and I'm not making any money off of this. I just
- want people to play it, laugh, go find the neato secrets and pass
- it along to friends and family. Anyway, on with the show.
-
-
- STORY----------------------------------------------------------
-
- Way way back in time, PONG was invented. And it was
- Good(tm). The only real player in the game, white paddle,
- enjoyed playing it, and played it well.
-
- Then, with the advent of color gaming systems, other paddles
- emerged. White, being the pompous holier-than-thou jerk he is,
- got all uptight about this and left.
-
- He joined the Pong Lao cult, a group of paddle warriors
- which held bi-annual tournaments and swap meets. He eventually
- toppled the Pong Lao leader, taking his throne (a mighty chair of
- porcelan). With the aid of his new friend, buddy, and bodyguard
- Monolith, he rules over this years' tournament with an iron...
- umm... well, paddles lack appendages, so just an iron.
-
- However, with new rainbow-colored paddles from all walks of
- life and a few old rivals seeking some revenge entering the
- tournament, he may have his hands full. Hopefully he can turn a
- few tricks and save his hide. Odds are certainly in his favor,
- but the forces of Good(tm) have you now.
-
- So don't screw up.
-
- INSTRUCTIONS---------------------------------------------------
-
- The game has two modes - game and attract. If you type
- PONGKOMB and let it sit there, it is in attract mode... a series
- of images and animations which tell the story of Pong Kombat and
- draw hordes of screaming arcade fanboys to the keyboard to test
- their wits.
-
- Now, this may be pretty to look at, but gets boring real
- fast, so most people choose to progress on to : game mode.
-
- Hit SPACEBAR at almost any time during attract mode to play.
- You will be presented with two paddles. The top one represents
- ordinary Tournament play. Tournament play is for one player, who
- will use the player two controls. The bottom paddle represents
- Paddle-to-Paddle combat, which is great for two players. P2P
- mode only plays one match, then goes back to attract mode.
- Tournament continues until you win or get bored.
-
- A word about controls. Each player has specific controls.
- Player one, on the left uses these keys. (They won't work in
- tournament mode, where player one is always the computer.)
-
- +---+
- FIRE | W | UP
- +------------+ +---+
- | Left Shift | +---+
- +------------+ | X | DOWN
- +---+
-
- Now, fire alone does diddley. However, fire in combination
- with up and down can shoot projectiles, do fatalities, and other
- fun things which are more or less secret.
-
- Player two, on the right, uses these keys.
-
- +---------+
- FIRE | UPARROW | UP
- +------------+ +---------+
- | RightShift | +-----------+ DOWN
- +------------+ | DOWNARROW |
- +-----------+
-
- The game works like this. You've got two paddles, one left
- (player one) and one right (player two) and a ball. You need to
- score 10 points first to win the match and get a chance to dish
- out some SERIOUS punishment to your opponent. You can score a
- point two ways.
-
- 1. Get the ball by the other paddle. (A new one will pop
- up.)
- 2. Smack one of your missile weapons into the other
- paddle. (Launch sequences are kinda secret, but easy
- to figure out.)
-
- If you win, it goes FINISH HIM! (how familiar) and if you do
- the right sequence, your opponent dies in a horribly gory and
- very silly way. Then, in tourney mode, you fight the next
- paddle. In P2P mode, you go back to attract mode.
-
- That's all. Silly, no? There is no score mode... I
- personally recommend betting large sums of money and/or donor
- organs on matches instead. It's not wise, but certainly
- entertaining. I am not held responsible for lost of cash or
- lungs.
-
- SECRETS!-------------------------------------------------------
-
- Each paddle has a missile weapon and a patented fatality.
- However, the moves for these are hush-hush secrets. You can
- figure them out easily enough... here are some tips.
-
- 1. All sequences are FOUR keystrokes long. IE, UP-UP-UP-
- FIRE, or UP-DOWN-FIRE-FIRE.
- 2. Fatalities must be executed AFTER your soundblaster
- says 'Finish Him!'. Program limitation. Go fig.
- 3. If you know the sequence is right, try holding down
- each key a little longer, and making sure you pause
- between keys.
- 4. Try to match your favorite MK moves or variants of
- them. Some paddles corrospond neatly to their ripof--
- err--parodied characters.
- 5. Fatalties sometimes are variants on the missile weapon,
- and vice versa.
-
- Also, there are secret characters. The most obvious one is
- Monolith... the others aren't as obvious, but there are clues in
- there. Tips.
-
- 1. Listen to Monolith's taunts. They have clues.
- 2. Check for visual clues, and match them to moves you
- already know.
-
- Lastly (or is it? Never can tell with these types of games.
- :), there is the stage fatalities. Some stages have special
- finishing moves that use the scenery to destroy your victim.
- They simply require a different finish combo instead of your
- normal fatality.
-
- Here, we'll start you out with one paddle : Red Paddle. Red
- Paddle's missile weapon is a nifty shadow paddle which zips
- (slowly) across the screen. To execute, while playing, use the
- combo of DOWN-UP-FIRE-FIRE. This should help you get the timing
- down, if you can get that move out.
-
- There are other secrets, but they are, as the word implies,
- secret. You CAN hack the game files to bits and rip the secrets
- out that way, but it's no fun. Not like I can stop you, of
- course.
-
- At last check, there were twenty secret functions in the game.
- Ten if you don't count the five weapons / fatalities. These range
- from characters to play modes to other silliness.
-
- TECHIE MAYHEM--------------------------------------------------
-
- It's not the best-coded game on earth, frankly. However,
- here are some tips to get it running smoothly.
-
- IS IT TOO SLOW?! Try this. Start Pong Kombat with
- 'pongkomb speed 0'. The default speed, nice on my 386/33, is
- speed 3. The lower the speed, the faster it gets.
-
- IS IT TOO FAST?! Try this. Start Pong Kombat with
- 'pongkomb speed 15'. The higher, the slower. Values such as
- 20,584,966,246 could do not-nice things (say, one frame starts.
- Once your kid is out of college, it moves to the next frame...)
-
- IS IT CRASHING?! Try this. Free memory. Lots of memory.
- Ditch your mouse driver. No CD-ROM. And doublespace has GOT to
- go (good advice no matter what you're running). If it still
- crashes... welll... sorry. Not much I can do about it. PK's
- graphics routines weren't coded by myself.
-
- IS IT CRASHING WHEN IT TRIES TO PLAY A SOUND?! Could be
- that your computer is a bit too slow... either that or you don't
- have enough memory to play sounds. Free some up! If nothing
- helps, disable sounds by using 'pongkomb nospeech'. You can
- stack this with the speed parameter, no worry.
- (As a curious note, originally I was going to require EMS to
- play sounds... however, it seemed to work okay with loading
- sound into conventional memory, so I went with that. If the
- speech causes too much mayhem, PongKombat 2.0 will probably
- go back to EMS required.)
-
- IS IT BORING?! Speed it up. If it's still boring, hock
- your copy to a friend and play DOOM. :)
-
- IS IT FUN?! If so, why are you complaining?
-
- REGISTRATION---------------------------------------------------
-
- No! Calm down. Put down the chair. I don't want your
- money... the game wasn't really made for profit, just for fun.
- However, if you're having no luck with the nifty Secret Stuff,
- there is help.
-
- I'll give you, free of charge, a copy of one of the
- following documents :
-
- 1. All the paddle weapons and fatalities, plus stage
- fatalities and other stuff too secret to mention!
-
- 2. All about the Secret Developer's Mode, which can make
- Pong Kombat do some nifty things, such as extended
- credits (yay!) and no blood (boo!).
-
- 3. All about how to get to the secret characters, and some
- tips on making them eat ball.
-
- Why only one? Because if I gave you all three, the game
- would get dull fast! Generally, having one of these guides will
- probably help you figure out the other two.
-
- Registration is easy. PREFERABLY!!!! E-Mail me. I'm on the
- Internet as gagne@locust.cic.net, or gagne@etext.org (same thing,
- I think). Anybody can Internet-mail nowadays... CompuServ,
- Delphi, American Online, even most WWIVnet and FidoNet BBSi.
- Just mention that you want the Pong Kombat guide for either
- FATALITIES, DEVELOPER'S MODE, or the SECRET CHARACTERS. I'll
- mail it off. No funny mailing for all three with separate mail,
- I keep track. Gather two friends with access if you want them
- that badly.
-
- Now, those of you without Internet mail are gonna have a
- problem. I *can* do US Postal Service type registration, but it
- will take a bit longer, since I have to print out the guide and
- package everything up for mailing. Don't expect lightning
- service, IE, especially if your local postman shows up to work
- with, say, an uzi. That could cause delays.
-
- La maile du snaile adresse du Stefan Gagne est :
-
- Stefan Gagne
- 912 Pointer Ridge Drive
- Gaithersburg, MD 20878
- ATTN : Pong Kombat
-
- And once again, I'd prefer e-mail, if you can. E-mail, again,
- is gagne@etext.org or gagne@locust.cic.net.
-
- CREDITS--------------------------------------------------------
-
- STEFAN GAGNE
- Main Coder, Artist, Sound Guy, and 3-D Renderer. Also bakes
- cookies for the rest of the crew and debugs the wild frontier.
-
- NICK STEELE
- Main beta testing and minor acts of larceny without a
- permit. Also making a guest appearance in the coveted
- 'WHOOPSIE!' role. (Yeah, I know 'TOASTY!' is the real line, but
- that makes no sense in PK.)
-
- JULIO DELEON
- Beta testing and encouragement. Plus he'll beat up anybody
- that says the game sucks. (Well, probably not, but I can hope.)
-
- DAVID "Dave" HUNT
- Beta testing and advice on how to get these various third-
- party graphics packages to work and play well with others.
-
- JOSH SAXON
- Cheerfully handed over two hours of his time to record the
- soundtrack for the game.
-
- GEORGE SOPKO
- Some beta testing, and cool enough to warrant a slot in the
- credits.
-
- Mr. MCCAIN
- My computer teacher, who will hopefully give me an 'A' for
- this. If not, well, I'm accepted at Maryland anyway. :)
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY---------------------------------------------------
-
- 1. "An in depth study into the Pong Lao cultist rituals," by
- Effram Zimbalist Jr., in MODERN PADDLE MONTHLY.
-
- 2. "Stacker Co. vs. MicroSoft Case Notes," by Some Court
- Stenographer.
-
- 3. "Ed Boon vs. MechaGodzilla," a short subject film by Ridley
- Scott.
-
- 4. alt.games.mk, a Usenet group dedicated to flaming and the
- occasional solid fact (just kidding guys! Where's my
- asbestos...)
-
- 5. "Spam and its importance in fighting games," by Hormel, Inc.
-
- 6. "2001," a feature film by Ridley Scott (I think)
-
- 7. "Seeking the Kano Transformation," an epic journey into
- human behaivors by Doctor Ruth.
-
- 8. NO POOFTAHS!
-
- 9. "MORTAL KOMBAT II FAQ - Complete Guide - Thirteenth
- Revision, January 26th, 1994" by ineluki@
- stein.u.washington.edu
-
- 10. That's not mayonnaise!
-
- KCIDAIDKW
-
-