Coin-Op, Video Game, and Arcade – Cheats, Easter Eggs, and Bugs

If you are having problems catching up to an A.P.B., simply stop and he/she will drive off the screen and re-appear right behind you in a couple of seconds (this works real well on narrow, crowded roads).<P>When making the A.P.B. confess, be sure to tap one gun and one siren button. If you tap both gun or both siren buttons, they will cancel each other out.<P>You can arrest common criminals faster if you have the gun by tapping both the siren and gun at the same time (just be sure you are aiming right at them).<P>BUG:<P>According to a booklet that came with C+VG Magazine of Feb' 1988, there is a bug in APB that can get you a lot of points.. It's described as follows: 'When you find the train, get infront of it, and let it push you across the screen. It will shove you through a lot of rubbish , and after a while, you will get millions of points.' Also noteably, is a mention of a similar bug in Paperboy, but it's not described any further.. (Paperboy is a system-II game as well, so it would seem possible.) The bug seems unreproducable on mame, doing so will get the car 'stuck' on the tracks. Perhaps some other train ??

The game will play itself if it has the credits to continue.

The more "P" power-ups you get, the stronger your fire gets, but with each one starting with the third one you pick up your rate of fire starts to decrease. This, of course, makes it harder to take out later enemies where a lot of very fast and straight firing shots are better than a few slow strong shots with a fan effect. The best "P" level to be at is level 3 or basically pick up only 2 "P" power-ups. This will give you decent firepower and still keep the fastest rate of fire.<P>Learn to anticipate when and where the other power-ups will appear and what position they show up from the pod. Some power-ups are better than others in different areas of different levels. When in doubt, the best ones to keep are either the guided missile the green "M" or the barrier the "B".<P>The "S" power-up will act as a pseudo barrier destroying any fire or weaker enemies that come into contact with the pods.<P>Holding the fire button will charge a "smart-bomb"ish-type weapon that when fully charged and released will destroy most enemies and their projectiles. It takes about five seconds to cool off before you can charge it again.<P>You can attain better control in the no gravity levels by moving your ship all the way to the left side of the screen and holding left. When you move up and down then, it will not keep moving up or down.<P>Level two has a two different series of high-speed narrow tunnels. These are best handled with the Barrier power-up which conveniently appears just before they show up. The Barrier will not prevent you from running into walls, it just makes it harder to do so. If you push up or down into a wall, the Barrier will resist, but eventually give way allowing you to crash. Watch the caution signs that appear on screen to anticipate how the tunnel will turn next and continue to fire while in these tunnels as enemies will appear in front of and behind you. Collect the dollar signs for extra points.<P>Level six is simply nutty but, amazingly, is possible to beat without dying. A TON of enemy fire will be coming at you during about half the level. You will likely survive longer if you pay more attention to the area surrounding your ship and make slight movements to fly around their fire rather than focusing on destroying the enemies. When in the walled section of this level, shoot at the moving blocks - although you cannot destroy them, you will rack up a ton of points doing this. Also, try to keep as close to the right side of the screen during the walls since moving up or down will require you to move left at the same time to keep from crashing.

Holding the Left and Right arrow buttons while pressing start at the title screen allows you to choose from two new skaters note that you can EMnotEM choose any of the normal skaters with this code.

When fighting Frankensteins Monster, try moving in close to him and allow him to hit you towards him. Some times you will land in a spot where the monster can no longer hit your character.PThere is a random and rare powerup in the game that extends your life bar making the game much easier. The howto of obtaining this powerup is easy do nothing Just hope that youre lucky enough that the CPU grants you this extra energy this could actually be a bug.

There is an excellent hidden cheat. If you do not fire at game start and allow yourself to die, you will restart with the maximum size ship with Homing Missiles nice touch. Also, the longer you manage to stay alive this first time, the larger your cheat bonus will be. You can avoid dying fairly easily by staying on top of the enemy. They will not fire at you within a specific area around them.<P>TIP: There is one major strategic element which is not obvious to most. Whenever the player selects Wing for additional pods of the current weapon type, or changes weapon type entirely, there is a grace period of about two seconds during which all enemy shots will pass right through the ship.

BUG: Pixels are missing from the top of the 5. This is a fault common to the code of the original ROMs on all of the boards both Sun and Atari.

This is not much of a "cheat", because if you play long enough the game will tell you how to do it: position yourself behind an opposing player and press the shoot and pass buttons at the same time. Your player will dive forward and pull down the pants of the opposing player. This will make him drop the ball as well as "freeze" for a couple of seconds while he pulls up his pants. You take this time to steal the ball.

Pressing the attack button while selecting rider allows you to mix and match the sled and rider of your choice. Pressing Start and Attack on the track select screen will toggle 'no drone' mode and a harder difficulty setting. All three apply for one race only.

Secret Rooms:<P>There are many secret "rooms" that can be entered by shooting combinations of inanimate objects in the game. For example, shooting all the office windows out after going up the ladder in the hangar will take you to "Shake your Buddha", where you can take shots at the stationary heads of the development team and increase your score and streak. Taking out all the windows on the back wall of the hangar will take you to another secret room full of power-ups.<P>Kron Hunter:<P>Instead of starting out the game normally, avoid shooting the aliens. Instead, shoot the first three members of STAAR that appear on the screen (the guys in blue). Do not worry, after your health gets down to one, the aliens will not hurt you any more. After shooting the third member of STAAR, you will get an info screen talking about Kron Hunters, and you will start the game over as one. The graphics pallette will be completely whacked, and when you are done, a Kron Hunter symbol (a green K) will appear next to your high score, rather than a military ranking.

Some cheats are excessible by shooting certain objects on the screen that are in the background, which will lead you to a different path in the level. Another cheat is to be a perfect shot with your gun with a 100 percent hit ratio, this will bring you into a bonus round.

As soon as the match begins, if your timing is right, pushing "left" will catch the computer player off guard and score an auotmatic full "power" and generally helps you to beat the computer player faster. Be careful not to foul twice or your game is over!

Fight against Geese Howard by beating the game without losing a match.

Special and super moves are all done by performing motion and button presses. Unlike the last 2 games there are no bonus games to play in this sequel.

Finish a level with 0 seconds left and you will get credit for the maximum time on a level. On some levels this can be worth an extra 17,000 points!

Finishing a level with 0 seconds does NOT give a bonus, as happened in IAssaultI. All other tips apply.

TIP: When playing as Obelix, he starts each stage with his big rock. Try to bash as many Romans as you can with it before you toss it away. Romans you drive away with the rock will drop helmets (worth bonus points).

The original version of the game had a feature that allowed the player to hide their ship in the score field indefinitely without being hit by flying asteroids.

There are 25 secret bonuses. Some are: destroying entire alien wave before it cycles, having all of your shots hit aliens in a wave no misses and docking with mother ship without moving your ship dead center is 1000 bonus, on the edge paint-scraper is 1500 bonus.

General: On odd numbered boards, the ships come out in a back and forth pattern. On even numbered boards, most of the ships come out and drop down shafts on the side where the players ship is, thus making even numbered boards more difficult.<P>Like other shooter type games, you are only allowed to have one shot on the screen at a time. Firing timing is more important that mindless, quick firing.<P>Simple Strategy: The numbering of the shafts for the explanation below: ***12345***67890***<P>Your basic strategy and priority is to keep the shafts in the middle of the screen as empty as possible (numbers 4, 5, 6 and 7). This allows you to stay in the middle of the board safely, while the ships fall to the left and right. If you keep these shafts as empty as possible, it is very easy to stay in the middle shooting the ships that fill those shafts, then sliding over to hit a saucer, and returning to the middle.<P>Saucer Values: The values for the saucers are not random, but are determined by the shot number you are on. 400 is the maximum score, with scores also of 300, 200 and 100 possible.<P>Counting Shots: I recommend only counting shots on odd boards. At the very start of the game you want to hit the first saucer (coming out in the middle) on the 15th shot to score 400. After that, you want to hit the saucer on every 16th shot to score 400. Your total count, not just the count between hitting saucers is used for your score (Ex. If you hit a saucer and score 400, then hit the next saucer on 15 shots you will score 100. You wil then need to hit the next saucer at 17 shots to score 400 on that one). In other words, if you fall behind on your shots, you need to catch up. That sometimes is hard to do because you have just enough time to shoot 16 shots between saucers, so you want to refer to the following scoring chart below:<P>If you just scored a 400 on a saucer, here is your score for the following saucer based on the number of shots:<BR><TABLE><TR><TH>Number of Shots</TH><TH>Score</TH><TR><TD>&nbsp;4</TD><TD>200</TD><TR><TD>&nbsp;8</TD><TD>300</TD><TR><TD>12</TD><TD>200</TD><TR><TD>16</TD><TD>400</TD></TABLE><BR>Everything else in between is 100. So, if you just hit a saucer and scored 300, you could hit the next saucer on the eighth shot to score 400. Or if you have a score of 200, and hit the next on 12 shots, you will score either 300 or 400.<P>When you hit a saucer and score 100, and you do not know where you are "in the count", then trying hitting each successive saucer on the 15th shot to try to find a 200, 300 or 400 score.<P>Counting shots and getting 400 on every saucer increases your score much more rapidy!<P>WHERE THE SAUCERS COME OUT: The pattern for where the saucers come out is not random either. This pattern repeats and starts at the top each time you get killed. (C- Center, L- Left, R-Right) The spacing helps me memorize it: CLR CR CL CC RLC RR LL.<P>The saucers always come out at the same frequency, so you can mentally time it to figure out about when they are coming out, then by knowing where, you will already be in position to hit it! You might think that if you know where they are coming, you will want to "camp out" on that side on even boards, but this is a bad strategy because most of the ships will also be falling on that side thus making it very difficult to stay alive.<P>On even boards, you want to keep the middle of the screen rows clear, and even concentrating on the <EM>opposite</EM> side of where the saucer is going to come out. Then when the saucer appears you can easily slide over to the other side, and there should not be many ships falling. I usually time my approach to the other side to when there is a gap of ships falling there.

Wear a pair of gloves to minimize blisters. For maximum speed, use two hands to spin the Trak-ball when running.<P>In some two-player models built in late 1978 and early 1979, there was a bug that would allow the QB to throw a pass after crossing the line of scrimmage, then going back behind it. When the QB crossed scrimmage, all the defending X players would leave their receivers open as they pursued the run, making long completions easy.

On the last level in the palace, there is a large statue/idol on the right side that gives an extra life if you kick it in the knee several times. After getting the extra life, you can stay there and collect points by kicking sickles being thrown at you. You die as time expires, but you start again prior to the extra life statue, and can get it again an unlimited number of times.

Spinning the spinner at a high rate during parts of the attract-mode will result in the programmer's name (Tim Stryker) appearing in approx. three inch letters across the center of the screen.