Carnival

Carnival is a fixed shooter arcade game that was released by Sega in 1980, and it was licensed to Gremlin Industries for US manufacture and distribution; it runs on their Vic Dual hardware, and was the first game from them to use the General Instrument AY-3-8910 (running at 1.193181 MHz). The player must use two directional buttons to make a small turquoise pistol at the bottom of the screen move left and right, and a third button to make it fire bullets up at the three-row gallery - and the two rows of bullets at the bottom of the screen below your pistol indicate how many you have remaining. The pistol has more bullets for the first round than the others, and the game will be over once it has run out of them; once a player has cleared the gallery, a "shoot-the-bear" sequence will be initiated. When you shoot the bear, he will rear up, roar, and turn round - and each hit will also speed him up (and increase his point value which is displayed above him). Once the bear has gone off either side of the screen, the next round will begin; as the game progresses, additional bears will appear at the end of each round up to a maximum of four. The first and third rows of targets will move from left to right but the second one will move from right to left - and any targets that go off the right side of the screen on the third row will reappear on the left side of the screen on the first row. The point values you will receive for shooting a target on each row are displayed on the right side of the screen, and they will increase with each round; the numbered squares will also give the pistol additional bullets when shot, and only appear on the first and second rows. Five letters that spell the word "BONUS" are also mixed into the three rows of targets - and if the player shoots them in the correct order, he will receive a special bonus. However, if he shoots them out of order the bonus indicator in the top-right corner of the screen will disappear until the next round; if you shoot a "B", the bonus value will stop increasing for the current round. And, whenever a duck goes off the right side of the screen on the bottom row, he will fly down towards your pistol - but if you cannot shoot him quickly enough he will fly down to the two rows of bullets, and steal ten of them. This means that if you have less than ten bullets remaining, it will cost you the game; four special yellow signs will also appear in the top-left corner of the screen. The two positive ones have plus signs, with bullets and point values - and once they have appeared, the value will start decreasing until they eventually disappear. If you can shoot one before it disappears, you will receive the amount of bullets or points that remained at the time of the hit; however, the two negative ones have minus signs, with numbers of bullets or bonus points, and if you shoot one when it appears, you'll lose that amount of bullets or bonus points. The pipe wheel features eight pipes (two of each colour) - and the sign below it indicates the point value you will receive for shooting one, but it also prevents you from shooting at them when they are orientated diagonally. Every time you fire a bullet, it will decrease the pipes' value (unless you hit a pipe); if you hit both pipes of the same colour consecutively, you will receive a special bonus of four times the current pipe value. Finally, if you fire a shot at that sign on the right side of the screen with the musical note in it, the note will disappear and the music will stop - but if you shoot it again, that note will reappear and the music will start again. However, regardless of if you finished one round with the music off, the next round will start with the music back on again.