Earth Warp/Walkthrough

Once you have inserted the (first, in the case of the BBC Micro version) disk of BBC Enterprises's Longman Logotron-developed 1993 educational game Earth Warp into the disk drive of your BBC Micro or Acorn Archimedes, you'll either have to push Shift and Break (if you are using B-Em running in DOSBox to play the BBC Micro version, Break is replicated with F12, but if you're using !BeebIt running in RISC OS, it is replicated with Pause) together to load the program into the console or click the disk drive's icon (named :0, but if your Archimedes has two disk drives the second one shall be named :1, so if you place the disk in the second drive, you have to click on its icon) on the RISC OS icon bar to bring up the disk's contents in a window, then double-click the file with Ollie's spaceship named !EarthWarp (it is also possible to transfer this file to the hard drive of your Archimedes, then run it from there); after the title screen has appeared, a Texas Instruments SN-76489 (the BBC Micro's sound chip) or !Maestro (Acorn Computers' own music scoring program on the Archimedes) rendition of the opening bars to the serial's theme song, It's Our Planet, It's Our Place, will be heard. The game will then ask you "Do you want sound?" (a cursor will also flash to its right in both versions) - and if you press N for "no", the game will play in silence. But regardless of your answer, the game shall now ask you "Have you played before?" (a cursor will also, again, flash to its right in both versions); once you have pressed N for "no" (for the second time, if you have decided to play the game without audio), the following text shall be displayed on the screen:

Whenever you see this sign press the space bar.

Please do it now.

Once you've pressed Space, the continue sign shall disappear from its current position and reappear at the top of the screen as the text "...and again please." appears on the screen; once you have pressed Space for a second time, it shall disappear again, and reappear in the bottom-right corner of the screen as the text "...and once more." appears on the screen. Once you have pressed Space for a third time, the text "Thank you." will appear on the screen - and the text "This adventure is about a being called Ollie who comes from a far away planet." shall then appear (with a picture of Ollie to its right). Once you have pressed Space for a fourth time the text "A hundred years ago, people from his planet sent a probe to Earth to check the levels of pollution." shall appear on the screen; once you've pressed Space for a fifth time, the text "One probe landed near Southbeach. The pollution level there is so high the probe is in danger of exploding!" will appear on the screen. Once you press Space for a sixth time the text "Ollie has arrived from the planet Gia in his spaceship. His quest is to try to find the probe and mend it." will appear on the screen - and once you have pressed Space for a seventh time, the text "He has met three friendly children called Amina, Martin and Jenny." will appear on the screen (with three pictures of the children under their names). Once you've pressed Space for an eighth time, the text "Your mission is to help them find the probe and make it safe. There will be many problems for you to overcome. Good luck!" will appear on the screen; once you push Space for a ninth time the text "In this adventure, you can press the Escape key at any time to return to the menu screen." shall appear on the screen. Once you have pressed Space for a tenth time, the game will proceed to its first challenge, in which you will have to guess how many days it took Ollie to travel from Gia to Earth before you can help him.