4-GET-IT

INSTALLATION

If you click on the Install Program icon, just follow the menus and instructions to install 4-Get-It wherever you wish on your hard drive.

After installing the program, you need to install the font with the Install Font icon. This will copy the 4-Get-It font to your font directory. If you boot from any disk other than the 4-Get-It disk, you will need to have the font installed, or you must click FontSet to tell the program where to find the font.

LOADING FROM DISK

4-Get-It will self boot if you reset the machine with the game disk in a bootable drive. You may also load from workbench by double clicking the 4-Get-It disk icon and then double-clicking the 4-Get-It program icon.

LOADING FROM HARD DRIVE

Just open the proper drawer (where you put 4-Get-It on the hard drive) and double-click the 4-Get-It icon.

GAME OPTIONS

From the title screen you may press any key on the keyboard and the Game Options screen will appear. On this screen are a number of options detailed below. Also on this screen is the current level number (the level you will be on if you start the game).

PASSWORDS

By pressing E when the Game Options screen is displayed, you can enter an 8-digit password that will start you on a pre-selected level. These passwords are given to you after you finish the tenth level, and after every five levels further. The password will start you on the level five boards back from the one that gave you the password (i.e. - on the tenth level, the password you get will let you start on the fifth level).

SOUND ON/OFF

By pressing S when the Game Options screen is displayed (or at any time during the game) you can turn the sound on or off.

STARTING THE GAME

Pressing Space at the Game Options screen will start the game at the level indicated by the Current Level number.

GAME CONTROLS

While the game is running, you may pause, re-start, toggle sound or quit the game. These options are detailed below.

PAUSE

If you press P while playing a board, you will pause the game. While paused, the high scores will be displayed. The top ten will remain stationary and the remaining 490 will scroll. Pressing any key will unpause and let you continue playing.

USING A RETRY

If you reach a point where you feel that you can make no further progress, press X and you will be allowed to restart that board. You have 2 retries at the beginning of the game and your counter is reset to 3 every five levels thereafter (unless you already have three or more, in which case a retry is added to the current number).

TOGGLE SOUND

Pressing S will toggle the sound on and off.

QUITTING

Hitting ESC while playing the game will return you to the title screen.

BASIC GAME CONCEPT

You must try to remove all the tiles from the screen before the timer runs out by placing them next to matching tiles. When two or more tiles match, they will vanish. Once all tiles have vanished, you will proceed to the next (harder) level.

As you proceed through the game, you will be given passwords that will allow you to start at higher levels in the game.

CURSOR MOVEMENT

You control the cursor (the flashing hollow square) with the up, down, left and right keys. You may move in any direction you want, including diagonally, by pressing the appropriate keys (for diagonal, just press up and right, for example). You may move anywhere you wish on the screen, but you can only affect the tiles, not the walls or the background.

SELECTING A TILE

When you have positioned the cursor over the tile you want, just hit Space and that tile will be selected. A selected tile will rotate to indicate that you can move it. If you want to de-select the tile, just hit Space again.

MOVING TILES

Once you have selected a tile, you can move it either right or left, but not through things. If your path is blocked by a wall or tile, you will not be able to move in that direction. If you move it over a gap of any kind, it will fall until it lands on something. You can not control the direction that the tile falls, nor stop it from falling. Any tiles that were on top of the tile that is moved, will drop down to fill the gap.

Remember, if you drop a tile, you cannot move it back upwards (usually...), so think carefully before moving.

MATCHING TILES

The goal of 4-Get-It is to match all the tiles on the screen in sets of two or more. To do so, the tiles must be adjacent to one another, either horizontally or vertically, not diagonally. When you have two or more tiles with the same picture on them which are adjacent to each other they will vanish and you will be awarded points.

You have to be careful not to match up two tiles of the same type if there is a third one on the board because you will no longer have any way to match that last tile. You cannot put two tiles next to each other and then add a third, the first two will vanish as soon as they touch. Three-way match-ups can be accomplished by placing two of the tiles one space apart and dropping the third one in between.

There are other ways of doing three-way matches as well, but you will learn those on your own. Four way, or greater, match-up are also possible, but again, you will have to learn them on your own.

Special tiles will also activate their powers when they are matched together. It is also possible to set up chain reactions by matching tiles above which could then match up, dropping the ones above those, etc. Multiple matches like this will score you a lot more points than regular match-ups and will often finish levels much more quickly.

MYSTERY TILES

There are several tiles and wall types that do strange and unusual things in the game. We are leaving it up to you to discover and use these, however we will hint that the board name usually warns you when one of these is used for the first time. Enjoy!

SCORING

You will earn points for matching tiles and for the time remaining on each level. The first tile in any match-up is worth 100 points and each subsequent tile is worth 100 points more than the last. You will earn points for EVERY tile in a chain reaction (for example, if you match two tiles that cause others to match, it counts as a four-tile match-up, that's 100 plus 200 plus 300 plus 400 = 1000 points!).

HIGH SCORE LIST

The top five hundred scores are saved to disk. If you earn enough points you will be allowed to enter your name (up to eighteen characters) which will be recorded along with the date, score and number of levels completed (only levels you actually played are counted, not ones you skip using a password).

When the game is paused the high score list will scroll past. The high scores may be rest at any time by deleting the file 4-Get-It.his from the disk or the directory from which you have been running 4-Get-It.

STRATEGY

You should pay special attention to the title of each board, sometimes they contain valuable clues to the solution (and sometimes they don't). Also, work from the bottom of the screen to the top whenever possible. That way, if you make mistakes, they can be corrected more easily.

Try to think through each level backwards. If you know you've messed up a level, do as much as you can anyway, you may learn something else which will be valuable in the next attempt!
