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OIL TYCOON
by Gordon F. Wheat
64 Translation by Chris Metcalf
You are P. J. Uing and you are about to make big money in the
petroleum business, but drilling for oil is not as easy as it sounds.
There are obstacles you must overcome in order to make a profit.
There are shale formations that grind away your pipe. You can blast
through them, but your dynamite is limited. Pockets of natural gas
sometimes collect where you have previously pumped out the oil. Hit
one of these and your oil rig goes up with a bang. There are also
"devils" that live in the oil. They take a dim view of your draining
their caverns. But you won't give up -- because you are the Oil
Tycoon.
I designed "Oil Tycoon" to be as much fun for parents as it will be
for children. Since the game is not based on reaction time but rather
on strategy, it helps even the score for the arcade dropouts. Your
strategy will slowly build, and before long you will be rolling in
cash or attaining high scores, however you wish to look at it.
Difficulty Levels
The screen will display the high scores attained for each of the eight
difficulty levels. The program will return to this screen after each
game. Your score and the difficulty level of the game you have just
completed are displayed at the top of the screen.
At the bottom of the screen you will see "DIFF. LEVEL 12345678."
Choose the difficulty level by moving the joystick left and right and
pressing the fire button when the number of the difficulty level you
want is blinking. Level one is primarily for small children. I would
recommend that seasoned gamers begin with level two. The higher the
difficulty level, the more difficult the game becomes. The various
conditions for the eight difficulty levels are shown in the table.
Difficulty Levels
Sticks of
Dynamite per Pieces Invisible
Level Oil Rig of Shale Shale
1 3 20 No
2 2 20 No
3 3 30 No
4 2 30 No
5 4 20 Yes
6 3 20 Yes
7 4 30 Yes
8 3 30 Yes
Playing Oil Tycoon
After you choose the level, the oil field is drawn on the screen. It
will be different for each game; you should never see the same screen
twice. For each game, you receive five oil rigs, each of which has 20
lengths of pipe and a number of sticks of dynamite, depending on the
difficulty level you choose.
In the upper-left comer of the screen are the oil rigs you have
remaining. In the upper-right comer is your score. Between these are
the sticks of dynamite you have remaining for the oil rig now in play.
The second line displays the unused lengths of pipe for the oil rig
now in play. As you drill, this pipe will be used one length at a
time and will be replaced as you withdraw your drill. The lower
portion of the screen is the playing field. Yellow squares are dirt,
black squares are oil, and the irregular squares are shale.
Move the joystick left and right to position your oil rig over the
column you want to drill through. To drill, pull the joystick down.
To withdraw the drill, push the joystick up. You cannot move the oil
rig while there is drilling pipe in the ground. You cannot bore
through shale, through devils, or off the bottom of the screen. If
you try, your drill will be ground up, and you will lose that length
of pipe for the oil rig in play. This becomes very important in
difficulty levels above four, for the shale is invisible and looks
like dirt. At these levels, it is very easy to lose most of your
drilling pipe before you realize that you are trying to drill through
shale. Also try to avoid drilling through empty spaces from which you
have previously pumped oil. Natural gas can collect in these empty
spaces and may cause an explosion when you try to drill through them
again.
Controlling the fire button takes some getting used to, because it
does three things. As you bore, if the end of the drilling pipe is in
oil or an empty space, pressing the fire button causes your oil rig to
start pumping. If the end of the pipe is in dirt, pressing fire drops
a stick of dynamite down the pipe. If you are not drilling, or if you
have fully withdrawn the pipe, pressing fire replaces your current oil
rig with one of your remaining rigs. Be careful -- it is easy to lose
valuable rigs. Replacing your oil rig with a new one is useful mainly
when you have used up your allotted dynamite for the rig in play, or
if you do not have enough pipe remaining to reach pools of oil near
the bottom of the screen.
Use your dynamite to blow up shale, devils, or dirt. When you drop
dynamite down the pipe, it will continue to fall until it hits one of
these three obstacles. This means that if there is oil or empty space
directly below the tip of the drill, the dynamite will fall out of the
bottom of the pipe and through this space until it hits shale, a
devil, or dirt.
Pumping Oil
When you pump, all of the oil in adjacent spaces to the sides and
above the level of the drill bit will be pumped out. In other words,
all squares of oil connected to the one you are pumping will also be
pumped out only if they lie directly above or to the sides of the oil
being pumped. Any squares of oil below those which are being pumped
out will remain where they are.
If you uncover a devil while pumping, it will blow up your oil rig.
If you try to pump a pool of oil which is at or below the level of an
uncovered devil, and which is directly connected to the devil's space,
it will also blow up your rig.
The deeper the oil, the more it is worth when you pump it out. An
extra oil rig is awarded for each $100,000 you acquire. In addition,
if you pump out all the oil on the screen and then retract your pipe,
you will be awarded an extra oil rig and a new screen is drawn.
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