Fort Apocalypse (1982) - Commodore 64 Classic Game

Goal of the game

Take off from your home base, rescue trapped people, destroy the core reactor (or whatever it is) and return to your home base. Destroy as much as you can, as fast as you can!

Vaults of Draconis

When you start at the Vaults of Draconis, you don't have much fuel left, so get fuel by landing on the "fuel" platform. The low-on-fuel alarm will stop too, thank god. When the fuel level reaches 2000, you're ready to go. It doesn't matter if you fly to the left or to the right. If you fly long enough, you'll end up where you started. We'll go right.

You'll immediately run into some tanks. The only way to get rid of those is to shoot their tracks. The way to do that without getting fired at, is look at the navatron, wait until you can follow one of the tanks and while following it, shooting to the ground and eventually hitting their tracks. I recommend to shoot-em-all. By now you most likely also have encountered a blue heli that's attacking you. There's only one thing to do: destroy it when you can. If you fly a little further you'll see a gateway in the ground, which is blocked by glowing blocks. You can shoot those rather easy by hovering above them (when the heli faces the player). When you have created a hole that's big enough to fly through, go for it. Once you're below the surface, tanks reappear.

Make sure you land on the little platform for a moment. When you get shot or crash, you'll start from the point where you landed last. This probably also will be the moment that you find some of the men you need to rescue. They're running around on the ground and you can pick them up by flying closely over them. You have to rescue them all if you want to proceed to the next level, deeper into the ground: the Crystalline Caves.

Flying further to the left or right, you'll discover an area protected by lasers (which fire at a steady rate) and moving blocks. If the blocks move towards you, you can reverse their movement by shooting them once. Now watch carefully, choose a moment to fly through and when the passages to the lower parts are open, fly through. Hopefully you survive. Wait right under the passage way until the lasers below have fired and resume course. Eventually you'll find a small platform with a text "Land here". This lift will bring you to the next level, but only if you've rescued all people trapped in this level.

Crystalline Caves

Fuel up here. You probably have some fuel left, but you need a full tank to complete this level. Shoot tanks, mines and helicopters you encounter and rescue people running around. You'll find two passages which lead further into the ground. Again, if the moving blocks move towards you, fire at them once and they'll move in the opposite direction.

The left passage is the easy way to the reactor. There are also quite a lot of people there that need to be rescued. However, the entrance to the reactor room may be blocked from that side. This seems to happen randomly. If it is blocked, you need to fly back up and go through the right passage. It's much harder to get through there. There are tanks moving around and lasers firing, while you try not to fly against the walls or the mines.

Once you've reached the reactor, check for people running at the base and pick them up. Then shoot the reactor to pieces. Once destroyed, all lasers will be disabled. Good for you! Now it's time to return to the home base. Fly all the way back, avoiding all trouble, especially the enemy heli, which sometimes awaits you at an unfortunate position. Returning at the fuel platform, land on it and you will receive a rank that suits your performance.

Play Fort Apocalypse on Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista or XP

What do you need to play the game?

• Download Fort Apocalypse from www.c64.com
• Follow instructions on the C64 emulator page