By the year 2190 the Earth is a barren and desolate wasteland. With all natural resources used up, the human race's last hopes rest with a huge orbiting solar power station known as the "Grid". Now the Grid has been invaded by a rave of evil droids from Frogfax V, intent on the total subjugation of Earth. To combat these droids, an incredibly powerful and manoeuverable ship, the Gridrunner, was developed. Your mission: Stop the droids and save the Earth!

Gridrunner is an arcade game requiring one joystick.

The screen depicts the "grid", a high energy lattice from which your ship, the Gridrunner, draws its power. At the top of the screen is your score, the high score, the number of ships remaining and the number of attack waves. The object of the game is to destroy the Gridsearch Squads before they destroy you.

These are groups of linked droids which trasverse the grid horizontally, dropping down to the next level whenever they find an obstruction. Each squad has a Leader Droid at the front. If the leader is hit, the droid following becomes leader. If a squad is hit in the middle it splits in two and the front droid of the new squad becomes leader. Squads may come in any size from solitary leader droids to linked squads of many droids. When a droid is hit, its body will change into a Pod.

The Pods are devices which sit at the nodes of the Grid and rapidly grow, changing in size and shape. When they come to the end of this life cycle, they turn into a massive dose of lethal energy which hurtles down the Grid. Hitting a Pod regresses it one stage. Continuous hitting will destroy Pods.

The X/Y Zappers travel along the left hand and bottom sides of the Grid. Periodically, the Y Zapper along the bottom will emit a plasma beam. This beam destroys anything in its path. At the same time, the X Zapper will emit a plasma pulse, and there this meets the plasma beam, a Pod is formed.

The Gridrunner can move freely along the bottom seven lines of the Grid. It may not pass through Pods. It can be destroyed by being hit by a droid, the plasma pulse of a Pod, or the plasma beam of the Y Zapper. The Gridrunner is steered using the joystick, and the Fire button is used to fire up the Grid. Keeping the button held down will result in continuous fire.

There are 31 distinct waves of Droids. When each wave is cleared, you are awarded an extra Gridrunner. You can only have a maximum of 9 Gridrunners at any one time.

Keep on the move, avoid the Y zappers beam, and above all, don't panic. Good players can expect scores of over 100,000 and aces can expect 150,000 or more.

CLOADM (ENTER)

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