It all started with the two cities of Shuaranits and Corasaline, located in the the land of Gruthe.
For billions of years, the people of the two cities lived together in peace. Over time, they forgot about one another, and by the year three billion AD, everyone thought their city was the only one in exsistance.
But then, one day, a traveler ventured outside of Shuarantis' walls, and after miles of walking, discovered the high towers of Corasaline. As he quickly discovered, Corasaline had been taken over by the evil dictator, Kron Thet, who had caused a reign of terror over his city for over one and a half billion years.
Hearing of the wealth and freedom in Shuaranits, the people of Corasaline slowly began sneeking out of their city, first in small numbers, then in masses.
Seeing this mass exodus of people, Thet created the Energy Wall, blocking passage out of Corasaline. He then created the Defender, who's task it was to destroy anything that attempted to break through the wall.
The people panicked. The defender could, at any time, attack and destroy Shuaranits. For the first time in three billion the city was in danger of being invaded. There was only one thing to do.
A second energy wall was created around the city of Shuarantis, and a second defender guarded it. The wall around Shuarantis was much stronger than the one belonging to Corasaline, and so the people felt safe.
For several million years Shuarantis went about it's business, not paying any mind to the other city.
It was then that Kron Thet made his move. The energy wall around Shaurantis came under attack by the defender of Corasaline, Thet's wall was still too weak, and it fell in a matter of hours. To the surprise of the Shuarantians, a second energy wall exsisted inside the first, and this one was much more powerfull. In secret, Thet had built an energy wall many times more powerfull than anything Shuarantis could build for milllions of years. Once again, Shaurantis was in great danger.
But there was no time to construct a new defense, their only hope was that their own defender could hold off the attack until the Shuarantians could find help.
You have been assigned to pilot the defender, your task is to break through Corasaline's energy wall, and prevent Thet from breaking through our own, before it's too late.
You'll see your Defender located at the bottom of the screen. Behind you defender is your shield. Your task is to guard the shield at all costs. When the enemy shoots, move yourself in front ofthe blast and let it hit you. That's right, you want to get hit by the blasts. Your defender cannot be destroyed, but your shield can, and of course it's your shield that you must protect. In the meantime, try to get some blasts up to the top so you can knock out the enemy defender. Same thing applies to him he's trying to block your shots, not avoid them.
In addition, from time to time you'll run into the other bad guys. Watch out for the Attacker, who looks a lot like a flying saucer. No, it's not an alien invader...but it can still ruin your day. If you can shoot it down it's worth good points, although it's not worth as much as the intruder. The intruder is pretty tough to shoot down, almost impossible at higher levels. Your best bet is to watch out for those missiles it drops. Your biggest worry, however, is the Bomber, it can take quite a few hits, and tosses out more firepower in one bomb than the other enemies drop in a single pass over the playing screen.
At any time during game play, you can choose "pause" from the "options menu" (command - P). This will freeze the game until you choose the menu option again or end the game. Choose "Sound" from the same menu (command - S) to enable or disable sound.
FireStorm requires that your computer have the following items to play:
• System 7 or higher
• 68040 or PPC proccessor (68k based, may run on pre-68040 systems, but untested)
• Sound Manager 3.0 or better
• Color Quickdraw (256 colors or 16 grays *strongly* recomended)
FireStorm should warn you if your computer does not have the needed hardware or software.
What should I do if I run out of memory?
Most computers have more than enough memory to run FireStorm, if you get a message saying that there is not enough memory, select the FireStorm application from the Finder, and then choose "Get Info" from the file menu. Select the text in the box beside "prefered memory" and change the value to something between "3000" and "5000," this will give FireStorm between three and five megabytes of RAM. If you have any applications running besides the finder, you may need to quit those in order to free up enough RAM for FireStorm to use. Note that FireStorm normally does not require more than one megabyte of RAM to run.
While FireStorm has been well tested, and there are no known bugs in FireStorm that are of any signifigance, there is always the possibility that some could exsist, undetected, and which could potentialy do damage to a computer system. The user takes full responsibility for any damage which may be caused by the use of FireStorm.
