Kurt Lang's Tips on Mr. Do -------------------------- First let me apologize if I've already sent you this high score, but I haven't seen it posted in a few weeks and am beginning to think I didn't send it. The attached .ZIP file contains the screen shots for a score of 2,698,200 for Mr. Do!. The game ended on scene 176 with a game time of 1 hour 16 minutes and 16 seconds. [ Judge's Note: Kurt later superceded this score and recorded it via INP file ] Again, I made sure to get the rollover shots for the score, and the scene rollover. The rest are just to help prove the score by seeing the progression with the first snapshot being just before the first rollover of the score. I don't know if you're interested in posted tips for players of these games, but I have had requests from people visiting The MAME Shack web site where my latest high score is posted. All of the text below is tips for Mr. Do!. It is of course up to you to decide what, if anything, you want to do with it. Thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are so many tricks I've learned by trial and effort that are much easier to see done than to explain, but I'll try anyway. First of all, I had a large advantage for a while. That is, I owned a Mr. Do! arcade machine, and had it in my house for about four years. Actually, I'm not sure $400 was much of an advantage over plugging quarters, but I could play as long and often as I wanted, and when I wanted. I sold it when I thought I would never beat my old high score of 2,300,000 something. But enough boring history. I could almost write a book on these tips. Here goes. First let’s lay down some of the terms I’ll use throughout this text. The characters were given very simple names by Universal. I read these somewhere else on the web, so I’m not responsible for the somewhat uninspired names. They are: baddies, diggers, blue chompers, and alpha-monsters. There are also of course the treats in the middle, apples, and the diamond. When I refer to a specific board, such as 3, 7 or whatever, it also includes any of that boards’ multiples of ten (5, 15, 25, etc.). Scoring: Shooting any enemy – 500 points. Dropping an apple on: 1 enemy – 1000 points 2 enemies – 2000 3 enemies – 4000 4 enemies – 6000 5 or more – 8000 Getting the diamond – 8000 points and a free game (pointless in M.A.M.E. since they’re all free). Eating a cherry – 50 points (you get nothing for the cherries the baddies or diggers destroy). Eating any eighth cherry in a row – 500 points. That is, 500 points only, not 50 + 500. Getting the treat in the middle: 1000 points for board 1 1500 board 2 2000 board 3 2500 board 4 3000 boards 5 and 6 3500 boards 7 and 8 4000 boards 9 and 10 4500 boards 11 and 12 5000 boards 13, 14 and 15 6000 boards 16, 17 and 18 7000 boards 19, 20 and 21 8000 for boards 22 and up. The number one tip for high scores: The number one tip I can think of is to set an apple off center. If you run the diagnostics screens, (Ctrl+F3 for M.A.M.E., you held down the fire button as you turned the arcade machine on to get there). After running some RAM and ROM tests, it eventually comes to a grid pattern. While it's really just there for a technician to adjust convergence and other screen geometry for the monitor, it's also a good representation of the grid you and the baddies use in the game. I'll get to the significance of this later. For the apple trick, dig straight up to the left or right of an apple, and turn under and past it. Stop and let the apple fall behind you, then push it so that it stops the baddies from coming up, but not so that it falls. Then move above the apple (preferably on the nearer side) and face/push straight down. The baddies will (almost) always take the shortest distance to get you. In this case, straight up. But the apple is in the way, so one of them eventually will start to tunnel, which will cause the apple to fall on both that one, and any other baddies piled up underneath. This trick also works for the blue chompers that come out when you get the middle, although not quite the same way. Since they'll eat the apple, you have to get it falling before they get to it. I usually look for an apple that came from a letter I got earlier on the screen, and make a quick determination as to whether it's off center or not. I then dig up to it in a zig-zag pattern until I remove the dirt under the apple and let it fall. If it is enough off center, none of the blue chompers will be able to eat it as it falls, and the whole line will get crushed. You don't get a whole lot of opportunities for that however. This trick actually gets easier as you get further into the game, because when you set up the apple, almost all of the baddies are out already, and you crunch the bunch with one apple. The harder part to master at the higher levels is getting to that apple in the first place, which is any one above the center of the screen. This is where the grid comes in. As soon as a new screen starts, look for an area above center that has two apples close together, one above or beside the other. Make a bee-line straight up for the lower apple, stopping one level below center at a point just at the horizontal line of the grid that lets you shoot through the wall, but not so far that the line is considered broken and the baddies jump on you with both feet. The first two baddies out of the center usually will take the long way around to get to you. Let the first one pass by, and shoot the second one. Immediately, (and I do mean immediately) tunnel up to the first apple and let it fall. Hesitate for a moment if necessary to let the baddies get under you first and let the apple fall. This will prevent the first baddie, who will come back after you, and the next ones out of the center from following you. It will of course also crush some of them. This gives you just enough time to set up the next apple off center and wait. Make sure to face straight down. If you're pointed left or right, the baddies won't tunnel straight up to the off center apple, and then you'll be in a heap of trouble. A great trick here that stuns rookies (at least the first time they see it) is if the two apples you want to tunnel to are straight above center as on board 3. Again, let the first one pass, and shoot the second baddie, then run straight through the middle up to the lower apple. As long as there are no baddies actually coming out of the middle, you are safe to run right through them. You can also run right through a letter or blue chomper that is busy eating an apple. It's also a good idea to learn the apple positions for each board so you can instantly decide which way to tunnel as soon as it starts. There are three apple positions for each of the ten boards, which of course come up randomly. Some boards are harder to do this on than others, but this is the basic technique. You will also have to improvise on this fairly often. On board 5 for instance, on one of the apple setups, there are two apples to the right above center, and also even with the middle in the same vertical line. At the higher levels, you don’t have time to get past the lower apples before the baddies start digging all over the place. So you have to go to the single apple on the left, dig straight up to it and let it fall, then run over to the apples on the right and face straight down over any of the other apples on that side of the board. At the high levels, the baddies will tunnel right up to the apple you are over, and it will fall on any underneath. Just make sure to stay facing down until the baddies are crushed. If you turn left or right as soon as it starts to fall, some of the diggers will also go that way and not get crushed. The hardest boards to learn to do this on are 4 and 10. Although board 1 has to be approached a little differently also. You’ll just have to experiment with what does and doesn’t work. There are also plenty of times where the first baddie out of the chute will go immediately into digger mode. You will have to shoot it and look for a different way to get to the upper apples. Think and move fast! I don’t have the ball and they’re gaining on me!: So you’re running crazy you say and either the ball hasn’t come back yet, or you took a wild shot and it’s bouncing everywhere but back to you, and not hitting anything. Head left or right towards any apple, one level lower than the one it’s on, and turn down when you get underneath it. Go down two levels and turn either left or right (whichever is safer) away from the falling apple. This will not always get the baddie on your tail, but will at least prevent it from following you as it tries to avoid getting flattened by the falling apple. You can also run in a straight line past the apple, and very often the baddie will either stop and move back and forth (in fear of its pitiful life) under the falling apple, or will stop and turn into a digger. Either way, it gets crushed. You can also just do your best to keep tunneling until you get the ball back. You’d be amazed at how often they will stop and turn into a digger when they could have just run you down. But you have to be tunneling for this to work. Out in the open, you’ll get run down like an ant on the freeway. Throwing the ball: I know this sounds stupid, but I don’t mean “let’s discuss the various ways to press the fire button on your keyboard or joystick”. I mean to pay attention to fact that the ball always goes down towards Mr. Do!’s feet first when thrown, no matter how he’s facing. This is important to know so you can make a better guess where the ball is going to go as it bounces away from you. Kill them all, but not all at once: Getting back to the apple trick. While this is a great way to clear the board, you will also not get to the kind of scores I’ve posted by getting only 8,000 to 10,000 points a board. To maximize your score, you need to get the middle as often as possible so you average 16,000 to 20,000 points per board. Do this by setting up your apple, but as it falls on the digging enemies, do what I said not to do, and move left or right before it gets all of the baddies. With any luck, they’ll only be one or two diggers that move out from under the falling apple in the same direction you went. Do whatever you can at this point to get the middle. If there are two left, I always try to shoot one of the remaining baddies right before, or after getting the middle so I only have one left to contend with after I clear the blue chompers and the letter. A sure kill: The easiest way to get the last baddie, or any one (assuming you have the ball) is to simply tunnel in the direction of the digger coming at you and stop. Then just hold the fire button down and let it run right into you. Mr. Do! will simply constantly throw the ball, and although sometimes it looks like the digger is going to run right into your face, you will get it every time, guaranteed. You don’t really want to do this early in the board though, because the more throwing you do before you actually shoot an enemy, the longer it takes for the ball to come back. Not a good thing when there’s still more than a few baddies and diggers trying to make you their lunch. A few laws of the game written in stone: 1. Actually this first one is a tip. I always shoot the first baddie to come out. But I hang on to the ball when it comes back, because number one, if you shoot another enemy with your second ball on the board, it takes quite a while for the third ball to come back. Something you can’t afford on the higher boards. And number two, if you don’t have the ball, the baddies and diggers aren’t afraid to come after you more directly. 2. The letter will never come after you if you have the ball. Even if you’re standing right next to the EXTRA bar at the top of the screen when one comes out. The only exception being if it’s so close to you on the higher boards, that you can’t even turn and shoot it without being caught by the letter. 3. A letter comes out anytime you land right on, or exceed a multiple of 5000 points. Meaning first at 5,000 points, then 10,000 and so on. Not if you are at 2,000 and then say drop an apple on enough baddies to bounce the score to 8,000. A letter will come out in this case, but not because the difference between two and eight thousand is more than five, but because you passed the 5,000 point mark. Another one will then come out at 10,000 points or more. 4. You can only have eight extra Mr. Do!’s, besides the one on the screen. Six of them show on the bottom of the screen if you fill it up. After that, the next two Mr. Do!’s land on top of the one on the right. They are there, but you can’t see them. However, if you get another extra Mr. Do! at this point, the game will go through all of the motions of saying you won an extra Mr. Do!, and show it being added to the line, but you will not get credit for that one. Eight is the maximum, period. A law apparently written in rewriteable stone: Letters will come out every 5,000 points until you turn the score over at 1,000,000. At this point sometimes they continue to come out, and sometimes they don’t. If they don’t, they only way to get any more letters is to get the middle. To get up to the two million plus scores, you need to get them to keep coming out. I think I’ve figured out how to get them to do that, but that’s one tip I’m not sharing. There’s a lot of other little tips I could share here that I’ve learned that help me get out of trouble, maximize my score, and just generally stay alive. But I’m not going to give up all my secrets for free. There’s enough here though to help any player improve their score. Good luck, and have fun!