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AIRPLANZ

Game BoyStrategyTurn-based

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    Overview

    AIRPLANZ is a two player, one Game Boy version of Airplanes, a pen and paper game that is very popular among Romanian students, who play it during recess and during class. It was written entirely in assembly as a personal challenge, after the author decided to learn how tile and sprite graphics really work on an older machine.

    For those familiar with Battleship, it is basically the same game, but with airplanes and slightly different rules. Each player has a 10x10 board on which they place three airplanes. Then the planes disappear and you have to guess where the opponent's planes may be: you pick a cell, and the game tells you whether you missed, hit part of a plane, or hit its cockpit, in which case the whole plane is destroyed.

    It is a two players, one console game, so you pass the Game Boy to your opponent each turn. Both players repeat the process until one of them has destroyed all three of the other's planes. The one-console idea came from a friend; the original plan was to link two Game Boys with a cable.

    Made by
    NotImplementedLife

    Controls guide

    Placing your planes

    Button and keyAction
    D-padArrowsMove the selected plane
    SelectShiftRotate the selected plane
    AXSelect the next plane
    BZSelect the previous plane
    StartEnterLock in your board (only if no planes overlap)

    Attacking

    Button and keyAction
    D-padArrowsMove the target cursor over the opponent's board
    AXFire at the chosen cell

    Other screens

    Button and keyAction
    AXStart from the title screen
    StartEnterContinue from the pass-the-console screen
    StartEnterReturn to the title after game over

    Cheatsheet

    Board marks

    X
    Miss
    O
    Hit on part of a plane
    Dotted plane
    Destroyed plane, after a cockpit hit

    Rules

    Board
    10 by 10 cells per player
    Fleet
    3 airplanes each
    Plane shape
    10 cells: cockpit, 5-cell wing, body, 3-cell tail
    Cockpit hit
    Destroys the whole plane at once
    Turns
    One shot per turn, hit or miss
    Win
    Destroy all three enemy planes

    Tips

    1. Only a cockpit hit takes a plane out. After a body hit, work out where the cockpit must be: it sits one cell in front of the middle of the five-cell wing.
    2. A plane spans five cells across the wing and four from nose to tail, so a body hit narrows the cockpit down to a handful of cells once you know which way the plane faces.
    3. The game will not accept your board while any two planes overlap; if Start seems to do nothing, check for overlapping planes.
    4. Pressing A on a cell you have already tried does nothing, so a misplaced cursor will not waste your turn.
    5. Turns pass automatically a moment after each shot, and the screen switches to the next player's view, so have the console ready to hand over.