Hover!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hover! is a video game that came bundled with Windows 95. It was a showcase for the advanced multimedia capabilities available on personal computers at the time. While primitive by today's standards, Hover! was a landmark in home computer development. It is still available from Microsoft (see below) and can be run on all of Microsoft's operating systems released since Windows 95 including Windows Vista.
The game is a variation on capture the flag. The game's help file says this:
- "The object is simple: steal all of the drones' flags before the drones capture yours. You will be awarded points for each of the enemy flags you collect, and for every one of your flags you have remaining in the maze when you finish the level ahead of the drones."
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[edit] The Hover 950 Control Panel
Across the top of the screen (from left to right in the picture at right) is a panel showing the number of flags collected by both player and computer, an optional rear view mirror (when disabled it reads Hover 950), and the player's score.
Across the bottom of the screen is a panel showing how many spring, wall, and cloak power-ups the player has left, the level's map, a speedometer and a compass of sorts, and another panel showing you how much shield, green light, or red light power is left.
[edit] The Levels
There are three different mazes in Hover!: a medieval castle, a futuristic city/ nightclub area, and an oceanic themed sewer. Each maze has its own music theme, spawn locations, and 'style' (e.g., the sewer has a lot of areas in the air, while the city level has several dead-ends).
The red and blue flags are random placed on one of several spawn points on each level each time that levels is loaded, as well as powerups. Certain objects (shown as a yellow square on the map) have different effects, e.g. an orange swirly stopping you, a green arrow shooting you in that direction, or a "No-Flag" symbol that will put a collected flag back in the maze.
[edit] Easter Eggs
One level (shown as "small.maz" in the mazes directory of the game) is used as the introduction level shown when the game finishes starting up. While the player cannot move your ship or indeed move at all, if the player manages to relocate his or her car through some creative hacking, he or she can view pictures of the developer's heads.
The player cannot simply rename and load this level normally; the maze is missing spawns for all other objects and crashes immediately on load.
[edit] Items
Power-ups and other items are found in green floating bubbles throughout the game.
- A cloud gives you the ability to hide yourself from the drones momentarily.
- A wall gives you the ability to put a temporary wall behind you, in order to slow a pursuing drone down.
- A spring gives you the ability to jump over walls and onto platforms.
A spring power-up - A green light temporarily increases your speed.
- A red light temporarily decreases your speed.
- A shield makes you temporarily invulnerable to the effects of all "power-downs".
- A question mark gives you a random item.
- A "map eraser" looks like a lightning bolt hitting your bottom control panel and it erases your map.
[edit] Pads
There are several pads along the ground in the game Hover!
- An arrow will force the craft to move in that direction
- A stop pad will stop the vehicle by lowering it below the ground.
- A pad with a strikethrough going through a flag will remove one of the player's captured flags if he or she happens to hover by it.
[edit] External links
- Download Hover! at Microsoft's Public FTP server
- HOVER! Download Website
