MOWDOWN
A Game by Jak Locke, 3/5/97
Programmed on the day the school caught on fire

---THE STORY

Since he moved in, Bill's neighbor Joe has never been a nice guy.  As a matter 
of fact, he's been a real jerk.  Finally, after an incident involving Bill's 
window and a sledgehammer, old Bill decided it's finally time to get him back.
Dressed in his favorite purple shirt and blue jeans, he leaned on Joe's doorbell
until Joe finally answered it.
"WHAT, jerk?" he bellowed.
"I'm sick and tired of your garbage!  It's time we settled it!" Bill said.
"Oh yeah?  What do you wanna do?"
And so, the neighborhood joined into the decision.  Finally, the garbage man
came up with a brilliant idea.
"Hey, how about they duke it out in the streets!" he said.
"Nah, that's too overused," mumbled a few neighbors.
"With pistols!" added the garbageman.
Faces lit up.  Cheers went out.  It had been over a century since a duel
had happened in their sleepy neighborhood.
And so, the local war veteran loaned two of his guns to Bill and Joe.  However,
both the guns had been through a lot of use, so only one chamber actually fired.
Still, guns are guns.
To remedy this problem, in case of a miss, a box of ammunition was placed at
both ends of the street.  If they happened to miss, all they had to do was
run to their end of the street and reload their weapon.
And now, it is time for the gunfight.  The sun is high in the sky and if you
look high enough, you can spot a few vultures above...

---HOW TO PLAY
The game is quite simple, actually.  All you need to remember is that you use
the numeric keypad to play and that you push the '5' key to fire (it is
conveniently located in the center of the keypad).  Make sure NUM LOCK is on.
When somebody fires their shot, the fright that ensues freezes the other player
until the bullet leaves the screen or hits them.
As mentioned before, you only have ONE SHOT.
To reload your gun, just go to the extreme left of the screen and it will be
reloaded.  Just make sure that your neighbor doesn't shoot you in the back!
If you should die or you do kill your neighbor, then a strange temporal shift
occurs and you get a chance to go at it again.  
To see you or your neighbor die in slow motion, push 'S' right when the death
animation comes on.

---TWO PLAYER GAME
The beauty of the two-player game is that it doesn't exist!

---THIS GAME IS RATED PG-13!
Whenever you or your neighbor dies, you get to see their bodily fluids leak
out of the entry and exit wound!
Depending on whether the shootee gets shot in the head or the body and from the
front or the back determines which death scene you'll see.  Both recoil and 
writhe and bleed in different ways, so there are a total of eight different 
death scenes to see.
By the way, if you get shot through the legs, nothing happens.
For those who don't want all the gory scenes, at the very beginning of the game
is an option to turn it all off.  This disables a few options, though.

---OPTIONS

ALIEN: If this is on, there is a slim chance that one of you will have
an alien inside of you.  If this is so, then right in the middle of the duel,
your chest will split open and you will give birth to a bouncing baby alien!

MOWDOWN MOTOWN: With this, a sufficiently annoying musical riff will play every
so often, bugging you and making you lose concentration.

MOWDOWN HOEDOWN: There's a chance every few seconds that the whole 
neighborhood will start running around and dancing, making you lose even more 
concentration.

RUSTY TRIGGER: It will take four keypresses to fire your gun!  Oh boy!

MOWDOWN WHOA!SLOWDOWN!: The game moves three times as fast if this is on.

THERMONUCLEAR DETONATION: There is a slim chance that armageddon will occur and
nobody will win.  We had to make one of the options real.

FUZZ: On rare occasions, a cop will appear and take you to the station where you
get to pick the way you want to die.  Of course, you'll be brought back to the
game right afterwards.

---PROGRAMMING ERRORS...UH, I MEAN GRAPHICAL SPICE-UPS
Every now and then, you might see a (ahem) neighbor pop up on the screen.  This
is perfectly normal and the neighbor won't get in your way.
Also, when you shoot, you'll notice that the bullet leaves a black trail of
dots behind it.  That's just the smoke (ahem) and it sort of stays in
the air for the rest of the match.
I (ahem) added these to spice up the game.

---THAT'S ABOUT IT
We hope you enjoy playing MOWDOWN.  I sure had a monotonous time programming it.
Oh well...have fun.                                     -JL
