Pizza Boy

Pizza Boy by Cleveland M. Blakemore

A conversion to the C64 of a type-in program for the C128 originally published in the December 1987 issue of Ahoy magazine.

Here's Cleve to tell you about the game:

You can't decide which is worse about your new job as pizza boy: your whining boss or the city that you deliver in. Between speeding motorists and rabid mongrels, it seems like your wages are ridiculously low. Worst of all, the delivery boy has to pay the difference if a pizza shows up cold.

Pizza Boy is a fun, fast action game. You'll need a joystick plugged into Port 2 to play.

After the title screen, you'll be presented with a city map, in which the pizza restaurant is located in the upper left comer. The restaurant area contains a window displaying how much money you've made, a block for the three lives you start out with, and the pizza counter beneath. Your boss is the grimacing fellow behind the counter; he sits next to the telephone and takes orders.

When an order is called in, the hungry caller lights up inside the house of origin, with a ravenous look on his face as he sits before an empty plate with knife and fork.

The boss will place a pizza under the heat lamps after taking the caller's order, awaiting your pickup and delivery. To pick up a pizza, merely stand under the heat lamp, close to it, and press the fire button. The pizza will vanish, meaning you are now carrying it.

Every time a pizza is placed under the heat lamp, the pizza boy's figure will light up with a color representing the temperature of the pizza. He starts out a steaming yellow, but will cycle through light red-dark red-brown-blue-black, to indicate the temperature of the pizza as it cools.

As long as the pizza is under the heat lamp, it cools slowly. Once you have it in your possession, it will cool very rapidly, so get it to the caller as quickly as possible. A regular pizza costs $20, but the customer may tip if it is warmer than expected, and he will certainly deduct from the base price as it grows colder. How much profit you make depends on the speed with which you arrive with the caller's pizza.

As if this weren't difficult enough already, you have to dodge the automobiles in town and watch out for the mad dog as you race through the streets. Once you arrive at a customer's house, go through the door and touch him to get your money. Immediately, another caller phones in, and a pizza is sitting under the heat lamps back in the restaurant, getting frosty while you hurry back.

If you get struck by a car or bitten, you lose one pizza boy. If you allow a pizza to grow completely cold, you'll also lose a boy.

Every time you successfully deliver five pizzas, the cars will pick up the pace a little. It gets pretty lough to navigate the city after 10 pizzas. If you manage to make anything over $100 in profit, you're a natural.