The 1st World is in the adjacent village

The "Village People" is the first "real" Level of Megablasters. That is, it was conceptualized as the original starting point of the game. But after some test players claimed that this world was too hard for a beginner I added the new beginner world "Box of Toys" and made the "Village People" to the second World of Megablasters.

While the "Box of Toys" was still in the home of our heroes Bart and Bob, the "Village People" is actually the place where the fair, that Bart and Bob attended instead of doing the babysitting of their cousins, took place.

Cobron's henchmen have advanced this far and have conquered the village. The original inhabitants of the village have fled or have locked them up in their houses. Now it's up to you to drive the bad guys away and clear the streets of this formerly peaceful village from all the Cobron scum!

Level 1: What are these ghosts doing in the village?

After getting acquainted with dropping bombs, avoiding enemies and collecting extras in the Rookie World, you will face a number of more difficult enemies in this world. The Green Ghosts will give you an easy time still, but the “Hooded Puddings” in Level 2 will definitely be harder to get rid off. In the levels after that the situation isn't going to improve. You will face enemies that hide behind trash cans, punks that attack you when they see you and thieves that run away from bombs (a natural trade of this profession).

Also the special extras like remote controls, shields, triple bombs and fires will be distributed a lot scarcer than in the Rookie World. I'm afraid you'll have to get along with the few things that you can find in this world.

Besides that the labyrinths will become more and more ramified, making it harder to hit the enemies and giving the enemies more ways to escape from your bombs or to surprise you with unpredictable twists and turns.

Unlike the other worlds where virtually everything was designed by Rex of Beng!, in this world there are also some graphics by me. As far as I can remember I've drawn the Green Ghosts, the houses in the background, the trash cans, parts of the end-of-world enemy and all the graphics from the Pac Man Secret Level. This bears proof to the fact, that I started to create the worlds before I've found a graphics artist who would support this undertaking.

Level 2: These enemies look like vanilla pudding with a hood!?!

The enemies in this world use more elaborate movement routines than the ones in the Rookie World. Some attack you, others run away from bombs and yet another type hides behind trash cans. Yet these enemies don't even scratch at the real potential that other opponents in later worlds will develop. They still move around in (counter-) clockwise often paying no attention at you whatsoever. The enemies will develop the ability to take turns at each junction not until the second world. Therefore the first world can still be counted as an introductory world with an below average skill level.

The end-of-world enemy, the Town Hall, was the first final enemy I've created for Megablasters, and I have to admit that I've put a lot more time into creating this end-of-world boss than into any other. If you look carefully you'll see this additional work.

First of all the Town Hall has to be hit from all four sides. With each successful hit new cracks appear in the walls and new fires start to come out of the bullet holes. In all the other worlds it doesn't really matter from which side you hit the end-of-world boss, just that you do hit him!

Besides that the Town Council Members are also different from the usual enemies, since they have two different movement states, either running around frantically or hiding beneath their hats to avoid getting hit by the bullets from the Town Hall's dome.

Level 3: These Clowns are real Weasels!

For the shots being fired from the Town Hall's dome I had to create a sprite and movement routine that was able to pass unimpaired over the border of two adjacent 16kb blocks of memory (all the CPC programmers among you know what I'm talking about). Also I had to write a approximation routine that would calculate the correct line for a shot that was being fired at your location. Later I used these shot-movement routines in several of the other end-of-world enemies.

The Town Hall is a lot harder to destroy than the Big Toy Snake from the Rookie World. As mentioned above you'll have to hit it several times from all four sides. If you're not aware of that and only bomb three or even two of the four sides of the Town Hall you won't be able to destroy it. You'll probably loose a lot of lives before you figure that out.

But with some extras from the BONUS Level and the items scattered around in the final level you shouldn't have much of a problem to destroy the Town Hall. You also shouldn't pay too much attention to the Town Council Members. They are just annoying and if you rationalize the two shields in the final level you should be protected against explosions or touch by enemies for most of the time anyway.

After burning down the Town Hall the real adventure will finally start!