========================================================= - - - Evel Knievel for the Game Boy Color - - Controls FAQ - - - ========================================================= 1. Introduction 2. Bike Settings 2.1 Speed 2.2 Acceleration 2.3 Braking 2.4 Rotation 2.5 Wheelie 3. Special Courses 3.1 Las Vegas Course 1 – Casino Cashpot 3.2 Las Vegas Course 3 – Easy Rider 3.3 Los Angeles Course 5 – Beverly Hills 4. End 1. Introduction Evel Knievel is a two-dimensional motorbiking game that is focused on finishing difficult ”trial”-type courses and achieving a high score through the game's point system. It is a hard game to pick up and play because of the steep learning curve involved, and that is largely, but not entirely due to the bike settings system. There are five properties to set on your bike, with five possible levels in each. That's five times five or 3125 possibilities to test before being able to even play the game. Yikes.. If you manage to make sense of the settings and get through the hurdles of the beginning, however, Evel Knievel is a rewarding game with a sense of speed and excitement unique to any Game Boy or Game Boy Color game I have come across. It has depth beyond Motocross Maniacs and possibly of the other bike games on the console: No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking and Sports Illustrated for Kids: The Ultimate Triple Dare!. 2. Bike Settings If you've tried the game out, you may have noticed that after jumping your bike sometimes spins uncontrollably in the air. To clear this and other problems, we need to adjust the settings. 2.1 Speed Speed is important and raising it to the maximum doesn't make your bike too uncontrollable. It does, however, drain your gas too much, sometimes making you unable to finish levels all the way through. Set your Speed to NORMAL and you should be fine. 2.2 Acceleration There is one major advantage in having high Acceleration: getting over jumps when you don't have much room to accelerate. It allows you more control of the bike, as well, but can be a bit daunting for the new player. Set your Acceleration to VERY STRONG. 2.3 Braking In real life, braking too hard might make you falter or even fly off the bike. This is a video game, however, and there seems to be no reason not to raise your Braking to it's maximum. Set your Braking to VERY GOOD. 2.4 Rotation Rotation somewhat affects how your bike spins in the air. Rotation makes your manually controlled movement range bigger but by way of ”jerking” the bike around to other positions abruptly. It is possible to control your bike only with a high Rotation and low Wheelie, but the movement range is lower than with high Wheelie, and jerky, so therefore less likely to hit the target you want to hit exactly. The rotation property doesn't matter too much, honestly. Unless you like jerky movement, set your Rotation to VERY SLOW. 2.5 Wheelie Wheelie is the main property affecting your bike's control in the air. Not only does it combat wild spinouts and stabilize your bike, it ultimately enables you to come down wheels first. It also helps when you have one wheel on the ground and need to ground the other one before running into a bump and losing balance even further. To control your bike while in the air you need to be able to move the wheels, and for that you need for your Wheelie to be high. Set your Wheelie to VERY GOOD. 3. Special Jumps There are courses that are different from the others, namely, Las Vegas 4, London 1, London 5 and San Francisco 3. They involve downhill, going down and up, a maze and climbing. What I would like to address here, though, are the courses with special jumps in them. These are jumps that do not appear in other courses and can be difficult to figure out. 3.1 Las Vegas Course 1 – Casino Cashpot Right off the bat, the very first course in the game entails special jumps. This is to confuse you even further I suppose. In this course you have to jump down several slopes. Brake into total stillness before the jump, accelerate just before the platform ends – a few wheel's length or so - and then raise your front wheel up in the air to land safely. 3.2 Las Vegas Course 3 – Easy Rider There's a tricky hole near the start with two smaller ones before it and no visible ramp to accelerate into a jump from. You can get over it using the barrel by driving into it with high speed, jumping far ahead of the hole. 3.3 Los Angeles Course 5 – Beverly Hills There's a tricky jump at the end of the Beverly Hills course. Go down with one wheel first, hold the brake, and then release it in increments. When you finally fall down, raise the falling wheel up to land wheels down. 4. End That's it – I hope that helped. If you are looking for other similar games I may recommend Skate or Die for the Game Boy, or Elasto Mania for the PC. There's a trick you can use when playing with a password. If you lose too many lives, use the remaining ones to practice difficult jumps. Then when you game over, and the password is saved on the screen, do a real attempt again. Only do real attempts when your lives are high. This way when you get a new password it will have all the lives left as well. You can also save lives by hitting the start button before your head hits the ground. Hit quit and select the course again.