RC>Anyone out there have Raptor: Call of the Shadows?
Yup.  I used to play it but it became too easy.  I'm not that great at
those kind of games, but the way Raptor was designed, once you manage to
surive long enough to get some decent weapons, you generally earn much
more than it costs to fully arm and sheild yourself so your profit just
accumulates. It's even that way on the hardest level.  And successive
'loops' through all the levels didn't get any harder or look any
different.
It also got too slow.  True, I only have a 486/66 but the game seems
like it should have been faster considering it wasn't an extremely
graphic intense game.  I used to have a similar game, with some what
similar graphics and it ran on an old 2mhz 8 bit micro and it ran only
slightly slower.
What was even more annoying was that I used to do it as a 'time killer'
and so I'd keep playing the same game a few minutes here and there, and
my money kept building and then rolls over more than what the program
can correctly handle.  If I remember right, it looked like the program
used two different score/cash 'roll over' values.  The larger one in the
score accumulation / display and the smaller one in the area where you
buy your weapons and shielding.
But, still, as I said, I used to play it fairly regularly as a 'time
killer'.  (ie: it was something some what mindless that I could do for a
short while, while I was waiting to do something else.)
RC>I hear that there are certain days to play the game and you will get
RC>special bonuses in the game.  I've tried all the days and I have went
RC>to every planet and played every level.
Raptor was written by Cygnus, and it seems to be a birthday present
to themselves.  Whenever Raptor is started when your system's clock
matches the birthday of one of the people at Cygnus, Raptor behaves a
little strangely. Here's the list of recognized birthdays.  You can
reset your system clock to one of these dates manually, if you wish;
any year should be all right, so long as it's not in the past:
                       March 12        Bobby Prince
                       May 16          Scott Host
                       August 28       Rich Fleider
                       October 2       Jim Molinets
Note that in v1.0 of Raptor, Bobby Prince's birthday was not recognized,
while Tim Neveu's was.
What happens is this:  first, the Apogee logo is displayed, but not
with Apogee's trademark music.  Instead, you hear the Cygnus folks,
sounding a little tipsy, humming the Apogee theme music themselves.
In version 1.1 and 1.2, Bobby Prince says, "You boys just don't get
it, do ya?" immediately afterward.  In addition, some of the Raptor
levels contain enemies that don't normally appear such as monkeys who
throw coconuts at you, raptor dinosaurs scurrying across the screen,
and cows with machine guns concealed beneath their hides.  Most of
these peculiar enemies appear on the first mission of the game, and
they are usually difficult to kill.
Finally, when you exit the game, you get to hear the member of Cygnus
whose birthday it is give an impersonation of a monkey.  This
might consist of hooting or screeching sounds, or simply an
eloquent rendering of the word "monkey."  (The raucous you hear
when monkeys appear during the game are all the monkey
impersonations playing together at random.)
There is a way, beyond setting the system time to a particular birthday,
of getting the monkeys and raptors and cows to fight you.  When the
screen comes up where you must choose a sector to fly, flip the switch
at the bottom center of the screen by clicking on it with the mouse.
It should darken.  This activates the three lights to the right of
this switch.  In version 1.0 of Raptor, you should turn on the first
and third lights; in v1.1 and v1.2 of Raptor, you should turn all
three lights on.  Then you can select a sector or "auto pilot" and
fly the level.  You'll know the cheat worked if you hear a
static-like sound. All levels have some new enemy that appears by
using this cheat, though sometimes they are small and inconspicuous.
Besides monkeys, cows, and raptors, there are:  the ship from 2001:
A Space Odyssey, the ship from Space 1999, pedestrians, a woman
sunbathing on a roof, and other miscellaneous items.
Note, however, that if you activate the "battle cow" mode using the
switches, as opposed to running the game on a Cygnus birthday, you don't
get the goofy Apogee theme song in the beginning, nor the individual
monkey impersonation at the end.
There is also supposed to be some other way to do it, but right off hand
I can't remember how, and my little FAQ file doesn't mention it.
Something about setting an environment variable to one of the author's
names or some such.
RC>There is also something about a cow but I haven't found it yet.
RC>Anyone know how to find the cow?
It shows up by itself on the right days.
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