Beauty and the Beast FAQ Last updated June 2, 2011 ========================== || TABLE OF CONTENTS: || || 1. Legalese || || 2. Credentials || || 3. Characters || || 4. Plot || || 5. Controls || || 6. Scoring || || 7. Lives || || 8. GREAT! || || 9. Gameplay || || 10. Acknowledgments || || 11. Contact || ========================== -------------------------- -- 1. LEGALESE ----------- -------------------------- This FAQ isn't copyrighted, nor are any FAQs I write. Seeing as I'm already letting GameFAQs distribute it for free, I don't see why I should care about someone else who wants to distribute it for free. Go ahead: post my FAQ on your site without telling me. Hand out photocopies at Grand Central Station. Whatever. -------------------------- -- 2. CREDENTIALS -------- -------------------------- My high score is currently 14,900, on the sixth building. But I'm always workin' on topping myself! -------------------------- -- 3. CHARACTERS --------- -------------------------- > YOU: You control a person in a yellow... raincoat? Jumpsuit? Big Bird costume? The instructions say you're a guy named "Buford," but I don't buy it. That character has a rack and is clearly a woman. Let's call her Susan. > THE VILLAIN: I guess this is the beast. It looks like a gorilla with a human face. The instruction manual calls him "Horrible Hank," but let's be honest, it's just King Kong wearing a Halloween mask. Same modus operandi even. > MR. COWBOY: Once more I must disagree with the instruction manual. It claims that you are rescuing a damsel in distress named "Tiny Mabel" from the monster's clutches, and yet even through the fog of Intellivision pixelation one can easily identify the cowboy hat. You're rescuing a dude from the monster. Really this whole game is just Donkey Kong with the gender roles reversed. How progressive for a 1982 video game! > WHITE BIRD: White Bird would do anything to take the life of our yellow- cloaked heroine. It swoops down voraciously, talons thirsting for blood and viscera. Watch out if you value your life. I mean lives. > BLACK BIRD: Yin and yang, Oreo cookie and Oreo stuffing, White Bird and Black Bird. Two sides of the same coin, and both sides want to kill you. Be wary. > CAT?: Cat? is called Cat? because it may not be a cat at all. Cat? may be a mouse, a rat, a raccoon, or any other comparably sized furry animal. Let not the limitations of the Intellivision's graphics lure you into false sense of security, however: Cat? is a killer. It cares not for its own safety as it scurries along the ledge of a fourteen-story skyscraper. It cares only for the hunt, and you are the prey. Whereas birds Black and White terrorize you from above, Cat? terrorizes you from ankle-height. Who let it out on the ledge, we may never know, but their criminal disregard for their pet's safety can only be matched by the pet's own insatiable bloodlust. > BARREL: Barrel feigns insentience, and yet it clearly is alive for the way it autonomously maneuvers in the later levels. Barrel will fall at any odd angle it pleases, caring naught a whit for the laws of gravity. Although unassuming at first, Barrel will eventually prove to be your greatest foe, greater than even the crazed monster who throws them at you. > BOULDER: Contrary to rumor, boulders do not appear in this game. Those are barrels. > LARRY LURKER: Larry spends all day in his apartment with the lights off. He has no friends and no hobbies. The only way he can pass the time is by anxiously opening and closing his window all day. Little does he realize you can use his nervous habit to your advantage.... > HEART: Heart is not a character; it is a visual representation of Mr. Cowboy's feelings of passion for our heroine Susan and his desire to return to her arms instead of those of a giant monkey in a plastic mask. Little does Mr. Cowboy realize that he never will, for no matter how many times the monkey is caught, he will merely leap to a higher floor, and no matter how many times he plummets to his death, he will merely spawn again at the bottom of that same building. It is lucky Heart is not alive, or it would be depressed at the futility of it all. -------------------------- -- 4. PLOT --------------- -------------------------- Susan awoke one morning in a cold sweat. She had been plagued with nightmares the night before. "At least my boyfriend Mr. Cowboy is here to comfort me," she said, smiling wistfully at the thought of one day becoming Mrs. Cowboy. She turned over to kiss him, only to find his side of the bed was empty. The sheets were cold — how long had he been gone? She rushed downstairs to see if he was somewhere else in the house. She found only a note: "Dear Susan, It's me, your greatest nemesis, a giant monkey with a plastic mask of a human face! I have kidnapped Archibald Cowboy and am holding him in one hand while clinging to the side of a skyscraper with another. If you ever want to see him again, you will need to best me in my own game, which of course is the game of jumping over a bunch of stuff and climbing up windows. Winner. Takes. All. —XOXO GMwaPMoaHF" Susan crumpled the letter in her hand and said through gritted teeth, "That giant monkey has messed with me for the last time." She grabbed her yellow... outfit from the closet and headed to the skyscraper. She had no idea that all through the skyscraper, the tenants were simultaneously unleashing their pets onto the building ledge for no discernible reason.... -------------------------- -- 5. CONTROLS ----------- -------------------------- This game makes brilliant use of the Intellivision's 16-button interface. > JUMP: Press any of the side buttons. I prefer top-right, but listen to your heart. You will know which side button is best for you. > AMBLE LEFTWARD: Press left on the directional disc. > AMBLE RIGHTWARD: Press right on the directional disc. > CLIMB AN OPEN WINDOW: Press up on the directional disc. Note that this move cannot be performed on a closed window. > DESCEND: While climbing, press down on the directional disc. > BLINK: Press 4 on the numpad. Does not affect gameplay. > SETTLE NERVES: Press 7 on the numpad. Operates under the placebo effect. -------------------------- -- 6. SCORING ------------ -------------------------- There are many ways to get points while playing Beauty & The Beast: > 50 points: Touch a heart. Also grants temporary invincibility. > 50 points: Touch a bird, cat?, barrel, or barrel shard while turned red from a heart. (Note: touching them while not being turned red results in instant death. Yours, not theirs.) > 100 points: Touch the giant monkey thing guy. (Note: you do not receive an additional 50 points from this while heart-powered. I checked.) > 600 points: It seems arbitrary to me, but touching the monkey atop the first floor of every building other than the first is worth six times the usual amount. I would have expected to make the last monkey, at the top of each building, to be the one worth more points, since that's when you actually kill him, but no, it's the monkey directly after that. You may think the best way to get points is to camp at the bottom of the first screen and just grab hearts and kill the occasional cat?, but this is false. Can you imagine how long it would take to get 14,900 points in mere 50-point increments? This is before one even considers the dexterity required to leap over the cat?s when you aren't hearted up! No, the fastest way to get points is just to climb those windows and beat each level. Grab the hearts if you can — not only for their points, but for your safety — and take out some enemies along the way (for the same two reasons actually), but keep the focus on advancing at all times. Higher and higher. Ever skyward. That is where the points are. Go for that big 600 as many times as you can. -------------------------- -- 7. LIVES -------------- -------------------------- See those ominous blue silhouettes during the establishing shot of the skyscraper? Those are not actual people watching your perilous ascent; they are nondiagetic representations OF YOUR REMAINING LIVES. For instance, if there are four silhouettes, you have four lives. Extra lives are awarded after a certain number of points. I have yet to discern the cutoffs. Doesn't matter though. Doesn't affect strategy. Note that you CANNOT HAVE MORE THAN SIX LIVES. If you have six lives and get even a billion points without dying, you will never get a seventh life. If you get six lives, earn a billion points, and then die once, you will be at five lives. Be careful! -------------------------- -- 8. GREAT! ------------- -------------------------- * * WARNING: SPOILERS * * If you make it all the way to the sixth building, a special, congratulatory message will appear for you. It reads: GREAT! The message will display on the bottom-right part of the skyscraper screen to inform you of your greatness. When you see this, you will know that you have done a great thing. I have not yet gotten far enough in the game to learn whether other messages await. * * END SPOILERS * * -------------------------- -- 9. GAMEPLAY ----------- -------------------------- You begin on street level. Every time you advance upwards, the building gets a little narrower... sometimes SO narrow that Mr. Cowboy will fling his hearts to places you can't even reach. When you see White Bird or Black Bird, your answer is the same: walk under it! Observe its arc, and time your walk to cross paths when it's at its highest. Do not, under any circumstances, jump when you see a bird. Unless you just got a heart. When you see a cat?, JUMP! Practice your jumps, because the directional disc is very sensitive and could send you careening at all sorts of odd angles. Seek that perfect forty-five degree angle. It's deeply rewarding. When you see a window open, CLIMB IT! Don't worry yourself with questions like "How does a window being open help me to climb it" or "Why are people opening their windows at such random and frequent intervals," simply ambulate to the enclave and press up to escalate. BE CAREFUL: If the window is about to close, and it closes while you are mid- climb, it will kill you. Poof, teleported back to the bottom of the screen, having to repeat your efforts all over again, but this time with one life less and the bitter sound effect of your defeat still echoing in your mind. If you are on the top floor, touch the monkey! This is how you advance in levels. Enjoy the marvelous cutscene, in which it is revealed that somebody has actually taken out an aerial banner advertisement to congratulate you, or in some cases dismiss your skill by calling you lucky. Who is this eccentric tycoon with so much expendable income? What hardworking businessman's real advertisement got displaced because of him? Do other pedestrians see the banner and mistakenly think its "GOOD JOB" is directed at them? What if one of them had just done something wrong, for instance snatch an old lady's purse? Would he be encouraged to repeat the crime, and more to the point, would the person who took out the advertisement be culpable? Trial of the century. When you finish an entire building's worth of levels, touching the monkey will send him VIOLENTLY PLUMMETING TO HIS DEATH. Are you proud? But no time to reflect on the moral ambiguity of your cold-blooded murder — the monkey's back and he's kidnapped Mr. Cowboy all over again! Time for another round! The second time, Barrel is a whole lot more cunning. He flies at you from all different angles; he bursts into two yellow pieces that are equally damaging should you touch them. Note that this does provide the opportunity for more points, for you can (with a heart) get 50 points per Barrel piece instead of 50 for the entire Barrel, but this is very difficult. The third building is identical to the second, as are bulidings four through six. (Seven and onward are, at least for now, uncharted territory as far as I'm concerned.) For a while I had assumed that gameplay was in some way more difficult, but it isn't. Things don't even move faster. Once the barrels start falling diagonally and splitting into yellow shrapnel, as far as I can tell, for as far as I have gotten, that is the game's maximum difficulty level. Have you gotten further in the game than I have? E-mail me! Let me know what awaits! -------------------------- -- 10. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- -------------------------- Thank you to Merian C. Cooper for creating King Kong, without which Nintendo never would have stolen your ideas to create Donkey Kong, without which Imagic never would have stolen THOSE ideas to create Beauty & The Beast. Now I'm not saying that Disney then stole this game's ideas for its 1991 animated film of the same name... but the timing is quite a coincidence, don't you think? Thank you also to Mattel Electronics for creating a gaming console with enough buttons to navigate the intense complexity of its games. Did you know that the Playstation 3 has only 14 buttons plus two analog sticks? The Intellivision wins with 16 buttons and one directional disc. And when it comes to wood paneling, there isn't even a contest. It's Intellivision by a mile. Thank you to the American Pet Association for teaching the country about safe pet care practices, thereby combating this game's example of letting pets roam freely on skyscraper ledges. Readers, if you own pets, do not let them roam freely on the ledge of your building. It's unsafe for them as well as for the lady scaling the walls. -------------------------- -- 11. CONTACT ----------- -------------------------- I love email! I can be reached for any reason at cottonrhetoric@gmail.com Peace, love, and retro gaming, Cotton