STRIKE THE SET
Closing night: fight to the lighting booth and save the last performance.
Loading the cartridge (512 KiB)…
Saved states last for this visit. Sound starts with Power.
STRIKE THE SET needs a keyboard or a game controller. On a phone or tablet without one you can read about the game here, but you can’t play it yet.
1
The cartridge · in the fiction
Avenell Playhouse's side-scrolling brawler for one or two players. On the closing night a hired claque wrecks the theatre, and the flyman HALYARD and the followspot operator TWILL fight them from the stage door to the lighting booth. The light field is the fight: in the dark the Claque are only eyes, a blow in the light scores double, and a followspot snapped out and back dazzles everyone it finds. The first Cyclorama game to rewrite its sprite table while the picture is drawn, so thirteen fighters share the screen.
- Developer
- Avenell Playhouse
- Year
- 1994
- Genre
- Beat-'em-up
- Technique
- follow-spot
2
Controls
| Cyclorama pad | Keyboard | Game controller |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrow keys | D-pad or left stick |
| A | Z | Bottom face button |
| B | X | Right face button |
| C | C | Left or top face button |
| START | Enter | Start |
| Save state | F5 | — |
| Load state | F8 | — |
| Power off | Escape | — |
Saved states are kept for this visit only. Controllers use the standard layout (Xbox, PlayStation and most USB or Bluetooth pads). Press any button on the controller after powering on so the browser notices it.
3
How to play
After the Curtain Up splash, press Start (Enter) on the title. Choose 1 or 2 players, HALYARD or TWILL, and NORMAL (FINAL PERFORMANCE opens once you have won) with the D-pad (arrow keys) and A (Z), read HOW TO PLAY, and press A to begin. Walk with the D-pad: left and right along the stage, up and down to change depth. A strikes (press it again as a blow lands to chain a combo), B (X) jumps (A in the air is a flying kick), A and B together spin to clear foes around you at the cost of some energy, and C (C) snaps the followspot out for a moment: the Claque caught in its light when it comes back are dazzled. Walk into a staggered or dazzled foe to grab them, then A to knee or push away and A to throw. Press A on an item to pick it up: a pipe or a sandbag to swing, tea and buns for energy, a cue sheet for another snap. Light is everything: a foe in the dark shows only its eyes, blows on a foe standing in the light score double, Stage Blacks and the Stand-in cannot be hurt in the dark, and a work light knocked over onto foes dazzles them. Start pauses. Clear each section of the Claque to move on (GO points the way) and beat the boss of each of the five stages; you have three lives and two continues, with extra lives at 30,000 and 80,000 points. Player 2 uses a second controller, or the keyboard: W A S D to move, F G H for A B C, R for Start. Player 2 can join at any time by pressing Start; joining again after being knocked out costs a shared life.
What is running
When you power on, your browser runs an emulator of the Cyclorama: its CPU, its video chip with the light field, and its Cue sound chip, at the real frame rate. The cartridge is the same 512 KiB ROM the project builds and tests, byte for byte.
strike-the-set · 524,288 bytes · SHA-256 7e618d8507c96490be3595ebdd6cb530fdd3933b6ca6b6dfe3aba510ae00c348
No account and no cookies. Apart from its own files, the page loads one script: Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and page speed without cookies. The hardware is documented in full: read the HED-0041 hardware and programmer’s manual and the SCRIM language specification. Or go back to the Cyclorama.