Battle Bugs

Click inside the game to capture the mouse. Space or Enter lets you move from the title to the manual check. Open the original Epyx manual and look for the printed number shown on the screen: it isn't necessarily the page number in the PDF viewer. Press the four symbols on that page, in order, and then Done. Back Up removes the last symbol if you make a mistake.

For example, printed page 4 —the seventh page of the PDF— shows a stone, a cross, a star and a key. Use that combination only if the screen asks for page 4.

At the recruitment office, press Enlist, type your general's name and confirm with Enter. Select the name in the list and go into Begin Campaign. The first exercise is Boot Camp 1: Dirt Simple. Close the help notice with Enter and review your troops before starting the clock.

Click inside the screen to activate the captured mouse; Esc releases it so you can return to the site's buttons. The left click selects insects and options. P stops or resumes the clock. The 1–5 keys select television channels and F1 opens help. To give an order, first select one of your insects and choose the action from its menu; then indicate the target it asks for.

On a touchscreen, open Controls in the player to use its virtual mouse. The Pause, Mute, Full screen, Restart and Exit buttons are on the player bar.

The files with Inglés (English) and Alemán (German) in the name are two DOS copies of the same game. The online game uses the English one. To play outside the site, keep the files of each copy together and use a compatible DOS environment. The English configuration points to C:\SIERRA\BUGS; the German one, to C:\OLDGAMES\BBUGS.

If you need to set up DOSBox, see DOSBox from scratch. The README of the original copy explains the sound setup and recommends selecting standard Sound Blaster if the game stops responding when you confirm the manual screen.

The date, the campaign and the number of insect types were checked against Epyx's page for the game. The original manual explains recruitment, the symbols and the orders. The configuration and language differences were checked in the files of the two copies.