2400 A. D. Walkthrough version 1.0.2
Copyright 1999-2000 by Andrew Schultz schultza@earthlink.net
****** AD SPACE ******
My 2400 A. D. page is at:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762/2400/main.htm
My games page is at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762/games/games.htm
My main page is at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762
2400 A.D. is copyright Chuck Bueche "Chuckles," Origin Systems, 1987.
This walkthrough copyright 1999-2000 by Andrew Schultz may not be
redistributed for profit in any way without my prior consent.
I look over old Apple games for fun and don't really think there should
be direct profit in it for someone who cuts-and-pastes without my
permission. Especially since there wasn't much real _WORK_.
This was fun to write and, I hope, fun to read too.
Any mistakes, corrections, etc., even of blatant typos(I don't often
have time to proofread), can be mailed to me at schultza@earthlink.net.
********BEGIN WALKTHROUGH********
The year is 2400 A. D. and the Tzorg Empire has enslaved the city of
Metropolis for a while, using robots to keep the peace, in its quest for
galactic domination. But wait! There's hope! You, with the help of
the Underground, a covert resistance movement who never get organized
enough themselves to put information together and stop the oppression,
can overthrow the Tzorgs.
I have asterisked out quests where you just need to find information.
They are not strictly necessary, but they are neat puzzles. Also
alternative solutions are labeled with "+." They may require knowledge
found elsewhere in the game.
First, start with intelligence=agility=endurance=30, and affinity=9. If
you really need to improve affinity just talk to someone, cut off the
conversation, and talk again. That's one-half of an affinity point--and
if people ignore you, shopkeepers won't, and you can build affinity that
way. However, with this walkthrough you will have the info you need to
complete the game, so why bother with the people you're trying to save?
For endurance, run or climb stairs--which lowers it short-term but
raises the maximum long-term by a quarter of how far it is lowered.
Agility comes from fixing or using weapons, and intelligence comes from
fixing or using items. You can pretty much futz with a teleporter or a
gridread or a scanner and get intelligence to 99. NEVER, NEVER use a
booster pill. They're not worth it. Boost labs are too hard to get to
if you want an efficient walkthrough, although they are a neat puzzle.
Look for Fritz in the underground if you really want to know. [Insert
cranky comment about how technology makes us lazy and fat and doesn't
improve our endurance ONE POINT here]
The first thing to do is to go to Joe's Bar. It's a building north and
two to the east of where you start the game. Spider is in back, behind
the bar. He's lying down. Now, he'll ask you to go to Johnnie's Corner
to see Reggie, who willyou a password. You'll want to run
east(Johnnie's is in the south of the east end) to avoid the Checker and
a potential Social Demerit. It isn't necessary to get the password, but
if you don't, you'll need to get a loan off Brehm's Bank at loan-shark
rates or suffer through a lot of losing battles with a hand blaster.
Even Brehm tells you the way you should be making money is by killing
robots. Searching for and finding energy cells and selling them at 5
credits is another, but it's a little more tedious. However, if you're
out of credits and guns, this is viable. It is less honest but more
effective, once you have given Spider the password, to drop all your
items and talk to him. Then drop the hand blaster you've received and
talk to him. Some racket, huh? Having several hand blasters isn't
useful, but selling them all and coming back again is. And if you're
ever out of ammo, just reload, get killed, err, "knocked unconscious,"
and pick up your gun again in the southeast corner of the rehabilitation
center(along the south wall is where contraband is hidden) maybe
stopping to see Spider along the way. A quick way to find Tim, who buys
stuff, is to use location 24 in the transporters. One other thing worth
noting about picking up credits is that if you kill a robot and go to
the correctional center, you can go back in a reasonable amount of time
and search for its credits if you hadn't before.
**At Johnnie's Corner: It's in the east sector. Run all the way
east(to avoid the checker robot and social demerits) and Johnnie's
corner is to the south of the end of the walkway. Johnnie's at the bar.
He'll tell you Reggie's upstairs if you ask about REGGIE. Go upstairs
and ask Reggie the PASSWORD. By the way, the stairs up/down are a great
way to improve your endurance. Most of the places have tubes, which are
strangely a bit slower for you--you have to wait for that noise to play.
++An alternative way to get there is to enter the transporter just
outside of the check-in center and type "LETSGO" and then "01" which
sends you to the transporter just outside Johnnie's Corner.
Back chez Spider you'll get Plastiform(healing) and a hand blaster and a
passcard FA74, which opens the door in the Novue Apartments, behind
which you can get to the underground. Don't worry about getting energy,
or that you can't load from an energy node without attracting attention.
In the underground there is a place with unlimited energy cells.
There's also another place in the Megatech warehouse that has lots of
energy cells. Rudy tells you about them.
The first thing you'll want to concentrate on is buying armor, perhaps a
light shield. It is 500 credits and can be found in the underground.
I'd advise picking off robots guarding the borders first. To sneak
behind them, either run on the walkways or use the transporters(type
LETSGO and then at the second prompt type 01, 02, 03, 04 to send you to
the restricted zones, and 00 sends you to outside the Public Tracking
Office! Read at any transporter to see its number.) The checker will
follow you, and you will probably want to sucker him into a corner.
Then attack him. A recurring strategy for fighting robots is to arrange
things so you take on one at a time instead of several. Alleys are your
friends, especially since robots can't shoot diagonally in them.
By the way, if you get "killed," just search for the loose panel in the
west of your cell. Climb down to the first level underground, then go
west and climb back up. You'll be in administration(the west side!)
Then go back to the correctional center. That's the first building
after you leave the western zone, on your north. Your items are in a
box in the southeast corner of the first level. Items are put there
whenever you go to jail, so this happens if you Z(urrender) too! It's
convenient and makes the game easier, but you can't help wondering that
security's a little lax. (Also, confiscated items go here!)
After you get the light shield you can attack robots with a little more
abandon. I'd wait until you have 1000 credits to buy stuff from
Wes(i.e. a Laser Cutter). In fact, you might want to buy a lot from Wes
and sell it back to Tim so that he will give(that's right, give!) you
the plasma rifle. Of course, the rifle will be broken, but we'll get to
that later. Your next priority should be the blueprints. If you've
been "working out" your energy by climbing stairs at Jonnie's Corner(or
other stairs) it will be pretty high by now. Once it's over 50, you can
break into the orange handled "heavy" door in Megatech. A high-powered
weapon may work too--plasma rifles do but I'm not sure about lesser
ones. Behind it is the blueprint room--there are some strange
blueprints you should give to Les. Ask him to BUILD the blueprints, and
he will charge the modest fee of 3500. It's worth it. The field
disperser is great armor(you can ignore attacks from level 1 and 2
robots!) and will get you through force fields if you keep it charged.
It won't break, either! With the field disperser the robots can't bug
you any more above ground, unless you poke around in the upper levels of
the correctional facility. After picking up the disperser, you should
concentrate on getting the very best weapons with your credits, unless
you feel like buying/selling to get the plasma rifles as mentioned
above. You might want to pick up a jetpack. There's not that much else
to buy, anyhow.
But what about puzzles? Stop off in the south subway to find the
transporter guidance device. Make sure you don't get hit by a train!
It's worse than getting killed normally because you may lose money.
There are some tough level 4 robots there so you may be best off to wait
until they lose their "charge." This is a surprisingly effective
strategy at any point when robots are behind energy fields. Robots have
to recharge a lot, and they die out. Just walk past them then. Behind
them in the second room, you find the TGD. Don in the hospital gives
you the transporter combination, 18-09-12-15. I'll tell you what this
means later.
For the plasma rifle, you'll need to trade an energy regulator(700 at
Larry's) for a microstat at Gilbert's and also find the multiplier tube
Gilbert put in the trash out back. Fixing it costs 550. To raise the
money, just waste a bunch of border guards if you don't have any better
plans. Probably the ones to the west should be avoided, as level two
robots may come from the correctional center on the alert.
**Off to the west there's another part of the underground. For a
superquick walkthrough you don't need to do this, just copy the
deactivization codes, but the puzzles are rather fun, and I recommend
trying them before "copping out."
There are access terminals that give deactivization codes so you can win
the game. Asking around at administration tells you they're behind
Marion's office. It's one of those doors you need 50 endurance to break
down, but don't worry. There are no robots in this part of the
underground, so you'll get your endurance back with no trouble. Once
you follow the hall and go downstairs, you'll have to climb over some
pipes to get down to the second level. Again climb over some pipes to
get to the first access terminal. As Jimmy told you in the west
underground, "ACCTRM"(level minus 2) gives "ACCTRM0" as access code.
Type CODES to avoid the humorous error messages, giving you the first
deactivization code, CHLOBU. The tube to the second level reveals a
bunch of conveyor belts. If you don't feel like mapping them out,
here's the shortcut. Take the one to the east and follow it until it
turns south. When you branch to the south and west, go west and then
take the next turn to the north. Beyond the belt is an access terminal.
Type ACCTRM1 and then CODES to get the second code, PERABR. For the
third terminal go south and then east. You will find transporter
05(read when you're around the transporter!) A wild guess, or "seeing"
the transporters beneath the garbage dump on the north side, might make
you try LETSGO and 06. Voila! Level 4. Now there are a bunch of bins
you need to push around. Basically, you can only push a bin onto an
empty space. You'll want to get to a 2x2 room over on the west side, and
on top of it, if you go over there, the disk may re-load and re-shuffle
the bins to their original position, leaving you trapped. Don't worry
about being trapped--you can push your way back out or even Z(urrender)
if you must. Saving the game before pushing anything is probably the
best precaution. The pattern to get to the third terminal is below("go
W" means go all the way west): 2W, 3S of terminal 6. Push W 2x.
Go N, Go W, Go S. Push W 5x. N. Push E 2x. N. W. Go 2S, W. Push W.
S. E.
Push E. S. W. S. W. Push N. Open door to W, go W twice. Talk W,
"ACCTRM2" and "CODES" gives you EDDONE, the third and final code.
Getting to the Tzorg complex is tricky--go to the waste dump in the
north, but because there are a lot of guards, you might want to make
sure you have two weapons loaded before you enter. Enter the dump from
the north and go to the east. There is a maze, not too tricky once you
realize which garbage you can walk through, but you will swing around
east, south and west to the southwest corner where you'll find stairs
down. Here's where you hit the "funny" transporters. If you don't have
the Transporter Guidance Device, you won't be able to complete this
part. Basically, you want to enter transporter 7. Teleport to
transporter 18(type "LETSGO" and "18") and then 09, then 12, then 15,
like Don told you in the hospital. Go east and take the stairs down.
Then you'll encounter four teleporters. Doesn't matter which one you
enter. They're teleporters 19-22. The one on the other side is,
logically, 23. "LETSGO" and "23" gets you there. From there, don't
enter any side rooms but go south. Then off to the west is a heavy-duty
door. There are robots behind there but let the robots plug up the
doorways, so you'll only have to take on one at a time. After opening
three "heavy" doors there is a north-south hallway. Skip by the
hallway, and don't go out until your endurance is high enough to take a
few hits before you make it through. Most of the guard robots are
stationary but they're not guarding anything. Just keep going west
through the doors. There's only one way to go after that. You'll find
yourself in a narrow hallway going north. Don't exit it--just fight the
robots one at a time. There's also a possibility they'll need to
recharge--in that case, to the east of the passage's end and the south
is a place to recharge. If you keep going east, behind a heavy door you
will find some much less difficult robots. Get rid of them, and then
look for bookcases along the north wall. Behind one of them is a flight
of stairs. Each time you go up, there'll be more stairs close by.
Always take them. At one point you'll have a choice between a conveyor
belt and the stairs. Take the stairs. The conveyor belt is a
convoluted one-way ticket back to Metropolis, away from the secret
entrance. Climb up the stairs again and note a heavy door to the right.
If you enter the Authority Complex directly you can break that door open
but couldn't climb over the garbage to get to where you are now. Go
north through the force fields and save the game--just to be sure, as
typos will send you to the correctional center--before you type in
CHLOBU, PERABR and EDDONE to shut down the robots. You win. Enjoy the
(primitive Apple IIe) fireworks!
++-there is an alternate solution as well. If you go through the front
door of the Tzorg Authority comlpex and get to the conveyor belt, you
can cross it with a jetpack, but you need to get the timing right so you
don't hit any walls. Which means that the whole Transporter Guidance
Device puzzle is technically unneccessary. Still it's fun to try this
both ways.
*********END WALKTHROUGH*********
Credits:
Thanks to an unknown author of the FAQ at
http://games.msk.ru:8102/abc/0.htm, which showed me an alternate
solution. Thanks to everyone who made me believe I *could* write a
walkthrough and write the homepage. Thanks to kahei (www.kahei.com) for
the hex editor that deciphered dialogs for me. And thanks to Chuck
Bueche and Origin for making a fun, original game.
Thanks to Al Amaloo at vgstrategies.about.com for providing an "Expert
Site" link to my page above. Which gave me a certain amount of
confidence.
Change log:
11/7/99 re-solved 2400 on my Apple IIe emulator. Wrote up a very rough
draft.
11/8/99 Touched up rough draft and submitted version 1.0.0 to
gamefaqs.com
2/25/99 More minor cosmetic changes(1.0.1). Added alternate solution
and homepage.
10/4/00 Yet more touch-ups(1.0.2)
(
geocities.com/soho/exhibit/2762) (
geocities.com/soho/exhibit) (
geocities.com/soho)