Meerca Chase remains one of the most popular games on Neopets, despite the age and simplicity of the game itself. Derived from the classic arcade game Snake (although with Meercas instead of a snake), Meerca Chase is an easy game to become proficient at -- with, like in most games, a little practice. Hopefully you will find something in this guide to help improve your skills or broaden your knowledge about the game.

Overview

The object of Meerca Chase, like that of many other action games, is simply to survive. Your character is the (tailless) Meerca, who lengthens his tail by eating all Neggs except the red ones (which are implied to be poisonous and which will cause him to perish). The graphics in Meerca Chase are quite simple and not overly detailed at all, and new pieces of the Meerca's tail are simply white dots, while the Neggs are pixellized figures. No matter, though; we can use our imagination.

There are only three ways to loose a game of Meerca Chase: one, by running into any one of the edges of the game screen; two, by hitting a red colored Negg at any point in the game; and three, by running into your own tail. Once a game is lost, you must start over from the beginning if you wish to play again.

The Game Board

The Meerca Chase gameboard is fairly simple to understand, as it does not change throughout the game. However, a diagram has been created for your convenience, displayed below:

As you can see, only one "good" Negg, such as yellow, green, grey, etc. will come up at a time, while Red Neggs will appear periodically (not necessarily every time your Meerca eats a normal Negg). Again, hitting a Red Negg will immediately cause you to lose.

Difficulty Levels

As you will undoubtedly find at the beginning of the game, you will have three different difficulty levels to choose from: these being Easy, Medium, and Hard. The more difficult the level, the faster your Meerca character will move; however, the more difficult the level, the more points each negg is worth (each negg point value will be multiplied by the number displayed on the main screen; that is 3 for Easy, 5 for Medium, and 8 for Hard).

You will probably find that certain difficulty levels suit your personal skill level differently than others. As for myself, I personally do not recommend playing games on Easy except for perhaps the first time you play Meerca Chase, as the Neopoint level in Easy just isn't adequately high enough to get a decent score in a game without playing for hours upon end (and you will probably become bored playing for that long). Medium, while better than easy, still often doesn't reap the benefits that one might wish for, but is good for novice players, as it isn't as absurdly slow as Easy is but can get you a decent amount of points per game. Once you've played Meerca Chase to the point of becoming fairly well acquainted with the game, I reccomend that you advance onto Hard, as it surpasses both in terms of poin-gaining. Hard may seem intimidatingly fast at first, but with a little practice, you will probably find that it isn't too bad, after all. Regardless of my advice, please choose whatever difficulty level you feel most comfortable with.

The Neggs

In Meerca Chase, there are seven "good" neggs and one "bad" negg. Some are quite a bit rarer than others, while others are more common.

Good Negg	Description
	Here we have the most common negg by far, the Yellow Negg. Being the most common negg, it makes sense for it to be the least valuable negg of all seven, and so it is, being worth only one point. Don't be suprised to see this one often.
	Also common (although not as common as the yellow negg, and understandably so), the Blue Negg pops up occasionally, and it's a pretty good thing to see one. It is worth three points.
	Being rarer than both the Blue and Yellow Neggs, the Green Negg can still be expected to pop up occasionally. It is worth four points.
	There is not much to say about the Grey Negg except that it is rarer than all three previously discussed Neggs and it is worth five points.
	The Yellow Negg With A Red Outline is quite rare compared to its predecessors, and you should probably consider yourself lucky if you find one, as they only pop up once every few games or so. This Negg is worth ten points, and can boost your score decently once retreived.
	Yet rarer, the Rainbow Negg is seldom seen in a game, but can boost your score significantly if found. This negg is worth twenty points.
	The rarest Negg of all in Meerca Chase is the mighty Fish Negg. Worth a grand fifty points, this Negg is extremely rare but can boost your score very significantly if received. Just to give you an idea of how rare it is, I believe that I've only ever gotten about ten total Fish Neggs in all of my time playing Meerca Chase (which has been for quite a long time). Even rarer is getting two or more of these in a row, but I suppose it isn't impossible, as I have gotten more than one fish negg in a game before (although such a thing is extremely uncommon).

Of course, there is only one "bad" Negg -- the Red Negg, that is -- and as stated before, hitting one will cause you to lose the game.

Tips and Tricks

• At the High difficulty, you may notice that breaks will appear in the Meerca's tail (presumably because he is travelling so fast). Interestingly, if you time your move well, you can actually move in between one of those breaks as a shortcut (or just for fun).

• Try to always take the safer route to a Negg if you are aiming for a valuable Negg or are attempting to get a high score -- remember, once you loose, you cannot start over with your old score again.

• On the main screen (the one that displays before you press "start"), if you hover your mouse over the very upper right hand corner of the screen, your mouse pointer will change to a hand. Click this space, and your cursor will now drag a little bit of text that says ": :j.boogie: :" (presumably J. Boogie was one of the Meerca Chase programmers). As far as I know, this does not affect your actual game at all -- it's just a fun little tidbit that the programmer(s) threw in (and the text will disappear once you begin your game).

Scoring

The Neopoints ratio for Meerca Chase is 100 Neopoints per 100 points scored, and therefore, the Neopoints you receive from a game will always be the amount of points you scored (unless, obviously, Meerca Chase is the featured game).

Conclusion

I hope that you have learned something from this guide. You will surely be able to become a good Meerca Chase player with a little bit of practice, and have fun!

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