SILENT HILL 2

ReadMe Version 1.0

Thank you for purchasing Silent Hill 2 for PC. This file contains additional
information not found in the game manual.

Table of Contents

1) System Requirements

2) Installation

3) Autorun Menu

4) Begin Playing Silent Hill 2

5) Uninstall Silent Hill 2

6) Memory and Performance

7) Controls

8) Saved Games

9) Graphic Cards

10) Troubleshooting

11) Silent Hill 2 Web Sites

12) Technical Support

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1) System Requirements

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Windows XP/ME/2000/98
700 MHz Pentium or Athlon processor (or equivalent)
64 MB RAM
DirectX 8.1 compliant 3D accelerator card w/32 MB VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compliant sound card
DirectX 8.1 or higher (included)
4X CD-ROM drive
1.8 GB free hard disk space

RECOMMENDED

1 GHz Pentium or Athlon processor

128 MB RAM
3D accelerator card w/64 MB VRAM
8X CD-ROM drive
Gamepad controller

NOTE: It may be necessary to update your hardware drivers.

Supported chipsets:
NVIDIA GeForce4, GeForce3, GeForce2, GeForce 256, TNT2
ATI Radeon 9700, 9000, 8500, 7500, 7200, 7000, Radeon
Matrox Parhelia, G550, G450, G400
PowerVR Kyro II, Kyro I

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2) Installation

In order to play SILENT HILL 2, you must first install the program on your
computer's hard drive. The SILENT HILL 2 CD contains an Autorun screen that
automatically guides you through the installation process.

1) Insert CD1 into your computer's CD-ROM drive.

2) Once the Autorun screen appears, click INSTALL GAME.
3) Follow the on-screen installation instructions.
4) Insert CD2 and CD3 when prompted, and click OK.
5) Make sure to install DirectX 8.1 at the end of the installation process.

If the Autorun screen does not appear:

1) Double-click on the MY COMPUTER icon on your computer's desktop. On computers
running Windows XP, the MY COMPUTER icon can also be found on the START menu.
2) Double-click on the CD-ROM drive showing the SILENT HILL 2 icon.
3) Double-click Autorun.exe

Once you have successfully installed the game, you're ready to play!

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3) Autorun Menu

The Autorun Menu will appear any time CD1 is inserted in the CD-ROM drive. The menu
has several options:

Install Game - Click to install the game. This option is only available if the game
is not installed.
Play Game - Begin playing Silent Hill 2.
Uninstall Game - Remove Silent Hill 2 from your hard drive.
View Readme - View this readme file for additional information about Silent Hill 2.

Install DirectX 8.1 - Install DirectX 8.1, which is necessary in order to run
Silent Hill 2 successfully.
Exit - close the menu.

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4) Begin Playing Silent Hill 2

Now that you've installed the game, there are several ways to begin playing:

1) The Autorun screen will appear each time you insert CD1 into your CD-ROM drive.
Click PLAY GAME to run the game.
2) You may also begin the game by clicking on the Windows START button, and
selecting Programs>Konami>SILENT HILL 2>Play Silent Hill 2.
3) If you chose to add a desktop shortcut during installation, double-click the
SILENT HILL 2 icon on your desktop.
Note: You will need to have CD1 in your CD-ROM drive in order to play SILENT HILL
2.

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5) Uninstall Silent Hill 2

If you need to uninstall Silent Hill 2, you may do any of the following:

Insert CD1 and select Uninstall Game from the Autorun Menu, or:
Click on the START button, choose Programs, Konami, Silent Hill 2, and select
Uninstall Silent Hill 2, or:
Click on the START button, go to Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and
remove Silent Hill 2.

6) Memory and Performance

Silent Hill 2 requires at least 64 MB of RAM and a 700 MHz processor; the
performance of the game will improve if you have more RAM and a faster processor.
Regardless of your machine specs, you can maximize your available memory and
increase the overall performance of the game by doing the following:

Close any open windows.

Shut down all other programs, including system tray programs.
Defragment your hard drive.
Make sure to have additional free space on your hard drive.
If you get a "Not Enough Memory" error when you first start the game, you may need
to increase the virtual memory that is available in Windows.

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7) Controls

You will be able to play Silent Hill 2 with a gamepad, joystick, or with the
keyboard. The game supports PC gamepads with analog sticks and has vibration
(rumble) support. All of the menus have mouse support as well.

By default, the Control Type is set to Rotational Style. Pressing Left and Right
will rotate your character left and right, and pressing Up will move your character
forward in the direction he is facing. If the Control Type is set to Directional
Style, your character will immediately move in the direction you press (Left,
Right, Up, Down). The Control Type setting can be found in the Options Menu.

If you are playing with a gamepad or joystick, you may have an easier time
controlling the character by changing the Control Type to "Directional Style".

With Rotational Style, you will be able to sidestep left and right with the Step
Left and Step Right keys/buttons. With Directional Style, Step Left becomes Cycle
Target Left, and Step Right becomes Cycle Target Right. When you have multiple
targets on screen at once, you can choose which enemy to target by using the Cycle
Target Left/Right keys/buttons.

If you are using a controller with an analog stick, we suggest that you go to Game
Options and change the Walk/Run Control to "Analog". This will allow you to
control the movement speed of the character directly with the analog stick. The
Walk/Run Control is set to "Walk" by default, meaning the character will run only
when the Run button is held down.

You may change any of the default controls in the Control Options screen.
Default Controls

FUNCTION KEYBOARD GAMEPAD

Turn Left Left (arrow) Left

Turn Right Right (arrow) Right
Move Forwards Up (arrow) Up
Move Backwards Down (arrow) Down
Step Left A Button 13
Step Right D Button 14
Action Space Button 1
Cancel ESC Button 4
Skip/Pause P Button 10
Run/Guard Left Shift Button 2
Search Mode S Button 7
Inventory I Button 9
Light On/Off L Button 11
Map M Button 5
Use Health H Button 3
Aim Lock F Button 8
Next Weapon E Button 6
Prev Weapon Q
Reload R Button 12
Un-Equip Weapon ~ (tilde)
Quick Save F5
Quick Load F9
Wooden Plank 1
Steel Pipe 2
Handgun 3
Shotgun 4
Hunting Rifle 5
Great Knife 6
Chainsaw 7
Hyper Spray 8
Revolver 9
Chinese Cleaver 0

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8) Saved Games

If you wish to backup your saved games, make sure to copy the entire SAVE folder,
or your saved games will not work properly. Do not delete or copy individual saved
game files in the save folder (outside of the menus in the game itself), or you may
corrupt your saved games. The SAVE folder can be found at "C:\Program
Files\Konami\Silent Hill 2\data\save" by default.

If your saved games are corrupted, and you are having difficulty loading or saving
your game, you can delete the entire SAVE folder as a last resort. When you start
a new game, a new SAVE folder will be created automatically. However, we do not
recommend this, as you will lose all of your previously saved games.

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9) Graphic cards

Silent Hill 2 requires a graphics card with 3D hardware acceleration and at least
32 MB of VRAM on the card, along with 64 MB or more of system RAM. The drivers for
your graphic card must support DirectX 8.1 or higher. If you are having any
problems running the game, make sure to update your graphic card drivers first
before contacting technical support.

Silent Hill 2 officially supports the following graphic chipsets:

NVIDIA GeForce4, GeForce3, GeForce2, GeForce 256, TNT2

ATI Radeon 9700, 9000, 8500, 7500, 7200, 7000, Radeon
Matrox Parhelia, G550, G450, G400
PowerVR Kyro II, Kyro I

TEXTURE DETAIL LEVEL

If your system has 64 MB of RAM, the game will set the High Res. Textures option to
OFF, and the game will use low resolution textures. This helps lessen the amount
of system RAM the game needs to run properly. You can turn on the High Resolution
Textures, but may experience some instability if you only have 64 MB of system RAM.
The game will also run faster if you use low resolution textures. Please note, if
you change the High Res. Textures option, you may not see an immediate effect,
until you enter a new area and new textures are loaded into memory.

ANTI-ALIASING
If your card supports anti-aliasing, do not manually select the anti-aliasing mode
within your graphic card settings in Windows. For Silent Hill 2, you will need to
keep the default setting, which allows the application to control the anti-aliasing
mode. The default setting for anti-aliasing should be listed as "Allow
applications to control the anti-aliasing mode," "Application preference" or
something similar. If you manually turn on anti-aliasing, it will cause graphical
glitches to appear when running the Silent Hill 2 program.

KNOWN ISSUES
There are some known issues with the very latest graphic chipsets available. It is
likely that most of these known issues will be fixed in future driver releases from
the graphic chip manufacturers. We recommend that you keep your graphic card
drivers updated, by checking the manufacturer's web site regularly for new drivers.
A list of the most common hardware manufacturers' web sites can be found at the end
of this document.

Windows XP - If you are running Windows XP, there is a slight chance you may notice
some random text appearing on the Control Options screen. This should not hinder
your ability to edit your control settings.

Changing resolutions - On certain systems, after playing the game for a long time,
the game may return to the desktop if you switch screen resolutions. We recommend
that you set your screen resolution before playing the game, and if you wish to
switch resolutions after playing for a long while, save your game before changing
resolutions.

ATI Radeon 9700, 9000, 8500 - With the latest drivers available at the time this
was written, you may experience some instability and flickering on the new ATI
Radeon cards if shadows are enabled. We expect this to be fixed in new driver
releases from ATI, so make sure to update your graphic card drivers regularly.

NVIDIA GeForce 3, GeForce 4 - With the latest drivers available at the time this
was written, you may experience flickering on water surfaces and blood. We expect
this to be fixed in new driver releases from NVIDIA.

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10) Troubleshooting
SOUND HARDWARE ACCELERATION
If you have sound hardware acceleration enabled in Windows, you may occasionally
hear the background sounds looping in the game. To reduce or eliminate the sound
looping, turn off or lower hardware acceleration for your sound card.

Instructions on changing the sound hardware acceleration:

Go to the Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel.� Double-click Sounds and Audio
Devices (Win XP), Sound and Multimedia (Win ME/2000) or Multimedia (Win 98) and
select the Audio tab.� Under Sound Playback, click Advanced, then select the
Performance tab. � Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to "None" to turn off
sound hardware acceleration.

POOR PERFORMANCE WITH AMD BASED MOTHERBOARD

If you have a motherboard with the AMD-751, AMD-761 or AMD-762 Northbridge System
Controller and an AGP video card, you may experience poor performance with older
AMD miniport drivers. You will need to update the AMD miniport drivers to the
latest version available for your operating system. The drivers can be found here:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_2336,00.html

PROBLEMS LAUNCHING THE GAME

If you are having difficulty launching the game:
1) Close any other applications that are running on your PC, including applications
in the system tray.
2) Make sure that DirectX 8.1 is installed on your system.
3) Make sure to update your graphic card drivers to the latest drivers available.

If you continue to have difficulties launching the game, please read through the
information listed below:

Q: Do you have a Kenwood multi-beam CD-ROM drive?

These drives can have older firmware which will cause problems reading the CD. If
you CD-ROM drive is the Kenwood ICR-412 or Kenwood UCR-401, and the firmware is
older than version 132, you will need to upgrade the firmware. The firmware update
is available from Kenwood at:
http://www.kenwoodtech.com/downloads.html

Q: Are real-mode drivers being used for the CD-ROM drive?

Real-mode drivers are not compatible with this software title; please install the
latest plug and play drivers for your CD-ROM drive.

Q: Is your sound card a PCI64 using the ES1371 drivers, version 4.05.1127 or
4.05.1129?
Please install the latest drivers for your sound card.

Q: Are you running the game on a Dell 4100/4300 series computer and Windows 2000?
Intel identified a problem with the Intel Ultra ATA storage controller, and has
offered an update on their web site.

1) The update to the Intel Application Accelerator program can be found here:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/

2) The latest drivers for the Intel storage controllers can be found here:
http://appsr.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=182

Select the drivers for Windows 2000, download and run the setup program, then
reboot.

Q: Is the firewall software Zone Alarm Pro being used?

Make sure the latest version is installed, and older version may cause conflicts
with the game software.

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11) Silent Hill 2 Web Sites

Konami Global Web Site

http://www.konami.com/

Konami of America
http://www.konami.com/usa/

Creature Labs
http://www.creaturelabs.com/

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12) Technical Support

If you experience any technical problems with your game that you are unable to
resolve, please contact Konami Technical Support:

Phone: 1-650-654-3249
Toll Free: 1-888-212-0573

Email: support@konami.com

Konami of America, Inc.

1400 Bridge Parkway, Suite 101
Redwood City, California, 94065-1567
USA
Attn: Customer Service

If you get stuck in the game, or just need some additional hints and tips to give
you a boost, don�t worry! You can call the Konami Game Hint & Tip Line for help
with this software and all fine Konami products.

Konami Game Hint & Tip Line: 1-900-896-HINT (4468)

$0.95 per minute charge
$1.25 per minute support from a game counselor
Touch tone phone required
Minors must have parental permission before dialing

Hints are available 24 hours a day. Live support Monday-Friday 9:00 A.M to 5:30
P.M, Pacific Time. Prices and availability are subject to change, U.S.
accessibility only.

If you are having problems running the game, you may want to try updating your
graphic card drivers before calling technical support:

3D labs www.3dlabs.com
ATI Technologies www.atitech.com
Creative Labs www.creativelabs.com
ELSA www.elsa.com
Hercules www.hercules.com
Matrox www.matrox.com
NVIDIA www.nvidia.com
PowerVR www.powervr.com
Trident www.tridentmicro.com
Turtle Beach www.turtlebeach.com