Megamania

About Megamania

Megamania (1982) is Steve Cartwright's Activision shooter for the Atari 2600 in which a space pilot's junk-food nightmare sends waves of hamburgers, steam irons and bow ties against his ship, named the best 2600 game by one magazine in 1984.

Megamania in Depth

After a day of work, the pilot of an intergalactic space cruiser gorges himself on everything from ice cream to pizza and falls asleep into a nightmare in which his ship is attacked by food and household objects, among them hamburgers, steam irons, tyres, spinning dice and bow ties. One player or two taking turns fire the ship's missile launcher at the attackers before their fleet of three cruisers is destroyed, earning an extra cruiser every 10,000 points.

Eight waves move with different speeds and attack patterns, each worth more per hit, until the eighth wave of "Space Dice", after which every enemy is worth 90 points and the colours and patterns change. An energy bar at the bottom of the screen drains during each wave, costing a ship if it runs out, and leftover energy earns bonus points. The game options offer guided missiles, which follow the joystick, or straight missiles.

Making Megamania

Cartwright had studied with David Crane at DeVry in Phoenix and joined Activision as it grew; Megamania was his second game after Barnstorming. Displaying objects moving horizontally past each other and missiles passing through rows of them took "months of late-night coding", and the game took over nine months to fit into 4 KB. Feeling the market was overloaded with space shooters, the team gave it a new theme. Released on 24 September 1982, it was among Activision's biggest hits of 1983, though Jim Levy did not list it among the company's million-sellers. Reviews were split: JoyStik called it "one of the most original variations of the bottom-shooter concept", while the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it "Space Invaders with a vengeance". It won "Most Humorous Home Arcade Game" at the 4th Arkie Awards, and Video and Computer Gaming Illustrated named it the best Atari 2600 game in March 1984. Glyn Anderson adapted it for the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computers, and Cartwright later counted it, Seaquest and Frostbite among the best fast action 2600 games.