Chapter 3: Shall We Play a Game?

Melvin breaks through the bricks in the second gray wall, and suddenly there is a collapse, and through the dust, you see an opening. Melvin soars into it, and climbing over dust and rubble, you follow him. It is dim inside, but you can see it is a ruined throne room, with a tall, cracked throne at the far end, and many empty alcoves on the walls. Gray bricks and pixel dust are scattered on the floor. Melvin’s glow is the brightest thing in the room, and he has flown straight to the throne, and is trying, ineffectually, to knock away bricks that are piled on top of it. “HELP ME!” he shouts, and as quick as you can manage without twisting an ankle over all the debris, you pick your way over to the throne. You start lifting away bricks and rubble, and to your horror, see what appears to be a human hand in black glove underneath. You keep digging out bricks, and the hand is attached to an arm, which is attached to an unconscious woman. As you clear everything off of her, you see that she is not just an ordinary woman, and she is not wearing a black glove. Her skin is purest onyx, like black plastic. She is dressed in a gown printed with silver numbers and letters, and with thin silver wires threaded throughout it. It is as if someone turned a computer chip into a regal, elegant woman. Looking at her, you have no doubt that she is a Queen. Some kind of android Queen, but a Queen, nonetheless.

And that she is dead.

You touch her hand. “She’s… cold,” you say. Melvin, who has been nervously quiet, flies high in the air, and shouts “STELLA!” then starts to sob, raining pixel tears down on his Queen.

“How can it be?!” he screams. “Just yesterday, the Atariverse was full of Players, everything was normal, and suddenly, no players, no castle, and the Queen is dead!”

As he continues to sob, you start looking around the room, illuminated by the hole Melvin punched through, and by Melvin himself. As you look down at the body of the fallen Queen, you notice something. “Melvin, come down here. What’s this?” You point at a thin black cord that seems to be attached to the base of the Queen’s dress and runs behind the rubble. “What?” he says disgustedly. “It’s just her power cord.” Suddenly he gets it. “What if she is unplugged! Dig!” Again, you dig at the rubble, and follow the cord around the back of the throne, where you find that, indeed, it ends at a small black transformer with a silver plug prongs and an Atari logo. There is a dusty power outlet just behind the throne. “Plug her in!” Melvin shouts. You do so, and dash back to where she lies. You watch with breathless anticipation, and… nothing.

“It’s no good,” he wails, and flies off to sob on the far side of the throne room.

As you stand there alone in the dark, you realize how insane this situation is. None of this can be happening, it’s all a crazy fantasy. You squeeze your eyes shut, and say “wake up, wake up, wake up.” Cautiously, you open one eye and peer around. Nothing is different. You are still in a ruined throne room, Melvin is still sobbing in an alcove, and the Queen is still… still… wait…

You notice something else. With Melvin’s glow out of the way, it is quite dark where the Queen is. When you look directly at her, she is just a dark shape. But when you look to the side, you notice a faint blue glow coming from the dual cathode ray tubes that form her eyes. You hold her hand again, and it is still cold. But you feel something. You put your ear to her wrist, and hear… a faint electric hum.

“Melvin!” you call, “I think she might be alive!”

Melvin races over. “Where? What do you see?”

You explain about the hum and the glow. “But I can’t see it when you are close.”

Melvin races around in circles. “Queen Stella, please wake up!” he shouts. But she just lies there, in her electronic coma. Melvin groans. “If only we had a way to revive her.” Suddenly, you have a thought. “Melvin, I don’t understand how things work here, but…”

“But what?”

“What about my whistle?”

“Yes! Your whistle! I don’t know if it will work… but… it can’t hurt!”

You find the whistle in your pocket, cover one hole like the Fisherman showed you, take a deep breath, and blast out a perfect 2600 Hertz tone. Again, a resonant wave spreads out in all directions, and for a tiny moment, the walls around you pulse a rainbow of colors before returning to their dark gray. But more importantly, the Queen seems to wake up! Her blue phosphor eyes blink, and she starts to sit up. Melvin is overjoyed, and flies about, shouting, “The Queen is Alive! Queen Stella is Alive!” in dizzying circles all around the ruined throne room. She looks at you, looks at Melvin, and then looks at her throne. She says nothing but reaches out a hand to you. You help her up, and with much effort, she staggers to the broken throne, and sits down, visibly exhausted.

“Queen Stella, I mean, your majesty, or um…” you wonder how stupid you must sound. “What can we do?”

She looks at you, right in the eyes, for a few moments, blinks, and then stares straight ahead. Suddenly, her eyes cast out a sort of hologram, a giant floating cube that hovers, filling much of the throne room. It is a 4x4x4 cube, and one cell in it contains a flashing letter X.

The scene is eerie, as the Queen’s eyes are now just empty dark disks that cast out this giant projection. You look at Melvin. “Melvin, what’s going on? Is she alright?”

“Yes,” he responds enthusiastically, “Yes, she’s alright. Or… well, she might be! She needs you to play. The whistle gave her enough energy to wake up, but playing a game will do much more to help bring her back.”

“Okay…” you say hesitantly, “I don’t know what game this is, but maybe I should let her win?”

Melvin rolls his eyes, not that he has eyes. “It’s tic-tac-toe, you goof. And don’t you DARE let her win. She needs you to do your best.”

Put the 3D Tic-Tac-Toe cartridge into your Atari 2600, and put it on game select 3. Set the Color/BW switch back to Color. Set both difficulty switches to b. Play until you win. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.