Chapter 33: Space Invaders

“Okay, Melvin, this is the last piece… easy does it…”

Melvin flies over to the Space Defense Station, and you send a signal to slow its rotation, hopefully at just the right time… and… yes! Melvin is quite close to the last installation site. He glides up carefully, and it clicks perfectly into place.

“YAHOO!” calls Melvin on the radio. “We did it!”

“Great job!” you say. “Now get back in the ship, so we can…” Melvin floats in his space suit, looking back at you. “So we can what?”

“So we can… uh… hey, what are we supposed to do next?”

Melvin says, “Well, Christa said this Space Defense Station was our key to getting to Solaris, right? I guess we go inside.”

You think that over. She gave a lot of detailed lecture about how to fly the shuttles, and how to build the space station… but… you never thought to ask what to do once it was built. But, you can see, just like the fueling depot, there is a spot on the station to dock with. “I’m going to dock, Melvin, so we can go inside.”

“Roger that!” says Melvin brightly. “Heading back to the airlock.” In a moment, you hear the sounds of Melvin returning through the shuttle airlock. Soon he is back inside, and you carefully start docking the shuttle so it connects with the station pixel perfectly. “Aaaaannnddd docked!” you say, taking your hands off of the controls. The shuttle does seem docked in place.

Melvin looks over some viewscreens. “These status screens seems to say the Station is now up to pressure – we should be able to go right in.” You are both very familiar with the airlock rituals at this point, given that Melvin did a lot of spacewalks to get this thing built. Out the window, the station looks like an enormous orange donut. It spins to create gravity, and now that you are docked, the Shuttle is spinning with it. You climb into the airlock, and then into the station. It has many docks, and appears to be meant as a landing and refueling station for spaceships meant for defense. Sort of like an aircraft carrier, but for spacecraft. You go down a narrow steel hallway, and emerge into a larger room with many consoles and status screens, all blank. Presumably this place would be used to communicate with a fleet of defense ships. But… there are no ships here.

“Wow – says Melvin. This is like battle HQ! Now we just need a bunch of spaceships, and we can take on those Zylons!”

That doesn’t seem quite right. “Melvin, we don’t even know where Solaris is… I don’t think it’s anywhere near Earth. And the only ship we have is the Challenger.”

As you explore the room, you find something strange in the rear of the console room. Behind all the desks there is a large circular platform, with a pedestal in the center of it. A small sign next to it reads “Multiversal Transporter.” You step up on the platform, and see on the pedestal is a red button, and a dial with a set of cryptic symbols. It is currently pointing at the largest of the symbols. There is a label above the dial reading “LCP Stations.”

“Any idea what this is, Melvin?” He reads it out loud. “LCP Stations… Oh! That’s the League of Civilized Planets! Maybe this transports people to the other Space Defense Stations. Hey! If one of them is at Solaris, we’ll be all set!”

This sounds dangerous. “Yeah, maybe… but… how do we know which one? Are you sure this is safe?”

“Safe?” says Melvin. “We’re currently alone in a space station we built ourselves. You want to talk about safe? The big symbol probably goes to the biggest station. I don’t see a manual anywhere – just press it, and we’ll find out.”

You raise your hand to press it, and hesitate. “Melvin, this is crazy…”

“Oh come on!” he says, rolling his eyes. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

You don’t want to think about that… so you clamp your eyes shut and drop your hand on the big red button. Immediately you feel weird electrical pulses going through every atom in your body, and everything goes white. Suddenly you feel cold, and the whiteness starts to fade… and you hear someone… screaming!

“NO! HELP!”

As the whiteness fades away, you see that you are in a vast chamber in a space station that is under attack. The walls are glass, fifty feet high, and you can see an armada of weird alien creatures dropping laser bombs on the station. The station shakes with each hit, and clouds of smoke come from damaged areas. Across the chamber, at an impossibly high desk, a green man in a metallic green outfit is shouting for help. “NO!” he cries, “It isn’t fair!” Suddenly he sees you. “You there!” he calls. “Quickly! Man that laser cannon!” He points towards a door that leads through the glass to a large laser cannon, twenty feet high, that is mounted outside on the surface of the space station.

“Come on!” shouts Melvin, who zips right over to the doorway. You run after him, shouting, “I knew this was a bad idea!” You go through the door, entering the laser cannon, and realize it is a sort of vehicle. Through the viewscreen, you see clearly above you a laser bomb heading right at you that will surely blow up the cannon and both of you. You lunge at the joystick, and the mobile cannon slides out of the path of the bomb just in time, moving under one of three large shields, giving you a moment to breathe. You sit down and take stock of the situation.

“Okay,” says Melvin. “You be the pilot, and dodge the bombs. I’ll be your laser.” He jumps into a large loading chamber in the center of the room. “I think that’s a fire button,” he says, pointing to your console. You try pressing it, and Melvin goes shooting out the top of the cannon, blowing a hole in the bright orange shield. A moment later he rematerializes in the chamber. “Yowch!” cries Melvin. “Could you aim this thing at the aliens, and not at giant concrete shields?”

“Sorry,” you say, gliding the laser cannon to the left, but carefully keeping an eye out for more laser bombs. “I don’t think this is my day for big red buttons.” The grid of weird digital aliens marches back and forth above the station. You take aim, fire again, and again Melvin shoots out the barrel of the cannon, this time blasting an alien to pixels.

Melvin reappears. “WAHOO!” he says. “I love being a missile! Thirty-five aliens to go! Let’s do this!” The controls of this tank-on-a-track are very smooth, and you feel like you might be able to take on these weird aliens… as long as they don’t get any faster…

Put the Space Invaders cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1, and set the difficulty switches to b. Play until you exceed 9999 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.