Chapter 42: Space Invaders Frenzy

The screen flashes the words you have been longing to see: ALIENS DESTROYED. You and Melvin high-five, despite his lack of hands. You lean back in the plush leather seats, and look around at the ship. “Wow, Melvin, this ship is incredible. The warp-hop, the computer, and man, that torpedo sight! Hey, let’s see how fast we can fly across a sector.” You start to open up the throttle, but just then everything goes white, and suddenly you are back in the Phaser Patrol spaceport. No surprise, you hear and feel the thundering of laser bombs. Despite the explosions, alarms, and flashing lights, the instructor leans against the wall, casually smoking.

You and Melvin dash out of the ship, and take a look out the window, fully expecting to see more invaders descending onto the Mothership. But… they aren’t there. The shields are floating back and forth, but no invaders. But then you see it: laser bombs are falling from nowhere.

You shout to the instructor, who seems oblivious to all of it. “What’s going on?”

She just shrugs. “I think the invaders have turned invisible, somehow. Probably hacked the secrets of our invisible Mothership. You should probably go man the laser cannon.”

“Why aren’t you doing that?” you ask with some irritation.

She lets out a long stream of smoke, and with another KA-BOOM from a laser bomb, so does a crack in the wall beside her. “I told you, I’m on break.”

You and Melvin race the short distance back to the main hall, past the frantic Administrator, into your laser cannon. You notice that you’ve had to man this thing so many times you really do think of it as “your” laser cannon now. You jump into the seat, and look up at the incredibly strange sight of laser bombs raining down from… nowhere. Melvin jumps in the loading chamber, you fire the button, and he rockets up and up, and suddenly he hits something, and for a brief moment, you get a glimpse of the invaders, before the skies are once again empty again.

Melvin rematerializes in the loading chamber. “That was weird,” he says, “but I think we can do this.”

You look out at the Mothership, so badly damaged from repeated attacks, that it looks like it could fall to pieces any moment, and you hope the Administrator can make the jump soon.

Place the Space Invaders cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 16 and set the difficulty switches to b. Play until you score 800 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.