The interior of your ship is like an oven. Sweat is pouring down your face, and the controls of your ship have gotten so hot you’ve torn pieces of the leather seats out to use as improvised oven mitts to keep your hands from burning. Everything outside the window is a bright orange glow, and still the debris and attacking ships fall down relentlessly. “One more sizzloid,” you think, “and we’re done for.”
“Scan complete!” shouts the Administrator. “Get us out of
here!”
You’re so dazed from the overwhelming heat you aren’t even
sure what to do, when the Administrator’s tail stabs out at the now red-hot metal
“LAUNCH” button. He gasps, and you hear a sizzling sound, as the cockpit fills
with the scent of roasted tail, but immediately the ship launches up from the
molten planet below, and you find yourself dodging debris as it races at you.
Immediately you feel the ship starts to cool as it leaves the boiling surface.
The Administrator taps on his portable console. “I’ve
transmitted the coordinates to the ship’s hyperwarp system. You can hit go as
soon as we’re out of the atmosphere, and it should take us straight to
Solaris.”
You keep rocketing up, and veer away from the path of solar
destruction that rains down on Siralos, turning it into a hot ball of plasma.
The ship has really cooled down now that you are in space, and you set aside
the hunks of leather in favor of manipulating the controls directly. Melvin
surveys the combination of ripped seats and melted trim that despoil the once
elegant cockpit. “I’m pretty sure StarCruiser interior design won’t be too
impressed with your decorating job.”
You ignore his jokes, and as your ship goes speeding by the
orbital platform, you point it out toward deep space and punch the WARP button.
Immediately two flat planes appear above and below the ship as a hyperwarp
wormhole opens in front of you, and you get the weird feeling of being in two
places at once. You feel intense acceleration pulling at you, as the warp
engines start to whine. The Administrator, gripping the back of your seat,
calls out, “don’t… forget… about… warp… focus…”
You do your best to keep the two translucent spaceships
aligned, and suddenly the ship rockets into the wormhole, like a paperclip
launched by a rubber band.
There is a bright flash, and immediately you are confronted
with worlds and worlds and worlds – planets of all shapes and sizes are
inexplicably racing by you. “What in the name of Bushnell?” shouts the
Administrator, studying his console screen. The ship slows down, and when it
gets to a more normal speed the Galactic Scanner appears, a deep blue, showing
a complex layout of stars, planets, ships, and other things you don’t
recognize.
The Administrator is studying it, and doing instant scans
with his portable console. “I… don’t believe this…” he says, under his breath.
“What don’t you believe?” asks Melvin. “Which one of these
planets is Solaris?”
The Administrator studies his console, then the galactic
map, then his console again. “N… none of them,” he says worriedly.
“NONE of them?” shouts Melvin in alarm. “You mean I’ve been
lasering myself all over the place for nothing?”
“Wait,” you say nervously, thinking about the dangers of
wormholes, “if Solaris isn’t here, then where are we?”
“I…” he pauses, running multiple short and long range scans.
“It… umm…”
“Come on! Spit it out!” barks Melvin angrily.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “There is a lot for me to process
here.” His voice takes on a tone of awed bewilderment. “I’ve… never seen
anything like this… not even during the wars… but… I think I’m beginning to
understand.” He points up at the galactic scanner. “Okay,” he says, “Solaris is
not here… but I think it’s not far away. The Krylons appear to have used the
Starstone to rearrange matter and space in a way I’ve never seen before. They
knew that when we figured out they had both the Starstone and the planet
Solaris, the entire universe would come to stop them.”
“We know that!” says Melvin with exasperation. “That’s why
they hid the planet… wherever we are.”
“Yes,” continues the Administrator. “But they’ve done much
more than that. They have rearranged this region of space into a system of,
fourteen… no…” he checks his console, “sixteen quadrants.”
Melvin rolls his eyes, not that he has eyes. “If there are
sixteen of them,” he shouts, “WHY ARE THEY CALLED QUADRANTS?”
“Maybe they are in a four by four grid?” you try to add
helpfully.
The Administrator studies his console. “I wish that were
true… but… no… the quadrants seem to be connected to each other by a strange
spaghetti of wormholes. Navigating them will take… some mapping.”
“Well,” says Melvin, “that doesn’t sound so hard. We map out
some quadrants, and fly around til we find Solaris. Should be easy.”
The Administrator snorts. “Would that it were so easy. The
Zylons have not only twisted up space, but they have pulled a huge amount of
stars and planets into this region, forming a sort of maze.” He gestures to the
Galactic Scanner. “The areas that show stars are completely impassable due to
intense gravitational fields. And, worse, some of the most evil scum of the
galaxy are in this area. I see Mechnoids, Gliders, Raiders, Targeters, Krylon
FlagShips, Kogalon Star Pirates, and even,” he swallows nervously, “Cobra
Ships.” Though the ship is no longer hot like it was, he dabs sweat from his
forehead using his tail. “I also see blockader minefields, more wormholes than
any healthy region should contain, and what we used to call Corridors.”
“Corridors?” asks Melvin. “Like in a high school?”
“More like wormholes infested with guardians, and with an
ion door in the middle that will destroy our ship if we don’t have a key.” Says
the Administrator, grimly.
“Yeah, that pretty much sounds like high school,” replies
Melvin.
You turn around to face the Administrator. “This seems
horrible. Should we just get out of here?”
He shakes his head. “I wish we could. They have space
twisted up into something like a Mobius strip. Without the Starstone I don’t
think it’s possible to leave here. That’s how they’ve trapped so many worlds in
one place.” You hear beeps coming from his console. “That’s also why we’re
hearing so many distress signals. They’ve sucked in multiple Federation
Planets, and mixed them in with Zylon Planets. Cadets on both are sending out
all kinds of distress signals.” He taps some keys on his console. “There is one
advantage to that…” he looks over a planetary scan. “If you can land on the
Federation Worlds, there will be an opportunity to refuel. And if you if can
land on Krylon worlds...” he taps a few more keys, “…yes… they appear to have
captured some StarCruisers. This explains why we haven’t had any response from
Solaris! All the StarCruisers have been captured!”
“So, what happens if we rescue a StarCruiser?” asks Melvin.
“The ship we are flying now is a multi-ship, like the laser
cannon back on the mother ship,” he explains.
“A multi-what?” asks Melvin.
“A multi-ship. Surely you noticed that your laser cannon
occasionally got shattered by laser bombs, but you didn’t die?”
“I… was wondering about that,” you say.
“Yes,” says the Administrator. “That is multi-ship
technology. If your ship gets compromised, a new ship immediately reforms
around you in the moment the old one is destroyed. It works via a sort of
pocket of space… it’s hard to describe. Anyway, it means you have three ships,
which will help us survive this horror. If you can rescue the Cadets on the
Zylon planets, you will secure extra ships that will work with the multi-ship
system.” He peers down at his console. “And I have another piece of good news,”
he says.
“What?” you ask hopefully.
“Normally, when in a Krylon territory, they send out a
massive jamming signal that would reverse the controls of your ship, making it
very difficult to fly. But the presence of the Federation Planets has a helpful
side effect… they have transmitters that counteract that signal, kicking out
the jams, as it were.”
“I guess that’s good,” you say, not really meaning it.
“It’s definitely good,” insists the Administrator. “That is,
unless the Zylons attack our planets, and destroy the transmitters. If that
happens, the entire quadrant will become a terrifying red zone, and all your
controls will be upside-down and backwards.”
You rub your forehead, trying to absorb all of it. “This…
seems… impossible.”
“I have to agree,” says the Administrator gloomily. “But
this morning I would have thought it would be impossible for an untrained earth
pilot to save the Terrans, fight off the Krylons and Dracons, and save the
Mothership multiple times. So at this point,” he sighs, “I’m ready to believe
anything.”
“See that?” Pipes up Melvin. “Old Greeny is starting to
believe in us! Greeny, you start mapping! Player, warp us to… I don’t know,
somewhere!” He looks back at the Administrator. “How will we know Solaris when
we see it?”
“Due to a peculiarity of the atmosphere of Solaris, it
appears to blink when viewed from space,” explains the Administrator.
“Alright then! Warp us somewhere blinky!” commands Melvin.
You sigh, and resign yourself to your most impossible situation yet. “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” you say, mustering up all the hope you can, setting the coordinates, and punching the WARP button.
Place the Solaris cartridge into your Atari 2600. Play until you land on the planet Solaris. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.