Chapter 50: A Snake in the Grass

It was incredibly difficult, and took more than a few hits of your reset button, but with tremendous effort, patience, and luck you manage to defeat Mister Mean! Fireworks explode on the video screens, accompanied by real fireworks launching from all four posts of the ring! The referee leans down over his prone body to remove the ring, but Mister Mean suddenly leaps up, hissing loudly. “Sssstep away! Thisss ring belongsss to ussss!”

You and Melvin look at each other, puzzled, and each ask “Us?”

The referee is all business, though, and steps back up to Mister Mean, reaching for the ring. Enraged, Mister Mean punches him so hard that he flies out of the ring. Horrifyingly, Mister Mean’s fist splits in half, and three angry snake heads stick out where his hand used to be. With his other hand, he reaches up and grabs the black leather facemask he wears, and rips it off, revealing more writhing snake heads. You see his skin start to swell, and burst apart, revealing a huge mass of snakes, each one a different color. One of them, a red and yellow cobra, starts to grow rapidly, and looms over the ring menacingly. You can see it glowing with power, and it keeps growing until its head presses up against the ceiling of the arena. It looks up at the ceiling with irritation, and smashes its head up and through the roof with a tremendous crash. Most of the roof collapses, leaving only parts of the building standing. The red and yellow snake is hundreds of feet high, and the wrestling fans are running every which way. Suddenly, the snake starts spitting venom, which rains down on the spectators. As you and Melvin stand staring up at all this in numb shock, Smilin’ Sam rolls up, not smiling for once. “Don’t get near that venom,” he says calmly, “it’s fatal.” A few more venom bombs explode around you.

“What do we do?” shouts Melvin, in a panic.

Sam sighs. “I don’t know. If only we had someone here who knew how to operate a laser cannon.”

“Do you have a laser cannon?” you ask, as the snake suddenly shoots down a laser of its own, blowing up a concession stand.

“Of course!” says Sam. “It’s mostly for special effects, but when you run a place like this, you have to be prepared for anything. Unfortunately, though, it’s the laser girl’s day off.”

“We can do it!” shouts Melvin. “Where is it?”

Sam seems pleasantly surprised, as a venom bomb blows up the seats next to him.

“Well, it’s right over there,” he points to a red satellite dish on the west side of the arena. “If you climb into that control pod, you can probably steer it back and forth to block some of these…” just then, a venom bomb blows his hat off.  “…bombs,” he continues. “It can block that laser too. Slide it into either the red or blue satellite dish, and you can fire a laser ball, which you should be able to steer up at that snake. By my calculation,” you see a bunch of equations appear in his eyes, “you should be able to destroy it in about eight hits. But you’ll need to hit it right in the eyes.” He looks up at the snake, and taps the ash off his cigar. “Heh, at least there’s only one of these things.”

Just then, while you wonder where the other snakes got to, the enormous cobra fires down another laser beam, and blows up half the wrestling ring. “We’re on it,” says Melvin.

“Good luck!” says Sam. “And, good job beating Mister Me…” But a venom bomb explodes right in front him, cutting him off. You and Melvin dash to the red control pod, and jump in. It has a sort of steering wheel that lets you fly it back and forth between the two satellite dishes.

“These controls are slippery,” you observe/complain to Melvin, but you manage to block a few of the venom bombs, to the snake’s obvious irritation.

“Get to the dish!” shouts Melvin, “so I can get into the cannon!” You slide the pod over to the satellite dish, and it sockets into a loading chamber. Melvin pops into it. “All clear!” shouts Melvin, then, “Let’s get ready to rummb…” and you hit the fire button, thankfully cutting him off before he can finish. Melvin flies up into the air toward the snake, and you use the steering wheel to guide him toward the eyes.

“Wow,” you say to yourself. “This is way more sport combat than I bargained for.”

Place the GI Joe cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1, and set the difficulty switches to a. Play until you get a score of 20,000. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.