Chapter 57: Fangs for the Memories

The pinball game is intense, and not just because the flipper buttons keep shocking your fingers! You realize that you are racing against time, because if Doctor Frankenstein catches you in here, who knows what he and his monster will do to you. At 10,000 points and 20,000 points, silver crosses popped out of the machine. You get nervous, though, because as your score gets higher, more and more blue sparks come out of the power cable, not to mention the flipper buttons! Just as you manage 30,000 points and a third cross pops out, a massive lightning bolt shoots from the backglass, and sends you hurtling across the room, crashing into a pile of pots, pans, and old electrodes. The room is black now, except of the glow of Melvin, and a flashing “TILT – TILT – TILT” on the machine, which gradually fades to black.

Melvin flies over, concerned. “Are you okay?”

You pull a pot off your head, and shake off some other lab paraphernalia with a lot of noisy clanging. “Yes… I think so.” You reach into your pocket. “But we’ve only got three of the five crosses! Will that be enough to defeat Dracula?” In the distance, you hear screams, groans, and… a smashing noise.

Suddenly the door flies open – it’s Igor. “You’ve got to get out of here! You shorted out the whole castle! The master is furious, and the monster has escaped!”

You and Melvin zip out the door, only to see the Monster smashing his way down the corridor toward you. The fury in his eyes is terrifying. Seeing no alternative, you run back into the room, and slam the door, trying to pile up the pots, pans, and other lab equipment in front of it. “Igor, what do we do?” you shout.

“Well,” says Igor, “I don’t see any other alternative.” He pulls out his flute, and puts it to his lips.

“NOW he’s going to play music?” says Melvin, incredulous.

“Of course!” you say. “That will calm the monster, right?”

Igor pauses. “Oh no. In fact, it makes him quite furious.” He starts to play. Immediately, you hear the monster scream in anger and the door and wall smash in. But, just as Igor plays his final note, a trap door in the floor clicks open under the pinball machine. Igor jumps in, and you and Melvin follow. You land on the floor below in a familiar hallway, and Igor plays the same song backwards, and you see the trap door click shut and disappear. You can hear the monster stomping around a floor above you, sounding frustrated, and then you hear what sounds like a pinball machine being smashed to bits. Fortunately, the floors of the castle are very thick, and it sounds like it is quite far away.

“I knew these musical locks would come in handy,” says Igor, tucking his flute back into his robe. “How many crosses did you get?”

“Just three – do you think that’s enough?”

Igor makes a circle in the dust on the floor with his foot. “Well… maybe… assuming you can trap Dracula in less than twelve seconds. But we have to get you out of here. The monster has seen you, and once he gets mad at someone, he’s relentless.”

“Is Dracula’s castle near here?” you ask.

Igor laughs. “Oh, no. It’s… very far away. Far, far off in the mountains. On foot it will take you months to get there.”

“Well, how will we get there, then?”

Just then, Melvin happens to look behind you, and shouts, “Look out!” You turn just in time to see that weird hallway ghost charge at you. You dive out of the way, and lose your white cap in the process. The ghost starts to come at you again, but then pauses, and says, “Hey Igor, who are these two?”

Igor cocks his head. “I’m not really sure. But they helped me build a wall to contain the monster. They need crosses because they want to defeat Dracula.”

The ghost looks at you with its hollow eyes. “Is THAT what you were doing? With that white hat, I thought you were the painter. Sorry I bit you so many times.”

“Yeah,” says Melvin. “What was up with all that biting?”

“Sorry,” says the ghost, shrugging. “I just… like the walls the way they are. Ever since Doc Frankenstein moved in, he won’t stop redecorating. He won’t even leave the acid pool alone. And I can’t even find the spiders half the time.”

You look over the spider bites all over your arms and legs. “I haven’t had that problem.” You hear more roaring and stomping upstairs, and dust and pebbles start falling from the ceiling.

Igor looks up at it. “I think he might actually break through.”

The ghost looks over your bites sympathetically. “Wow, we really did you up a treat. I wish there was some way I could make it up to you.”

Igor says, “Maybe you can. They want to go to Dracula’s castle.”

“Why do you want to do that?” says the ghost. “Dracula will kill you. He kills everybody. He killed me.”

“We have to help a friend of ours named Peek.”

The ghost’s weird eyeholes get real big. “PEEK? Oh, now I have to help you. His friend Sneak tried to kill Dracula once, and I think got trapped in there. Do you have any crosses?”

“Yeah, three.”

“Hmm…” says the ghost. “That might be enough… if you’re fast.”

The pounding upstairs is getting louder, and the ceiling is definitely starting to crack. You get the feeling that the monster is jumping up and down on the trap door. Melvin shouts, “Igor, this whole place is going to collapse!”

Igor looks up, then looks down, then looks up again. As rubble rains down from the ceiling with each pounding jump from the monster, Igor pulls out his flute and plays. The ceiling trap door opens, and so does the one in the floor. You see the monster, in his furious green glory, plummet past you into the now open trap door in the floor, and you hear a loud thud below. You, Melvin, Igor, and the ghost all gather around the trap door in the floor to peer down into the hole. You see the monster lying unconscious on the little island in the basement acid pool. As you watch, the island glides off into the darkness.

“He’s lucky he didn’t land in the acid,” says Melvin.

“Yeah, but he’s going to get a lot of spider bites,” says the ghost.

From above, the angry face of Doctor Frankenstein glares down. “Igor! Where is my monster!”

“He’s in the basement, master. I think he’s… resting.”

“Well, stop jibber jabbering with that painter, and help me get the electricity back on.”

“Duty calls,” says Igor. “Ghost, can you take them to Dracula’s castle?”

“It will be my pleasure! They probably won’t survive… but… imagine if they do!”

“Igor,” asks Melvin, “will you be okay, with the monster, and the doctor, and everything?”

“Oh sure,” says Igor. “Just an ordinary evening around here.” He surveys all the cracks in the walls and ceiling. “You can see why we redecorate so often.” He peers out the window. “If you are going to defeat Dracula, you better get going. It’s well after midnight.”

“Yes,” says the ghost, “we had better go.” It seizes you around the waist, and to your horror, leaps out the window. You are quite high up, and find yourself hurtling towards the sharp rocks on the mountainside below, and you scream. At the last possible second, the ghost pulls up, and you narrowly avoid certain death, suddenly sailing up into the sky. As you look back at the castle, you see Igor in the window, waving goodbye, and Melvin darting out after you, trying to catch up.

When you catch your breath, you gasp, “Did you have to scare me like that?”

“Sorry,” says the ghost. “You’re heavier than you look.”

Melvin catches up. “Nice night for flying!”

“Yes,” says the ghost, looking up at the flashing gray clouds in the night sky. “Unless we get hit by lightning. But at least the rain has stopped.”

As you sail over the mountain forest below, you try to decide whether what is colder: The high altitude mountain air, or the chilling arms of a ghost around you. You’d rather not think about any of it, so you change the subject. “So… how do you know Peek?”

“Yeah,” says Melvin. “And how do you know so much about Dracula’s Castle?”

The ghost sighs, his cold breath literally sending chills down your spine. “It wasn’t always his castle. It used to be my home.”

“When was that?” asks Melvin. The moon breaks out from behind a cloud, and you see it reflect off of a mountain lake below. In the distance, a wolf howls.

The ghost sighs again. “I… I don’t remember, exactly. Being a ghost does things to your memory, I think. It could have been a thousand years ago, I’m not sure. I was once alive, I know, living a happy life. Then Dracula appeared in my bedroom one night and the next morning I was dead and my castle was his. I became a ghost, haunting my own home, swearing revenge on Dracula. For centuries, I plagued him, causing him all manner of difficulties, and no matter what he tried, he could not get rid of me.” The ghost pauses, to fly up and over some clouds. “And so it went, for centuries. Until the dark day he met Doctor Frankenstein.”

“Why would Doctor Frankenstein visit Dracula?” asks Melvin.

“Dracula heard about the famous scientist, and invited him to Ghost Manor.”

“Ghost Manor?” you ask.

“Yes,” the ghost says quietly. “It’s what I call my home. I… can’t remember my living name, and I’ve been a ghost so much longer than I was alive.” He continues. “He explained to Doctor Frankenstein that his house was haunted, and that he desired to make it ghostproof. The doctor believed that by running electricity through metal walls, he could repel ghosts, even trap ghosts.”

“Did that work?” you ask.

The ghost inhales and sighs its deepest sigh yet, and you feel ice crystals forming on the back of your neck. “Yes, it worked. I was furious. My life was taken from me, and then my own home. Not only could I not live there, but Frankenstein built special ghost trap rooms to try to imprison me. But I was too clever for that, and so I followed Doctor Frankenstein home, to haunt him instead. If I couldn’t haunt the fiend who stole my home, I would haunt the one who cast me out from it.” He looks down. “Ah, here we are. There’s Ghost Manor, just ahead.”

You see a large castle made of reddish brown stone, surrounded by a great cemetery. The ghost flies down, and lands among the tombstones near the castle, but not too near. You are very glad to have your feet on the ground again, and hug yourself, and rub your arms, trying to warm up from the bone-chilling flight, but in a chilly cemetery in the mountains, after midnight, you aren’t having much luck.

“Do you still have the crosses?” asks the ghost.

You reach into your pocket. “Yes… I…” oh no! You feel around in all your pockets. “I only have one!”

The rainbow ghost frowns. “I was afraid of that. The crosses are enchanted. They have returned to the coffins they were taken from. You see, after Frankenstein built all his electric walls, Dracula refused to pay him, and so Doctor Frankenstein pried the silver crosses from the coffins as payment. But some of them were enchanted, and now that they are near the castle, they have returned to the coffins.”

“Well, how can we defeat Dracula with just one cross?” you ask, your voice in a rising panic.

“You probably can’t. You’ll need to find the other two crosses when you get inside. Remember, you can’t kill Dracula, you just need the crosses to keep him from killing you before you steal his key.”

“Oh right,” you say, rubbing your forehead. “We’re here to get the key so we can free Peek’s friends from the bad man’s house… the Graves Mansion. I almost forgot!”

You look at the castle, and feel overwhelmed by a sense of pure evil emanating from within.

“So… we just… walk in there?” asks Melvin, nervously.

The ghost laughs. “Oh, no. Dracula has all kinds of guardians. Bats, scorpions, flying skulls, an evil knight (boy, is that a long story), and a giant mummy with an axe. You’ll have to defeat them all to get in.”

You and Melvin look at each other. “How are we supposed to do that?” you both exclaim simultaneously.

The ghost laughs. “Ha, yeah, I know. That’s part of why no one can defeat Dracula.” He looks around. “I know a way to do it, though. Those enchanted creatures can all be defeated by ectoplasmic spears.”

“Ecto-what?” asks Melvin.

“It’s a ghost thing,” says the ghost. “See, when a ghost floats over a grave, for a brief moment, an ectoplasmic spear materializes from the ether. Watch.” He floats in front of one of the gravestones, and indeed, for a brief moment, you see what looks like a delicate crystal rod appear over the grave, and just as quickly, it seems to evaporate. “If you’re quick, you can grab it. Get ready.” He floats over another grave, and again a crystal rod appears. Quick as you can, you snatch it out of the air, and the ghost is right! In the moonlight, you see every color of the rainbow dancing inside the spear, no thicker than a twig, but about two feet long, and tapered to an incredibly sharp point.

“Wow!” says Melvin. “Ghost weapons from beyond the grave! This is pretty cool!”

You look at the castle again. “Ghost, will you come with us?”

He shakes his ghostly head. “No way. Dracula is waiting for me, there’s nothing he would love more than trapping me. I’ve heard he might have other ghosts trapped in there, all because he’s trying to catch me.”

“Hmm,” you say. “Anything else we should know?”

“I think that’s most of it,” says the ghost. “There should be lamps in the front entryway. If you make it past the mummy, grab one, it’ll be dark inside. Oh! And don’t be tempted by the golden walls.”

“Golden walls?” asks Melvin, confused.

“Yes. Gold is the best conductor of electricity, so Doctor Frankenstein melted down the gold from my vaults to build the electric walls that keep me out. One side of the walls is deadly, by the other side is safe. I’ve heard that several foolish burglars have tried to steal the gold from his walls, only to end up ghosts themselves when the power reverses.”

“Got it,” you say. “Spear the creatures, get the lamp, find the crosses, repel Dracula, find the key, and get out.”

“That’s pretty much it,” says the ghost, looking with concern at the setting moon. “You better get in there, though. The sun will be up soon.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to do this in the daytime?” asks Melvin.

“It’s quite impossible,” says the ghost. “Ghost Manor only appears after midnight when the moon is full. The actual castle was destroyed long ago. Make sure to get out again before the sun comes up, or you may never be able to leave.”

“Oh, come on!” says Melvin, clearly at the end of his rope. “Ghosts, disappearing castles, Dracula, Igor, Frankenstein, and the Mummy. Where is the Wolfman, I ask you? WHERE IS THE WOLFMAN?”

“Are you done?” asks the ghost.

“Yeah,” says Melvin sheepishly, “I’m done.”

“Then follow me. You’re going to need a lot of spears to get into Ghost Manor!” and he darts off across the cemetery, a row of crystal spears popping up in his wake.

Put the Ghost Manor cartridge into your Atari 2600. Set both difficulty switches to b. Set the Color/BW switch to “Color” to play as a girl, and “BW” to play as a boy. Play until Dracula is captured, and you rescue the friend from the castle. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.

Chapter 56: Let the Midnight Special...

Soaking wet, freezing, covered in spider bites, bat bites, ghost bites (?), and acid burns, you dive through yet another swarm of bats and put the sixth iron rock on top of the stack outside the lab. It turns brown like the others, and electricity starts to pulse through your stack of iron-bearing rocks. “Nooooo!” You hear Doctor Frankenstein call from inside the lab. Suddenly, Igor drops from ceiling, playing a triumphant tune on a flute, and dancing a little jig around the electrically charged stack of rocks. A tiny eye-level panel snaps open in the locked lab door, and the glaring slits of Doctor Frankenstein’s eyes peer out at you and Igor. “Igor!” he shouts. “What are you doing out there with that painter?”

“We’re choosing colors, master.”

“Well, do it more quietly! Something has sapped the electricity from my experiment, and the storm is almost over!” He snaps the peephole shut.

“Nicely done,” whispers Igor.

“Where did you come from, just now?” asks Melvin, a little irritated, and noticing that Igor is not covered with venomous bites.

“Oh… I took a shortcut. I would have told you about it, but… it’s kind of hard to explain. Anyway, great job!” He starts playing his flute again. The muffled voice of Doctor Frankenstein comes from inside the lab. “Igor, enough with that flute!”

“Sorry, Master,” he calls back. He puts the flute back into his robe. “Now…” he says. “You were looking for the silver crosses, is that right?”

“Yes,” you say, excited and glad that Igor remembered the deal. Melvin nods vigorously.

“Yes…” says Igor, sniffing at the air. “It’s almost midnight, I can tell. Come with me, the crosses are in the game room.”

“The game room?”

Igor starts down the hallway. “Oh…” he says. “I almost forgot. We’ll need to charge up the game room.” On the wall near the stack of brown rocks is a large knife switch. He gestures at it. “Can you do the honors?” he asks.

“Uh, sure.” You throw the switch, and you see pulsing electricity leap from the stack of rocks, and flash down a cable that disappears down the hallway.

“Nooooo!” you hear from inside the lab. “Where is the power going?”

Igor smiles. “That’ll teach him to lock himself in the lab. Follow me.” You and Melvin follow him down a dark corridor illuminated only by the pulsing white and blue sparks coming off of the cable next to you. “Careful,” says Igor. “You… don’t want to touch that.” You keep a respectful distance from that side of the corridor.

“Hey Igor,” asks Melvin, as a bat flutters by you, lands on the cable, and is incinerated by the electricity, “When you gave us those rocks, they were red. But when we stacked them up here, they turned brown. What’s up with that?”

Igor shrugs. “The iron in them oxidized in the presence of the electricity. Soon, nothing will be left but a pile of rust. Ah, here we are, the game room.” The hallway ends at a wide wooden door that Igor opens with a prolonged creak. Behind it is a small stone room containing a pinball machine with flashing letters reading “MIDNITE MAGIC.” It is plugged into the electric cable Igor warned you not to touch.

“Finally!” shouts Melvin. “Some pinball!”

“There’s no time for pinball, Melvin,” you chide him, “we just need to get the crosses, and get out of here.”

“Oh, no, you don’t understand,” says Igor. “Master hid the crosses inside the pinball machine. The only way to get them out is to get a good score… at midnight.” He sniffs again. “It’s almost midnight now.”

You squint at Igor. “Why in the world would he do that?”

Igor rolls his eyes. “Well, Dracula knows that people want to use these crosses to stop him. They don’t stop him much, since he’s an immortal undead, but each one will give you maybe four seconds before he kills you. Anyway, Dracula and Frankenstein have had this ‘frenemies’ thing going since I don’t know when, and so the Doctor gathered up the crosses and hid them here, in case he ever needed to use them against Dracula.”

You put your face in your hand, and then take a deep breath. “Okay, sure, but what does a pinball machine have to do with it?”

Igor shrugs. “Duh. Dracula hates pinball. Everyone knows that. Maybe because the ball is like a mirror? Anyway, just drop a quarter in, and you’ll get one cross for every 10,000 points you score. There’s five in there, I think… if you wanna beat Dracula, you’d better get them all. I better get back to the Doc before he gets suspicious.”

You search your pockets frantically. “Wait! Igor! Don’t go! I don’t have any quarters!” You run out into the hallway after him, but he’s gone. You punch the start button on the pinball machine a few times, but it’s no good. Just then, you hear a distant clock start to strike twelve. “Melvin, what are we going to do?”

Melvin smiles, and looks at your chest. “I think the answer is right in front of you.” You look down, and see the Spectran Medal of Valor attached to the double rainbow ribbons. Melvin is right, it is just the size of a quarter. You pluck it off of your chest, leaving the ribbons dangling, and slot it into the machine. It plays an electronic bugle call, and a ball appears by the plunger.

“Well, Melvin, I guess we’re off to the races!” You pull back the plunger, and hope this machine won’t electrocute you.

Place the Midnight Magic cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1, and set difficulty switches to a. Play until you get 30,000 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.

Chapter 55: Come Up to the Lab

You’ve destroyed wave after wave of Morpuls, which seem to keep getting faster and more dangerous. You and the Spectra Warrior have been firing the Spectron back and forth between your ships so much it has overheated dozens of times. But you blast one last group of Mastrods, just as your sensors indicate that the Spectron has gone into permanent meltdown. Melvin has reappeared in the loading chamber, dripping with sweat, and about to pass out. Just then the Mothership glides across the battlefield and you are sure that the next group of Mechanolds it releases are going to do you in. But… this time the Mothership stops, just hovering there. The white lights on the side fade out ominously. Then they blink back on, spelling out “We Surrender!”

On your video screen, you see and hear the Spectra Warrior hoot victoriously. “We have done it! Spectra is avenged!” He presses a button, and again your body is gripped with painful electricity, and everything fades to white.

When the pain and the white light subside, you and Melvin are standing in the center of a vast arena, in front of an audience of thousands of Spectrans who are howling with excitement. On a vast screen above, you see replays of your battle, and each time a Morpul is destroyed, the crowd howls again. The Warrior is there with you, and is shouting and howling along with the rest of the crowd. Suddenly, the crowd goes silent. Out of the shadows, an enormous form looms forth, a giant Spectran, at least forty feet tall, wearing rainbow war paint like the warrior, but with many elaborate decorations in his braided hair. He stares at you grimly, and with booming footsteps, strides to the center of the stage. “SPECTRANS!” he thunders. “OUR LONG NIGHTMARE IS OVER!” The audience howls back in excitement. “THE INVADING MORPULS HAVE BEEN CHASED BACK TO TZORIS, AND HAVE SURRENDERED! IT IS ALL THANKS TO MIGHTY WARRIOR JAANTIK AND THE ALLY THAT HE FOUND. SIX CHEERS FOR THE ALLY!” The audience barks six times, sounding something like “GAMP GAMP GAMP GAMP GAMP GAMP!”

“WE ARE AT PEACE – FOR NOW.” He looks down at you sternly. “ALLY, YOU ARE TRULY A FRIEND OF THE SPECTRAN PEOPLE. YOUR PROWESS AT BATTLE IS INDEED MIGHTY. THE PEOPLE OF SPECTRA OFFER YOU TWO THINGS: FIRST, THE MEDAL OF VALOR!” Two Spectrans, a man and a woman, come out, each holding either end of a string. In the middle of the string is a strange floating pillow, and upon that, a shining circular medal, about the size of a quarter, emblazoned with the seal of spectra, and adorned with rainbow ribbons on either side. The man and woman stop before you, but the floating pillow keeps moving by its momentum. It floats over and hovers before you, and suddenly the medal rises up from the pillow on a strange ropy tentacle, which guides the medal to your chest, where it attaches. The crowd erupts into howling approval. The warrior, whose name is apparently Jaantik, strides to you and shakes both of your hands at once in what seems to be a Spectran salute. He smiles and whispers, “What? No Medal of Klig?” He laughs. “I tease you! You should be proud!”

The giant Spectra speaks again. “NOW ALLY: AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO, YOU MAY NOT STAY WITH US. WE WILL RETURN YOU TO WHATEVER NOBLE ENDEAVOR WE TOOK YOU FROM.” A thing that looks like a vast bundle of tree roots, but facing up, floats down from the unfathomably high ceiling in darkness above. Amongst the roots are glowing spheres in every color of the rainbow. Ropy, vinelike tentacles wave around beneath it. It makes you think of a giant jellyfish wearing some sort of crown. “OUR DIMENSIONAL SENDER CAN PLACE YOU ANYWHERE YOU CARE TO BE, IN THIS WORLD OR ANY OTHER.”

Of course, you think, we need to get to Dracula’s castle, so we can get the crosses so that we can… but then, an image of your own bed comes into your mind. You realize how tired you are, how strange this all is, and how it feels like the end of a dream, and you are ready to wake up. One of the tentacles comes forth, spreads into a series of thin fingers, which ever so gently grip your head. In your mind, you see a glowing rainbow of light. Up on the screen, you suddenly see your bed, in your room at home. “JUST THINK OF WHERE YOU WOULD GO, ALLY, AND WE WILL SEND YOU THERE.” You look longingly for a moment at that picture of your bed. But suddenly the picture changes, and on the screen is Peek, sitting alone in a dark corner of his dark house. You can tell he is hiding from something horrible, and though tears are streaming down his cheeks, he does not make a noise. Then the picture changes again to the gray castle of Queen Stella, which still looks sad and crumbling. Then your bed reappears. The leader booms, “THERE ARE MANY PICTURES HERE, ALLY. WHERE WOULD YOU GO?”

“I…” you look longingly at your bed. Then you look at Melvin. He looks down at the floor. “You have done a lot, Player, I won’t make you go back.”

You look up at the leader. “I have chosen.” A picture of your front door appears on the screen. Melvin looks crestfallen. You go on. “As much as I would like to return to my true home, this missile and I must continue our quest. We must go somewhere in none of these pictures, because we have never been there. It is a castle on earth that contains a terrible monster. We must stop that monster, to save the souls of many. Can your sender bring us to a place we have never been?”

The leader looks surprised, and the crowd breaks into murmurs. Clearly, this has never happened before. What appear to be Spectra advisors float up on pillows of their own to the leader’s massive face, so that they might give advice. They all appear to be arguing, and the murmuring of the crowd becomes louder. The leader shouts “SILENCE!” and stamps his foot with a thunderous boom. The advisors bow their heads and float to a respectable distance. “ALLY, YOU ASK MUCH, BUT NOT MORE THAN WE CAN PROVIDE. CONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE PLACE YOU SEEK, AND THE SENDER WILL BRING IT TO YOU.”

You close your eyes and think about a castle, and monstrous Dracula, and a pile of silver crosses. Melvin, who is watching the screen, says, “I see it! Keep concentrating!” While your eyes are gripped shut, a terrifying castle looms on the screen. Bolts of lightning flash in the sky around it, and then suddenly one great bolt of lightning flashes, and your feel your entire body seized with painful electricity, and you feel yourself fall down into the mud.

You open your eyes and find yourself and Melvin lying on your backs in the mud, with rain pounding down on you, soaking your clothes. Suddenly there is a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, showing the silhouette of a huge, evil castle in front of you. “We’re here!” Melvin shouts, over the pounding rain, and you realize that, yes, it appears you are at what must be Dracula’s castle. But then you have a terrible thought. “Melvin! We’re not supposed to be here yet! We don’t have the crosses!” Melvin looks horrified. “You’re right! I… well, we’ll just have to… uh… you don’t suppose it’s too late to just… go play some pinball?”

The lightning flashes again, and you are startled to see a weird hooded figure, with a strange twisted face standing before you. He holds a shovel, and a strange red stone. He is smiling, and seems to have no idea that it is raining. “Can you help me?” he asks. “There is a problem in the castle, and it is urgent.”

You and Melvin look at each other. “A problem with Dracula?” asks Melvin. The weird figure laughs. “Dracula? Oh, no. The Doctor has nothing to fear from Dracula.” He looks serious again. “The problem is with… the creature. The doctor has connected him to the power probe, and with all this lightning, I’m worried something terrible will happen.”

“Terrible like what?” asks Melvin.

“Terrible like… last time,” says the figure. “The creature turned green, became enormous, and destroyed everything in the village.”

You shake your head, and the rain streaming down your face flies off in all directions. You’ve had enough. “We can’t help you now. We need to find crosses so that we stop Dracula. I think you’ll have to work out the creature problem on your own. Come on, Melvin.” You start to stride away from the castle, towards… well, you aren’t sure.

“Wait!” calls the figure. “The Doctor has those crosses! They are what keep him safe from Dracula! But if the monster gets loose, he’ll destroy us all!”

You stop and put your head in your hand. You take a deep breath and look up at the sky. Huge raindrops keep splashing loudly on your face. You return to the weird figure. “Okay, fine. What do we have to do?”

He looks up to the top of the castle, nervously. “The power probe is at the top of the castle, and the Doctor has locked the laboratory. I think he suspects I want to stop him.”

“So, how can we get in?”

“We don’t need to get in.” He holds up the red rock. “These rocks have a strong iron content. If we can build a wall of them outside the lab, it will shield the lightning from getting to the creature.” The figure hobbles a little closer to you. “But I’ll never be able to get them all up there in time. If you can carry these rocks to the top of the castle and build the wall, we’ll all be saved, and I can help you get those crosses.”

Melvin says, “That sounds easy… we just need to carry some rocks? Where are they?”

“Here’s the first one.” He drops it into your hands, and you almost fall over it is so heavy. “This must weigh twenty pounds,” you say. He looks at you. “Yes… It’s full of iron, that’s why it’s red. You take this first one up, and I’ll look for more.”

“What if the Doctor sees us?” you ask nervously.

“Here,” he says, producing a white cap from under his robe. “Put this on. If the Doctor sees you, he’ll think you’re the painter.”

You put it on. It’s hardly the weirdest thing you’ve had to do today. You look up at the castle. It is intimidating, especially with lightning flashing behind it. “How do we get in?”

He points to an open grate that has rainwater pouring into it. “That’s the only safe way to go in. But, it’s easy once you are down there. Just cross the pool of acid, mind the white spiders, climb through the ceiling trap door, mind the brown spiders, climb through the other ceiling trap door, mind the ghost, and then, presto, avoid hundreds and hundreds of bats, and drop the stone outside the lab. Then come back down, and I’ll give you another stone.”

“How many times will we have to do this?” you ask.

“Six stones should do it. But… hurry!” A lightning bolt hits the power probe atop the castle. “The monster is energizing as we speak!”

You start climbing down into the grate. “What’s the Doctor’s name, anyway?”

“Frankenstein,” he calls back, shovel on his shoulder. “And I’m Igor. Pleased to meet you.” He bows, and you see how pronounced his hunchback really is.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” you say, as you and Melvin climb down through the flooding grate into the cold air of the dungeon below the castle.

Place the Frankenstein’s Monster cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1, and set the difficulty switches to b. Play until you successfully stop the monster. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.