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DISCLAIMER: AtariQuest is unofficial fan content, not approved or endorsed by Atari or anyone else. I do not own and make no claim of ownership of any Atari games, names or characters that appear in AtariQuest. It is non-commercial, offered for free, and just for fun.

Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Chapter 76: They Look Just Like Asteroids

The “ALL CLEAR” alert sounds, and your ship starts transforming back into its initial submarine form. The Doctor’s voice comes over the radio. “Incredible! You’ve calmed the reactor, and starved out all the power to Building 2. I’m extracting your ship back into my syringe…”

You feel turbulence all around you, as things go from dark to a kind of twilight brightness. Again things are shaking. “So, with no power, that means we win, right? Can you make us big now?”

You hear the Doctor’s panting voice. “Oh no… draining power from Building 2 is only a temporary victory. It gives us a narrow window of time where the X-6 virus can be destroyed.” He’s panting. Is he running? “I’m taking you to the replicator in Building 2. I will inject you into the system, and the Proteus will enter megathrust mode.”

“Megathrust mode? What’s that?” you ask, nervously, but you just hear the Doctor say “I’m injecting you into the master replicator.” Things swirl and go from light to dark to… red.  The large red area you are suddenly in seems to be crawling with all kinds of strange entities. Some are tiny rings, others are like little snakes, and others seem to be huge colonies.

“VIRUS ALERT” screams the screen. “ENTERING MEGATHRUST MODE.”

“What is Megathrust Mode?” asks Melvin in a panic.

You see your throttle moving ahead, beyond your control, and the ship rockets forward toward the viruses.

“I think it’s this!” You shout, frantically steering to avoid a collision.

“How is this helping?” shouts back Melvin. “We’re going too fast!”

A panel opens revealing an “A/B” switch. A lighted panel says:

A: SINGLE TORPEDOES
B: SALVOES

“At least we have a choice!” shouts Melvin, hopping into the loading chamber as viruses swirl all around you, wondering if you, or the world, can possibly survive.

Place the Supercharger into your Atari 2600, and press play on the Suicide Mission cassette. Use game select to choose “HARD” mode. Set the difficulty switches to a or b, your choice. Play until you score 25,000 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.

4 comments:

  1. Made it to 16k tonight. I have quickly realized I am not very good at asteroids style games, wow! All good we'll get there - this one will take me a few days...It is interesting how similar these viruses look when compared to an asteroid!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 16K is a great start -- it worked for the Atari 400 anyway! :)
      If you didn't grow up playing asteroids, yeah, asteroids-type games are pretty hard. I bet you'll get there soon, though!

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    2. Sooner than I thought for sure! Happy to get this one, a bit tricky but figured out a little strategies here and there to get me through and just needed to be patient. Really enjoyed this title!! Thought salvoes was a typo in the manual till I looked it up and learned it is actually a word for exactly what it is meant to describe...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ONFF0fq8ow

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    3. Looking good! You really showed those asteroids... I mean viruses! I hope there aren't any more...

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If you make a video of yourself completing the challenge, leave a link to it below! Other thoughts about the story are also welcome. Please keep it friendly - AtariQuest is for everyone.