How to play Meltdown online
- Aim: move the mouse (it stands in for the XG-1 light gun)
- Shoot: click. On menu screens, clicking also picks the option shown.
- Choose one or two players and Novice or Expert difficulty: F2 (Select)
- Back to the title screen to restart: F3 (Reset)
- Pause: F4
The screen flashes white every time you fire, just as it did on the original cartridge, so expect a lot of flashing. Both the USA (NTSC) and Europe (PAL) releases are on the site; use the switch above the emulator to change between them.
Gameplay
A gang of terrorists has sabotaged twenty nuclear reactors by filling them with deadly sparkx. Each reactor is a screen with walls and control rods, and the sparkx bounce off both, eating away at the core. Your job is to shoot every spark before the rods are damaged beyond repair. If the rods are destroyed, the reactor melts down. Save all twenty reactors to win.
Missed shots are not wasted: each one leaves a barrier that works as a wall until it fades, and up to four can be on screen at once. Over time, radiation damage causes earthquakes that harm the rods further. There are several kinds of sparkx. Container sparkx burst into six Bounder sparkx when they hit a wall, a rod or one of your shots. Exploding sparkx slowly change colour from blue to red. Expanding sparkx grow a little with every hit, and Quick sparkx get faster instead.
Shooting a Power Crystal icon gives you a bonus for the rest of that reactor: Freeze, Killer Barriers, Big Shot, Continuous Shot, Protect Control Rods, Double Points, or 2 Extra Shots (six barriers instead of four). Control Rod Repair fixes damaged rods. The first time you reach a level, the game shows a four-character passkey, so you can come back to it later.
Tips
- Shoot sparkx as soon as they appear. The longer they bounce around, the more damage they do.
- Build walls on purpose. Fire around a control rod to surround it with barriers.
- Think before hitting a Container spark. It splits into six Bounders, so be ready for the swarm.
- Write down the passkeys. There are no save states on this page, but a passkey lets you start again from a later reactor.
The story behind Meltdown
Meltdown was developed in-house by Atari Corporation. It was one of only five 7800 games made for the XG-1 light gun, the gun that came with the Atari XE Game System and was also sold on its own. The others were Alien Brigade, Barnyard Blaster, Crossbow and Sentinel. AtariAge sees echoes of the 2600 game Reactor in its theme.
Reviewers did not find it pretty, but GamePro felt that the fun of the light gun and the fast action made up for the plain look. Note that a different, unreleased Atari 2600 game also called Meltdown exists: it is a separate prototype by another programmer, not a version of this game.
