How to play Meltdown online
- Line up the stabilizer and the cadmium tube: arrow keys
- Insert a cadmium rod: Space bar
- Choose one of the 15 game variations: F11 (the consoleās Select switch)
- Start a new game: F12 (the consoleās Reset switch)
- Penalty for firing at an empty atom: F4 (the left difficulty switch)
- Let the quarks wrap around the screen or not: F9 (the right difficulty switch)
Gameplay
Meltdown is a kind of hide and seek played on a grid of 16 atoms, four by four. At the start of each round a rogue quark runs around the reactor, and every atom it touches loses some of its electrons and shrinks. When the quark jumps onto an atom, you have to move the stabilizer along one axis and the cadmium tube along the other until both point at that atom, then fire a cadmium rod into it before the quark moves on.
A temperature bar at the top of the screen shows how the reactor is doing. It grows as the core cools down, and when it reaches the middle of the screen the reactor is back under control, at least for now. The next round brings more quarks, and they move faster.
Variations and switches
Games 6 to 10 line up the cadmium rod for you, so you only have to steer the stabilizer. Games 11 to 15 are for two players. With the left difficulty switch in position A, firing at an atom with no quark on it makes that atom shrink; in position B there is no penalty. The right switch decides whether quarks can wrap around the edges of the screen (B) or must stay on the grid (A).
Tips
- Start with games 6 to 10. With the rod aligned automatically, you can learn how the quarks move before handling both axes yourself.
- Set the left switch to B while learning. Missed shots then cost you nothing.
The story behind Meltdown
Like most of Foxās 2600 games, Meltdown was made by an outside studio. Videa finished it under the name Atom Smasher, and Fox renamed it when it took the game on. Videa later became Sente Technologies and was bought by Bally, becoming Bally Sente. Meltdown was shown at the Winter 1983 CES and listed for release in April 1983, and adverts announcing it as ājust releasedā had already been printed. Then it disappeared. Nobody knows exactly why Fox dropped it, but the collapsing video game market is the likely reason. The game was thought lost until 2004, when a collector came across a copy in a resale shop.
