How to play Tooth Protectors online
- Move T.P. left and right: left and right arrow keys
- Call a clean-up: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Start at a higher difficulty level: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Save and load: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
You play T.P., the Tooth Protector, a small smiling face holding a strand of dental floss. A Snack Attacker moves along the top of the screen, dropping snack cubes onto the white teeth at the bottom. Slide under the cubes and knock them away with the floss. A tooth starts to blink after three hits, and a badly decayed tooth disappears.
The fire button sends in the clean-up crew: a toothbrush, a box of floss and a bottle of fluoride rinse pass over the teeth in turn and remove all the plaque. You start with three clean-ups and earn another every 50,000 points. At any moment the Snack Attacker may also swoop down and try to carry T.P. away. The game ends when three T.P.s have been taken or three teeth are gone.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Deflecting a cube | 100 |
| Deflected cube hits another cube | 1,000 |
| Snack Attack survived with no teeth lost | 10,000 |
| Snack Attack survived with one tooth lost | 5,000 |
| Snack Attack survived with two teeth lost | 1,000 |
The game has four built-in difficulty levels and starts at level 1 unless you pick a higher one with Select. The difficulty switches are not used.
Tips
- Save clean-ups for blinking teeth. One clean-up fixes every tooth at once, so don’t spend it after the first hit.
- Go for chain hits. Knocking a cube into another falling cube is worth ten times a normal deflection.
- Watch the Snack Attacker, not only the cubes. When it dives, move out of its way.
The story behind Tooth Protectors
The game was never sold in shops. Johnson & Johnson mailed it out in a simple foam case instead of a normal box. It appeared in 1983, the same year as two other advertising cartridges, Kool-Aid Man and Chase the Chuck Wagon. The last section of the manual, “The Real Tooth Protectors”, is simply an advert for the company’s floss, Reach toothbrush and Act fluoride rinse. It was the only 2600 game from either the developer or the publisher, and collectors now rate it extremely rare.
