Overview
Megamania is an Atari 2600 shoot em up game released in 1982 by Activision. It was designed by Steve Cartwright, and was later ported to Atari 8-bit and Atari 5200, with some minor interface/graphical improvements, by Glyn Anderson. Insofar as the game has a plot, it takes place in a Space Nightmare, brought on by the protagonist, a pilot on an intergalactic space cruiser, consuming two pepperoni pizzas and a quart of chocolate mint ice cream.
Gameplay
Megamania is a fairly traditional shoot em up.The player controls a spaceship visually similar to the Starship Enterprise armed with a laser cannon. A time restraint in the form of an contiuously dwindling energy bar is displayed on the bottom of the screen, and when this runs out, the player loses one of his three initial ships. The ship can be moved left and right, and shoot, and that is the full extent of the player's control of it.
As usual with Atari 2600 games, the game has several gameplay modes; the player can select to have missiles that follow the sideways motion of the spaceship, or missiles that fire straight, independent of the spaceship. The game's enemies feature a typically early 80s variety of random foodstuffs and geometric shapes, which come at your space ship in increasingly intricate patterns as you progress through the levels.
Scoring is performed by killing enemies, and the points awarded for each kill increase from level to level. The player is also awarded for finishing levels quickly, as the remaining energy bar is also tallied into the score. Should the total score exceed 999.999 points, the game crashes, as a result of a programming error.
The lyrics to the theme song bear mentioning. It was performed by The Tubes, a San Fransisco-based rock band.
"Mega! Megamania. Megamania!!
It's gonna drive you insane.
You've got to shoot to survive,
you've got to run to stay alive!
You may regret it,
the day you get it-
It's never gonna let you alone!"
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