Crackpots

You Can't Make an Omelette Without Crackin' a Few Pots

Crackpots is a classic Atari 2600 game where your goal is to kill as many bugs as possible as wave after wave assaults your rooftop position. You are armed with a supply of elegantly potted plants which you will use to violently crush the arachnid menace whose sole purpose is your utter demise.

Control is simple: you can move left and right along your rooftop fortress, pressing the button to unleash a terrible terra cotta rain upon your enemies. You have six plants which don't respawn immediately so you have to be careful to push down the right one. Worry not though as your plants are strong enough to kill several bugs on the way down.

Each level consists of a wave of bugs that climb the wall in some predictable pattern based on their colour. For example the black bugs simply pick a column and climb directly upwards towards you; the red bugs will criss-cross the grid making their destruction all the more difficult. At the bottom of the screen is a display that shows how many bugs it takes to kill you in a given level. This number diminishes as the game progresses, making it even more difficult to survive the putrid waves of chitinous doom.

Crackpots is a classic game of timing and pattern recognition with a humourous premise and simple, addictive gameplay that serves to teach us an important lesson: Bugs are still a threat.