Megamania

2600 box art.

Megamania is a classic single-screen shooter programmed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision in 1982 on the Atari 2600, and in 1983 on the Atari 5200 and Atari 8-bit computers. This is one of my favorite Atari 2600 games, and a favorite of the single-screen space shooter genre.

I first played the game as one of the many games in a used collection of Atari game my parents bought us kids at a garage sale. I once programmed by own version of Megamania in QuickBASIC.

Status

I own Megamania for the Atari 2600. My highest score is 111,920, well beyond the score of 45,000 needed to earn the Activision Megamaniacs patch, but a far cry from when the game stops counting at 999,999.

Review

5	6	4	3	4

Best Version: 44%

Good

• Despite the Atari 2600's memory restrictions, Cartwright packed a lot of variation into this game's enemies. Their movement patterns vary, they look different, and each have several variations.
• Even though the ship designs repeat, the palette shifts and the enemy ships adopt new movement patterns in subsequent waves giving the game more variety.
• Being able to control the ship's gun in different ways was a nice addition.
• The game has really nice sound for a 2600 game.

Bad

• Due to the extreme limits of the Atari 2600, the game is unfortunately too repetitive.
• Although the enemies all have different movement patterns, they're really all just variations on a theme.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The cartoonish 2600 box art beautifully depicts the game.

• 

  Both the 5200 and 8-bit releases use this utterly terrible art. The game is only depicted in the reflection of the strange bow tie wearing man.

Documentation

• 

  2600 manual.

• 

  5200 manual.

• 

  Megamaniacs patch.

Videos

• youtube.com/watch?v=c8v-wtcDGpo - Longplay of a full score of 999,999.

Ports

Port	Released	Porter	Publisher	Notes
Atari 2600	1982-??-??	Activision	Activision	Original release.
Atari 5200	1983-??-??	Activision	Activision	More detailed graphics and additional sound effects.
Atari 8-bit	1983-??-??	Activision	Activision	Nearly identical to the 5200 port.

Credits

Role	Staff
Entire Game	Steve Cartwright

Links

• mobygames.com/game/megamania - MobyGames.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megamania - Wikipedia.