Granny Vinnie Reviews

7800 Rank: 32nd Genre Rank: (Shooting) 3rd Awards: 6th Best Originality, 6th Worst Graphics Have an Epileptic Seizure with Meltdown! Pros: Unique gun game/ Lots of power-ups/ Passcode feature Cons: Off-center Atari gun/ Blinking screen M-M-My left eye is Twitching!

Overview: Meltdown was a game I owned for awhile, but never could play until I located an Atari Light Gun from somewhere in the world. I found one on the life sucking eBay at a price that I could agree with, and I nabbed it. When it finally arrived in the mail, I almost squealed with glee. I remember hearing horror stories about the Atari Light Gun, and my dreams of owning one slowly turned into a nightmare upon playing this cart. In a nutshell, the Light Gun itself almost ruins this game! Let's just put it this way...if the guy on the grassy knoll had a gun that was this off, JFK would still be mourning the death of Jackie O. No matter how much the Gun tried to ruin the cart, Meltdown shined as a unique Cold War title that had tons going for it. Terrorists have attacked 20 Nuclear Powerhouses and it is up to a crooked gun-toting hero that can blow "Sparks" out of the air before they damage and destroy the reactor's cooling rods. The cooling rods are keeping the reactor from melting down, and that is a good thing for all of us that prefers green trees and blue skies to orange mutated hell beasts that roam the earth.

Graphics: I know I just bashed the Light Gun for 2 or 3 lines, but now it is time I turn my player hating towards Meltdown. At first glance, everything is groovy. Meltdown looks similar to the 2600 title Reactor, which was a great/strange game in it's own right. Overall, the game looks simple, but respectable. Tons of various Sparks litter the screen, attacking the inner core's cooling rods. The enemy Sparks and inner cores change depending on which level you are playing. This keeps the game very fresh, as different cores are more vulnerable therefore tougher to defend than others. The menus in the game are cool, and the passcode screen looks great too. The problem happens every time you click the trigger. When you aim and fire, the screen flashes bright white. This wouldn't be too bad if this was a skeet shooting simulation or a sniper game, but Meltdown is a fire fest! After a few minutes, the flashing white screen can really screw with your eyes. After my first initial play, I sat on the toilet and watched the funny objects float around my cornea for minutes. Well, this was pretty bad, but you haven't seen anything until you get the "Continuous Fire" upgrade. Talk about legal drugs...who needs LSD?

Sound: The audio loop in the game sounds like a Midnight Mutant/ Fatal Run loop, and a bad one at that. The game features plenty of whistles, zips, dinks, bonks, and zeeps when objects bounce of the reactor's walls and things are shot, but overall the sound is so-so. More convincing sound effects would be beneficial here.

Gameplay: Not only does Meltdown look like the 2600 classic Reactor, but it also plays similar to the title as well. With your light gun, you must dispose of a certain number of tiny 'Sparks' as they bounce around a nuclear reactor trying to collide with and damage the inner core's cooling rods. If the cooling rods are damaged, the reactor will begin to collapse, and if the reactor collapses, Meltdown occurs and the game (and your life) is over. Sadly, the problem with the gameplay has nothing to do with Meltdown itself, but the Atari Light Gun. If the game featured a joystick option like Crossbow did, the game would be saved. But alas, we are forced to play the cartridge with a device that has the accuracy equivalent to a crooked carnival gun. In my estimation on my 18 inch TV screen, the point of impact is about 1/2 inch down and to the left of where you aim it. This can be overlooked, but it takes you really wanting to like the game to do so. A calibration screen could have remedied the situation...but hey, Atari probably didn't care about much at all when this cartridge was released late into the 7800's life. This is a pity because with a little help, Meltdown could easily be the best shooting game on the system. The action is fast and furious, and the several different levels keep the game exciting and fresh. There are 20 different boards to defeat, and each one has its own set of rules. Along with the design of the inner core and position of the cooling rods, the available power-ups change with each level. Power-ups can range from 'Big Shots' that increase the size of your bullets, to 'Freeze' which momentarily stops the Sparks movement. There also is the hypnotizing 'Continuous Fire' which saves your finger but attempts to murder your eyes, and several others, such as 'Killer Shots' 'Expand the Reactor', and 'Double Points'. An odd but innovative feature on the game is what happens to your bullets if you miss. Upon missing, a large circle forms on the screen, creating a momentary barricade that the Sparks can bounce off of. Four of these will appear on the screen at a time, before they fade away. This is useful to block Sparks flying towards cooling rods you can't hit with a shot. Pretty interesting, and useful since the gun itself is not accurate.

Originality: I would have to imagine that the design team was a little influenced by the Parker Brothers game Reactor, since the game is very similar in certain ways. But, Meltdown does a lot different, including offering you the ability to defeat the game. The "Power-ups" are a great addition, and the barricades that your missed gun fire creates is pretty cool as well. The passcode screen is brilliantly done and is unlike anything I have seen on any Atari system before. Overall, this game feels like something different, and that is important.

Value: Again, this has a lot to do whether or not you can forgive some of the Light Gun's sins enough to enjoy deep down what is really a neat game. If you have mercy in your heart, the passcode feature is enough to have you coming back for more. Even if you stink terribly at aiming 1/2 inch above and to the right of objects, this feature will enable you to defeat the game easily. There are 2 difficulty levels on the game: Novice and Expert. So when you master the art of aiming away from an object to annihilate it, you can graduate to the higher plane of "Absurd Marksmanship" and play the game at the Expert level.

Overall: I feel like Meltdown is a great game deep down inside, but it was abused as a child and it never fully developed properly. So it grew up, identified with the wrong crowd, started hanging out with that under achiever, the Atari Light Gun, joined a gang with Crack'ed and Jinks and slowly drifted away into a life of mediocrity and small time crime. The Light Gun and the flashing screen damage the game's marketability, and seriously limit the fun one could have with this otherwise brilliant game. Yes, Meltdown, you coulda been great...but alas.........your greatness was just a little "off target".

Seriously, I ain't no doctor, but it is my belief that this game may induce Epileptic Seizures. Be careful!





Other Reviews:
The Atari Times: 8 out of 10
CV's Atari 7800 Panoramic Froo-Froo: 3.0 out of 5.0 (Fair)
Videogame Critic: C



Additional Info: I would like to take this time to thank Mitch Orman, owner of The Atari 7800 Page for allowing the use of his screenshots for this review.

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