SpiderMwa plays Atlantis

Yep, it's a Missile Command clone. At least it tries to be original.

Atlantis was a Missile Command clone released for the Intellivision. But instead of being more of what you'd expect from the game it was based on, there are pretty interesting things.

You have two turrets, but you have infinite ammo, and you can choose which one fires a bullet with the press of a button. Your enemies have to run into the explosions from the bullets in order to die, and enemies can't take splash damage from enemy explosions, unlike in [i]Missile Command[/i]. Unfortunately, you can only shoot two bullets at one time. 

As enemies fly around, you'll have to shoot them, and if you miss them there's a chance they might attack Atlantis and take out one of the various buildings with a air-to-ground laser beam. When a building is destroyed, there's no way you can get it back like in [i]Missile Command[/i] where you can restore a city after enough points are scored.

Each stage, or "day," is split up into three sections: morning (a blue sky with clouds), evening (a grey sky with clouds) and night (a black sky with search lights moving back and forth). While this is somewhat ambitious for an Intellivision game at the time, it ends up becoming a pain in the ass as well.

The enemies are nothing spectacular, altough sometimes they move slowly and sometimes they move fast. They don't fly in a straight line most of the time, either; instead they move up and down as they move from one side of the screen to the other. There are three waves of enemies in a section of the day, and when you beat all three waves, you go to the next part of the day.

However, some of the enemies will blend in with the clouds and can be hard to see at times. That's nothing compared to the night section, where all the enemies are as pitch black as the sky itself and the only way to see them is with the searchlights. Your only hope is to shoot ahead of them as soon as you see them and pray that you see the explosion that results from a direct hit on an enemy. You can see them if you fire the laser, but by then it's too late.

You do have a UFO that you can sic on the enemies and fly around wherever you want in, but you can only use it for 90 seconds which you can look at on the bottom of the screen, where they will be listed directly underneath where its silo is. After 90 seconds, the UFO will return to the silo and you'll have to wait for the timer to go back up before you can use it again. Thankfully, you can take it back to the silo manually before this can occur. If it gets hit by a ship or a missile, you won't be able to use it again until the next day.

When all the buildings are inevitably destroyed, the game is over, and a giant UFO flies off. Turns out, this is the Cosmic Ark from the Atari 2600 game of the same name, which is considered by many to be the first-ever console sequel. In this sequel, it is implied that the Ark flew off with the survivors.

Is this a good game? Well, if not being able to see your enemies on the night screen really ticks you off, you're going to hate this game. The searchlights do make it easier, but it makes the last third of every day more of a nailbiter than it should be. Other than this, the game is worth picking up and playing a few times, and if you like a bit more challenge in your classic games than usual, you'll be hooked on this one.