As you can see from my battle with the vicious space irons, there's a lot to talk about. You start with 3 ships, and the goal, obviously, is to get as many points as possible. Each enemy is worth the same amount of points, and the value goes up by 10 every round. The differences between this and other similar games are several. Number one, you get guided missles. You can control the direction of your shot once you fire, though this option can be turned off. Two, besides the oddness of the enemies, they're not restricted to just moving left and right - only you are. They can move off the right of the screen and return from the left, and even move all the way down in some cases, and reappear at the top. An enemy touching you is the same as getting shot: death. Which makes your "energy" somewhat deceptive, I guess. One hit will finish you, your energy is more of a time limit, gradually decreasing. The higher it is after you finish off a round of enemies, the more points you get. So now, let's meet the enemies!

HAMBURGER: (20 points each) Yes, your first opponents are evil purple space burgers. I'm not making any of this up, it's straight from the manual. The Burgers aren't much of a threat, they just move from left to right continously, firing down on you and cycling across the screen. We'll call this Round 1 - in odd numbered rounds, the enemies will not try to make contact with you. In evens, they will...

COOKIE: (30 points each) ...Which brings us to the Cookies. These things will not only fire on your little cyberwang ship, but gradually move in diagonal patterns down. You either have to have a quick trigger finger and take them all out before they reach you, or position yourself where they won't hit you before disappearing off the bottom of the screen. They'll then start back at the top, where you can blast them again.

ANT: (40 points each) Although the Ants won't get close enough to make contact, their entire row will shift ever so slightly downward, making it both easier for them to hit you, and you to hit them. There are a lot more of them than there are of you. Otherwise, they're just like the Burgers, and not too much of a threat.

RADIAL TIRE: (50 points each) These things are a blasted nightmare, and will almost assuredly leave treadmarks all over your face the first few times. I don't care if they're only fourth in the cycle, I consider them the toughest of the eight, at least at the outset. They descend upon you just like the Cookies, except they shift left, then right (or vice versa) on the way down, making them almost impossible to avoid if there are too many close to you. Argh.

DIAMOND: (60 points each) Back to the left to right wave movement, with two differences. One, the Diamonds move extremely fast, so when it comes down to about two or three left, they can be a real pain in the asteroid. Two, they're significantly smaller than any other enemy, making them even tougher to hit. Not too hard, but you might kill some valuable time.

STEAM IRON: (70 points each) Depending how you approach it, these can either be simple or impossible. They attack in three vertical columns, and always remain in their rows while falling toward you. If you take out one or two entire columns, you won't be able to enter a remaining one when it gets low, and time will always run out. If however you take out a few from each column, you should be all set.

BOWTIE: (80 points each) These are even faster than the Diamonds, and although they're bigger in size, they also move in a wave that practically nicks the tip of your ship, making it somewhat hard to avoid their fire at times. Not much else that sets them apart aside from their keen sense of fashion, so onward we go.

SPACE DICE: (90 points each) All right, either Alien dice games are incredibly different than ours, or out in space, they just play Craps with large lumps of moldy cheese. In any case, your battle with the Space Dice is an all out free-for-all; they just fall from the top of the screen at high speed (unlike the other slowass descending enemies), so quick reflexes are a must.

Now, you may be asking yourself what happens after the Space Dice get wasted. Patience, dipstick. You do go back to the beginning, but there's good news and bad news. The good news is that all enemies are now worth 90 points from here on out, and come in different colors. The bad news is that they've learned new attack patterns, are a lot quicker, and are generally a lot harder to kill. Formerly passive Burgers will stop short then speed up incredibly, Cookies will drop as fast as my pants on New Year's, and Space Dice will zigzag across the screen like nobody's business. It's a good thing you get an extra ship for every 10,000 points. Energy is the key.

...

So yes, Megamania is indeed a Space Invaders ripoff. The creator even had to sneak the word itself into the title by subtitling the game "A Space Nightmare". But the enemies are far more varied in movement, attack, and wackiness, plus they don't keep making that "thwack!" sound when they move. The burning noise when your ship gets hit is annoying as hell, but it's minute compared to the overall addictiveness. In addition, I find myself making at least one mistake almost every time I attempt to type "Megamania". I don't know what that means, but then, I also don't know what shooting at Space Dice is supposed to mean either. It's just fun, damnit.

NEW!! Updated 9/13/03 - Retro Reader Eric McConnell writes in:

"Hey, saw your review on MegaMania. Great stuff! One thing missing was 'breaking' the game. At 999,999 points, it literally stops. Check out the attached screenshot. Just did it today! Figured you'd appreciate it!! :)"

Indeed I do, even the fact that the letter ends with a smiley is forgiven, when you consider that the feat was accomplished on an old Atari system. I've gotten used to emulators and save states to make these reviews a lot easier and less time-consuming, but Eric actually had to sit there and play the damn thing till he got to the breaking point. Kudos to you, good sir, and if that project of yours comes to fruition, let me know so I can update this review again.

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