Reactor

The game activity starts with the player's ship contained within the heart of a nuclear reactor. The player moves his ship using a track ball, and has the use of a rapid fire energy button and a decoy button to protect himself.
During the game play, the core expands as the enemy particles attempt to destroy the player's ship by deflecting it against the kill wall. Simultaneously, the player must destroy the enemy particles by using his ship to deflect them against the kill wall.
Pushing the energy button (located on the control panel) when the player's ship is in contact with an enemy particle, will increase the force applied to both the player's ship and enemy particle When the decoy button is pushed, a decoy will emerge from the player's ship. The decoy will remain stationary at the point where the ship was located when the button was pushed. The decoy confuses the enemy so that they attack the decoy instead of the player The decoy cannot be destroyed and should be placed in one of three positions:

1. Next to a kill wall.
2. in front of the control rods
3. Inside the entrance to the bonus chambers.

In doing so, the enemy particles will be lured into a position which will allow the player to:

1. Destroy them against a kill wall.
2. Destroy the control rods.
3. Trap them in the bonus chamber.

• Knocking down either set of control rods, with enemy particles, will reduce the size of the core.
• Knocking down both sets of control rods will add an extra decoy
• After every 15,000 points, the player earns one extra ship. (Dependent on switches #7 and #8.)

While the enemy particles are in the bonus chambers, they will deflect off one another and the walls. As they are deflected off the walls, bonus is scored. To achieve maximum bonus, the player must use the ENERGY button to hold the enemy particles in the bonus chamber as long as possible The player earns 15 points per bounce during the early rounds and 15+ per bounce as the game progresses On each round, point values per bounce increase As the play progresses, the reactor core continually grows in size, which decreases the usable playfield, During the early rounds the core is a rectangular shape which expands outward forcing the player closer to the dangerous kill walls. The player can shrink the core by destroying either set of control rods, or killing the total amount of enemies "TO GO" for each round In later rounds the rectangular expanding core is replaced with an expanding and swirling vortex Unlike the rectangular core, the vortex is deadly to the player. As it enlarges, it will draw the player to its center and destroy him A skillful player can get out of the vortex even after it has caught him by moving his ship in a clockwise direction The ideal game play is a balance of using the decoys and bounce chambers to accumulate large bonus points, extra ships and using the control rods to gain extra decoys.

# 2019-11-23 08:08:37 - official description

software: Emulated on MAME,

hardware: Gottlieb System,

display: raster

ported to
Reactor (Atari 2600)