Megamania

Megamania is an 2600 shooter developed and published by Activision. The game was designed by Steve Cartwright. 

Gameplay is similar to Space Invaders and Galaxian, but is often compared to Sega's Astro Blaster. The player situated at the bottom of the screen and fires upwards at enemies. The enemies were very unique at the time and may be a precursor to the cute'em up genre of games like Fantasy Zone.

The enemies fire down at the player, and can also fly down in set patterns attempting to ram the player. The goal of the game is to clear the screen of enemies before the player's energy bar is depleted.

The energy bar is more of a time limit; it is constantly draining. The player can move left and right, and depending on the game setting, may be able to alter the path of the shot while it's travelling.

The game features 8 levels, after which it loops back to level 1 and continues until all lives are lost or the player reaches 999,999 points. The first time through, each stage only features one type of enemy, while the second time through the levels are made up of several types of enemies at once.

Enemies include: Hamburgers (Level 1), Cookies (Level 2), Bugs (Level 3), Radial Tires (Level 4), Diamonds (Level 5), Steam Irons (Level 6), Bow Ties (Level 7), and Space Dice (Level 8).

Megamania was part of the Activision Badge program and, upon release, anyone who scored above 45,000 points could send Activision a picture of their screen and receive an official Megamaniac emblem badge.

The 2600 version of Megamania is available on the Activision Anthology for PS2 and Microsoft's Game Room service for Xbox 360/PC.