Terra7

About the game

The planet Terra7 is being invaded, and the only thing that can stop the horde is a laser satellite that drifts across the top of the screen. It only fires once it reaches its position near the end of its path, and only if its ten batteries are charged. Every invader you destroy keeps a few more technicians safe to work on the batteries: each 25 kills charge one, so the mission takes 250.

You fly a small robot over the blue surface of the planet, shooting to the right with a bazooka. Enemy ships of several shapes come in from the right, some of them firing, and asteroids roll through between them. Now and then an astronaut floats past, lost in space: touch them to bring them home, because letting one drift away or hitting one with your bazooka costs you a shield.

The robot has five shields and can never carry more. It loses one when it is hit by a missile, collides with a ship or an asteroid, or fails an astronaut. Two special items appear among the enemies: an E (energy) module that gives a shield back when you fly into it, and an S (smart bomb) that wipes out everything on screen when you shoot it, and counts as three kills. Whether the satellite fires or your shields run out, the game ends there.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 2600: a new game by an independent developer for the 1977 console, not a commercial release. Cisano Carmelo wrote it in 6502 assembly in 2024, and it runs here in Stellerator, an Atari 2600 emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play, then press Space on the title screen.

The top of the screen shows your shields and the charged batteries. There are no save states on this platform: like on the real console, a game lasts as long as you keep playing, and P pauses it. A gamepad works too.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Watch for astronauts. They are easy to shoot by accident in a busy wave. Ease off the fire button when one appears and fly into them instead.

Fly into E, shoot S. The energy module only helps if you collect it by touching it; shooting it wastes it. The smart bomb is the opposite: touching it costs a shield, shooting it clears the screen.

Keep moving. Enemy missiles fly in straight lines, and a robot that drifts up and down is much harder to hit than one parked in place.

Credits and licence

Terra7 was written by Cisano Carmelo, who made the code, graphics and sound effects. It is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. The ROM served here was assembled by FredyGames from the author's source code with the dasm assembler, and the complete source code is hosted alongside the game. The licence text is linked from this page.