death trap

Most common features include:

A death trap, properly executed (no pun intended), always involves utter faith in its effectiveness on the part of the villain. To demonstrate this faith, the villain is obliged to always perform the following actions before the death trap has terminated its victims:

Failure to comply with these regulations will be punished by imprisonment in a facility from which it is actually somewhat difficult to escape.

Avalon Hill thought long and hard about what to release for their very first video game. The game had to be both original and fun. After much contemplation they decided on, get this, a space game.

This is the only bad game Avalon Hill ever made for the Atari. It is a rather unoriginal, shoot through the force field with your spaceship game. Three layers of moving force fields protect a huge mothership. You must blast through them so you can take it out.

This game must have used the 2600 hardware in a nonstandard way, because it does not play properly in most Atari 2600 emulators. Specifically, you cannot fire and neither does the enemy. Making for one boring game.

You have just graduated with honors from Cadet training. Your first mission is especially important. You must deliver a TOP SECRET diplomatic message to the Emperor of the Glaxiau Empire - immediately! You proceed to cross the galaxy via the latest Black Hole acceleration techniques when your trips is interrupted by a gigantic space ship which intends on ensuring that the message you carry never reaches the Emperor. You heard of rumors in school of IT being out there - the reason for so many missing ships. Your only hope for survival and success in your mission is to destroy ITs power generators before IT kills you with intelligent plasma fireballs or disintegrates you with high energy defensive shields.

This was Avalon Hill's first title. It is valued at around $175 USD, and games with boxes and manuals may go for more.