Things could be bad for Jeff and others at Buy More when the company unleashes an efficiency expert on them, ready to ‘trim the fat’ from this particular retail body. It turns out that Missile Command designer Morimoto has secretly hidden a code on the last level of the game that gives access to a real missile defence system orbiting the world, and only one man can get that code for them! As an official geek, fully paid-up and everything, I should of course point out that it was in fact Dave Theurer, he also of Tempest and I, Robot fame, that designed this Atari classic. At first Chuck is rubbish at this game. But then he realises that the Tom Sawyer in the title refers to an old music track by Rush. Music that also happens to share an inherent rhythm with the game, thus taking him all the way to the ‘Kill screen’. Except in reality Missile Command has no ‘Kill screen’, doesn’t stop at 2,000,000 as the score only displays 6 characters and the world record, set in 1983 by Victor Ali, is 80,000,000. But everyone knows that. It’s all typical Chuck fun, although it appears that Emmett Milbarge, efficiency expert, is now installed at Buy More and is a potent nemesis for Chuck. In the meanwhile here is the finest selection of Chuck factoids distilled from this episode:
Chuck was just twelve merits away from getting his Stanford diploma when he left Jeff has a Ferret called Roscoe (is that a Dukes of Hazard reference?) Morgan owns his own smoke machine Jeff carries a card with him that reads ‘MY NAME IS JEFF AND I’M LOST’ on one side, and his address is printed on the other. Morgan was once a roadie for Mama Mia for four straight summers Anna is Jeff’s ‘muse’ in his mind Atari HQ is full of Japanese early animation memorabilia Morgan claims to have a Zune, but thankfully it’s actually an iPod
Check out Billy’s review of episode 4 here.
