Your name is Captain Nalad Modnar and you are part of an advanced underwater civilization. It's your duty to patrol your section of the ocean in a semi-organic submarine called the Manatee. Highly aggressive seaweed surrounds you and it keeps trying to replicate faster than you can shoot. Use your torpedoes to blast any bits of seaweed that appear before they clog up your sector and spread to others, making it nearly impossible for anyone to travel. Don't let the seaweed strangle your civilization to extinction.
Seaweed Assault is an engaging and original homebrew title for the Atari 2600 by Duane Alan Hahn. You must deftly pilot your Manatee, avoiding seaweed that can damage your vessel, as well as Wrothopods, a protected species of cephalopods that travel deep to feed on parasites that attach to mature seaweed. Your goal is to keep the sea lanes free of seaweed, and to that end you must blast the seaweed with your torpedos. However, watch out for mature seaweed tentacles that reach up from the depths to try and grab your Manatee!
Some relief is offered in the form of Homing Health Canisters, which appear after you've shot 100 bits of seaweed. The more quickly you grab a canister, the more health units will be replenished for your Manatee. Be wary of corroded Homing Health Canisters, which you may uncover when clearing bits of seaweed! If you don't salvage these in time, their damaged circuits will home in on the Manatee and try to ram it, causing damage that will take one health unit to repair.
If you'd like to learn more about Seaweed Assault, please visit Random Terrain's Seaweed Assault Page. Here you can read the online manual and even try the game online.
Additional Information
Seaweed Assault includes a twelve-page, full-color manual and game cartridge. Seaweed Assault is an NTSC-only game.
Get a Seaweed Assault Box!
If you'd like a boxed copy of Seaweed Assault, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding Seaweed Assault to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your Seaweed Assault cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrinkwrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.
These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari 2600 library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.
Number of Players | 1 |
Controller | Joystick |
Cartridge Size | 32K Melody Enhanced |
Programming | Duane Alan Hahn |
Label and Manual Design | Brian Ostrowski |
Very well thought out and crafted game that requires strategy, skill, timing and luck.
When you die it is always your fault. The rewards come vs the risks taken, but, above all else - this is FUN.
You can tell the developer put a lot of time and effort into balancing not only the presentation, but also the game play.
It looks and sounds great, the difficulty ramps up fairly, and makes you want to come back for more.
100% recommended.
In addition to its engaging gameplay, Seaweed Assault is also finely programmed, with lots of attention to detail that gives it a very polished finish. The graphics are simple but effective. The submarine is a joy to pilot, it sports animated flapping fins and has a little bit of a drift that needs to be managed in order to line up shots properly. The sound effects are superb and really support the mood of the game, from the squeal of a Wrothopod, to the menacing rumble of the seaweed tentacles, to the satisfying swoosh of the energy burst at 1,000 points. The difficulty ramps up slowly at the beginning, but then gets tough pretty fast. Overall a highly recommended game.