Play Stronghold Online

You sneak into an asteroid base, dodging drone swarms at first—then it turns into a frantic scramble as shields pop up, interceptors chase you, and the base starts shooting back through the gaps you create.

File size: 3.27 KB

Game Overview

Stronghold on the Atari 2600 is one of those games that starts simple and then absolutely wrecks you. You're sent to investigate an abandoned asteroid base—except it's not that abandoned, because the second you get close, drones swarm you like angry bees. Some versions let you blast them (shooting one takes out the whole group if they're cloned), but in other modes, you just have to dodge. And that’s when things get messy.

Once you survive the drones, three shields pop up at the bottom, and suddenly interceptors are chasing you while patrol ships sweep back and forth. You’ve got to shoot gaps in the shields to hit the command crawler below—but the second you do, it starts firing back through the holes. Oh, and sometimes the Mega-Field creeps down from the top, shrinking your already cramped space. Good luck.

The difficulty switches change your starting level, and the game variations mix things up: rapid fire, indestructible drones, cloned swarms—every combo feels like a fresh nightmare. Game 9 (rapid fire + Mega-Field + cloned drones) is where I usually give up. It’s brutal, but in that classic Atari way where you keep mashing reset anyway.