Beamrider (Atari 2600) - RetroAchievements/guides GitHub Wiki

Achievement Guide Author: ikki5

1) Synopsis

Set Difficulty: 6/10
Approximate time to Master: 1-2 Hours
Minimum Number of Playthroughs Needed: 1
Number of Missable Achievements: None
Does Difficulty Affect Achievements?: N/A

2) Introduction

Beamrider is probably one of my favourite Atari 2600 games, while I don’t have much experience with the Atari 2600, this game is fantastic. The idea of the game is you are a ship flying through sectors battling your way through until you die. You are on the bottom of the screen while enemies come down from the top and kill you by shooting you or crashing into you.

3) Walkthrough

Step 1

The first step is the play the game. Playing through the game will earn you your sector achievements, the base of the game really. Doing this step of just playing the game will unlock the following achievements:

Sector 1-5
Sector 6-10
Sector 11-15
Sector 16-20
Sector 21-25

Step 2

Pretty much the clean-up, some of these you should have gotten just from normal play. The rest are just little challenges and score related. The rest of the achievements are as follows:

Some Spare Parts
Flying Pro
Indestructible
Space dodging
Pea Shooter
Ship Pilot
Ship Combatant
Ship Killer Ship Hero

4) Achievements

Sector 1-5
Complete Sector 5.

{Story related}

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Sector 6-10
Complete Sector 10.

{Story related}

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Sector 11-15
Complete Sector 15.

{Story related}

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Sector 16-20
Complete Sector 20.

{Story related}

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Sector 21-25
Complete Sector 25.

{Story related}

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Some Spare Parts
Gain a Life.

See Indestructible

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Flying Pro
Get a total of 5 lives.

See Indestructible

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Indestructible
Get 10 lives.

Getting lives in this game should just come naturally while playing. Essentially you get lives bast on your score so the more points you rack up, the more you get. You can also collect some lives so keep an eye out for them.

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Space dodging
Complete Sector 1-5 without losing a life. (Reset must be done if you die)

This one isn’t too hard however, if you die, you must reset the entire game. Good thing it is only the first 5 sectors! Essentially, just don’t get hit, play carefully, kill the 15 ships in each sector and make your way through.

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Pea Shooter
Get 20,000 points.

See Ship Hero

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Ship Pilot
Get 40,000 points.

See Ship Hero

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Ship Combatant
Get 60,000 points..

See Ship Hero

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Ship Killer Get 80,000 points..

See Ship Hero

=-----------------------------------------------------------=

Ship Hero
Get 100,000 points.

Ah yes, the points. Points are basically the main goal to most Atari 2600 games. So how do you get points? You kill things. Killing various ships will award you points. A great way to get points however is to have ships in your fleet. At the end of each sector, is a sector sentinel, the more ships you have in your fleet when you destroy one, the more bonus points you get when you kill it so try not to die as dying will only make the points achievements that much harder.