During the height of the Atari 2600's dominance of home video gaming, Atari's marketing department came up with a unique promotion designed to sell cartridges. The company partnered with DC Comics to create a comic book series that revolved around a group of Atari superheroes. These mini comic books would appear in various 2600 titles, forcing people to buy more games if they wanted to read the latest adventures of Atari's superhero team.

The original plan was to name the series "Atarians". The Atarian team would travel the universe, exploring strange new worlds and fighting evil aliens in a style that loosely corresponded to the game the comic got packaged in. The Atarians name and concept were scrapped by marketers who believed the name and the premise were wimpy. Atari and DC went back to the drawing board and came up with the Atari Force, a group of paramilitary operatives who travel to parallel universes.

The first Atari Force comic was packaged with Defender for the 2600. Future issues appeared in Berzerk, Star Raiders, Phoenix and Galaxian games. Only 5 issues of the original Atari Force were ever released. However, the series later migrated to a traditional monthly comic book format. The second Atari Force ran for 20 issues before the company pulled the plug on the project.

Atari Force takes place in the distant futuristic world of 2005. An amazingly advanced technological society has colonized the moon and landed on Mars. However, an attack on the lunar base touches off a horrific nuclear war, devastating the world. Most countries destroy each other, and society as we know it ceases to exist. In what used to be America, the benevolent Atari company, which has somehow survived this holocaust, takes control of most aspects of society, including NASA and other organizations. Luckily, Atari is a benevolent organization and uses it's new unquestioned authority for the betterment of the human race.

In the future, society is controlled by a gigantic, omnipotent corporation that runs all aspects of life and employs it's own private militia. But that's a good thing......right?

The devastating effects of the nuclear war was causing the planet to die. The overlords at Atari did what any all powerful corporation would do in their situation. They built a super advanced interstellar ship that not only traveled through space, but also through the multiverse itself. That ship would travel to parallel worlds in an attempt to find an alternate Earth that could be colonized.

Apparently, Patrick Stewart was chosen to succeed Nolan Bushnell as head of Atari.

This space-and-timeship, called Scanner 1, was powered by the most advanced supercomputer that Atari engineers could design, the Atari 8000! A full 10 times more powerful than the old 8-bit Atari 800 computer whose greatest accomplishment was playing M.U.L.E.

The Atari 8000 is so advanced that it can run an almost flawless port of the Pac-Man arcade game. It also features Omni-BASIC and an alpha build of Windows 1.0!

Atari had a ship and a mission, but it needed a crew. Not just any crew would do. Atari needed a group of fearless multicultural specimans with a variety of skillsets, troubled pasts that left them emotionally scarred, and matching skintight spandex uniforms. They needed the Atari Force.

Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart! Gooooo Planet!!!!

Commander Martin Champion- Defender of Freedom.

Blond haired, blue eyed, hunky astronaut and all-American guy. Martin Champion is the embodiment of stereotypical superheroism. He is that jock in high school that lettered in every possible sport, got all the girls, and was class valedictorian. He is one part Captain Kirk, one part Dolph Lundgren, and one part Hulk Hogan.

When Champion was young, he won a trip to NASA's Space Camp as a contestant on Nick Arcade. He fell in love with the space program and joined NASA before jumping to the Atari Space Agency. (After conquering the video game world thanks to the resounding success of the Atari 7800, Atari moved on to bigger and better things by starting their own space exploration program.) At the Atari space program, Champion became a space shuttle commander, leading missions to the Moon and Mars.

As the leader of the Atari Force, Champion is the mission commander, leading Scanner One and it's motley crew to strange new worlds.

Lydia Perez- She's a Girl.

The second rule of creating a superhero team is there must be a strong female second in command who can serve as the love interest for the manly commander. Lydia Perez serves as a positive role model for younger readers while still fulfilling the Comics Code Authority quota of sexual tension between the male and female leads.

Perez is another talented member of the Atari Institute's space program. (After Atari became the world's largest corporation, with their own private army and moon bases, they changed their name to the more unassuming-sounding Atari Institute.) She quickly rose through the ranks of Atari's officer corps, participating in many important missions. After her family was killed in the last world war, she vowed never to love anyone again, much to the chagrin of Commander Champion and any comic readers who like sappy love stories.

Perez is the pilot of Scanner One and the mission's Executive Officer. As XO, she occasionally takes over when the Commander is captured by aliens or is on the can.

Li-San O'Rourke- Guinness meets Sapporo

Another sacred tenant of superhero team formation is the need to be multicultural. No self-respecting justice league would go into action without packing at least a few members from continents other than North America. Li-San O'Rourke is half Chinese and half Irish, giving a +10 to her ethnic stereotype ability. She inherited her looks from her Chinese mother, her brogue from her Irish father, and her perky skin-tight purple jumpsuit from the perverts at Atari's uniform department.

O'Rourke got her start as a peacekeeper in the UN. When the world went to hell following the attacks on the lunar base, she jumped ship to the winner of World War 3 which, oddly enough, was the Atari Institute. Her wartime experience made her perfect for Atari's private army. Li-San quickly climbed the ranks to become the head of security for Atari. (Atari's private security forces were formed back in 1984 in order to capture George Plimpton, the spokesman and spiritual leader of Mattel Electronics. Shortly afterward, Atari successfully lobbied to have Mattel declared a terrorist organization and led a coalition of the willing on a crusade to defeat them.)

O'Rourke is supposed to be the weapons expert and the muscle of the outfit. However, everyone knows that her real task is to see how far she can take the stereotypical Irish accent before somebody gets offended and sues.

Mohandas Singh- Your call may be monitored for quality assurance.

The part of team engineer was supposed to be played by Phil over in the IT department. Unfortunately for Phil, Atari decided to outsource his job and bring in a lower paid engineer from India. (Don't feel too bad, Phil wouldn't have looked very good in the skin tight Atari Force uniform, think Tron Guy.) Mohandas manages to beat out Li-San in the offensive stereotype category, thanks to the giant red dot on his forehead.

Mohandas was a very poor child in New Delhi until a chance encounter with a rich British tourist causes the death of his friend. The rich man feels sorry for SIngh and buys him a fancy education that leads him to Atari's legendary Sunnyvale Engineering department. (Originally, Atari engineers were high strung prima-donnas that made VCS games. After Atari's expansion, the engineers were high strung prima-donnas that made interplanetary spacecraft.) Singh, who incidentally was a rare super-genius, invented a number of technological breakthroughs like the Micron computer chip, which was twice as fast as Intel's 386 processor. He eventually replaced Al Alcorn as the head of Atari's engineering division.

Singh is the computer expert of the Atari force. His job is to fiddle with electronics, interact with the Atari 8000 supercomputer, and help the crew get their e-mail whenever Microsoft Outlook bugs up.

Dr. Lucas Orion- He's a doctor, not a warmonger.

Dr. Orion is actually the least stereotypical part of the crew. Despite looking like a cross between an exceptionally badass Samuel L. Jackson and an even more exceptionally badass Commander Worf, he is a huge pacifist. Not only is he against violence of any kind, he is also a doctor and an armchair philosopher. Dr. Orion breaks all the generalizations about clerics, nearly ruining the perfect stereotype symetry that Mohandas Singh and Li-San O'Rourke worked so hard to achieve.

Lucas Orion worked hard to escape the inner city streets of Detroit, eventually landing a job as a medic with the UN. When WW3 started, he was assigned to Africa to help refugees. After seeing all the carnage of war, he decided to renounce violence and become a hardcore pacifist, making John Rambo turn in his grave. He was offered a job at Atari's new NASA division, where he worked to help mankind. (After conquering video games and space, Atari tried to take over the medical world. Unfortunately, they came up against a power even greater than their own, the HMOs.)

Lucas is the medic of the group, a pretty self explanatory job. To break up the monotony of his work, he also weaves long, detailed rants about the pointlessness of violence and war.

While piloting a super futuristic timeship across parallel worlds in search of a new home planet might sound exciting, it's actually quite dull and uninteresting. Luckily, the multiverse is chock full of villains ready to make our heroes' life miserable.

There are many clones.....

The Zylons are a race of maurauding baddies controlled by a hive mind who destroy peaceful planets. The crew of the Galactica.....er, Scanner 1, face off with the Zylon fleet, eventually defeating them.

Stereotype readings are off the chart, sir!

Green skin? Check. Giant fangs? Check. Bizarre alien language displayed as symbols? Check. Enslaving innocent races to power their death machines? Double check. The Malaglons appear once in a side story involving a pilot avenging his father's death. The fight appears suspiciously like the gameplay of Phoenix. Even more suspicious is the fact that the Malaglon issue comes packed with the 2600 version of Phoenix. Strange coincidence, indeed.

Only slightly less pointless than Final Fantasy 9's Necron.

No matter what universe you live in, you can bet the farm that there is some sort of evil entity trying to destroy everything for no other reason than because he's a big jerk. The Dark Destroyer fits that mold perfectly. The Destroyer lives in the space between dimensions, taking the form of a mass of tentacles with a evil red eye at the center. The evil villain's only purpose is to end all life in the multiverse (and with a name like Dark Destroyer, any backstory or reasoning would just be pointless).

DD tangles with the Atari squad a few times, losing horribly on each occasion. Although it seems like he is defeated for good in the last issue, the Destroyer launches a small organic pod that contains his life essence, dooming the Atari squad to yet more pointless battles against the giant space squid.

In the end, the Atari crew find an alternate Earth, Lydia falls in love with Martin, and Nolan Bushnell is named overlord of the galaxy. Although the real world Atari will fall victim to the crash of the video game industry in 1983, the Atari Force will live on.

A second run of Atari Force magazines are released that feature the adventures of a new generation of Atari heroes as they battle the reborn Dark Destroyer and his minions on New Earth. However, that is another tale for another time....