V. Story Overview

Atomic Sam is the story of a young boy, separated from his parents for the first time, who must rise to the challenge of discovering what has happened to them. Though Atomic Sam s focus is as an action/adventure game, the humorous and touching story sets the game apart from many other console action games .

The setting of Atomic Sam is the Earth of the future, but not exactly the future as we imagine it now. This is the future as foretold in the first half of the twentieth century by magazines like Popular Science and The Electrical Experimenter , as well as by futurists like Norman Bel Geddes and Buckminster Fuller. Certain innovations that we see as obvious today never came to pass, such as jet airplane travel; instead, people still travel aboard giant propeller craft and zeppelins. Similarly, the personal computer and certainly the Internet are unheard of, while super- intelligent and always helpful robots are ubiquitous. Man has even colonized the Moon and found the extraterrestrial life that lives there, the Moonies. It is in this whimsical and fun future that the story of Atomic Sam takes place.

One day, young Sam returns from school to his parents apartment only to discover them mysteriously missing. Sam s parents are both scientists at Zeffir Zoom, a transportation company, but they always make it a point to be home when Sam returns from school. Distraught, Sam decides to go looking for his parents. He dons a red jacket and puts on the atomic rocket-pack they gave him for his birthday, and renames himself Atomic Sam, gaining courage through his new alter ego.

Sam travels through the city of Gargantuopolis toward his parents office, but along the way is attacked by robots who try to block his progress. Sam finally reaches their office, only to find them missing from there as well, with only a mysterious note remaining. A friendly robot soon arrives, however, and escorts Sam to a towering building right next door. Sam travels up to the top floor and meets a strange woman who calls herself the Electric Priestess. She tells Sam that, though she does not know what has happened to his parents, she will help him find them. She offers Sam transportation to three locations where Sam may try to discover their fate.

Sam will travel to Benthos, the city beneath the sea. There he will meet Xeraphina, the flying girl, who will help Sam locate his parents private office. Next is Harmony, the robot city, where Sam will try to look for Ike, the robot who was his parents loyal assistant for years . Along the way Sam meets Scrap, a plucky young robot who strangely doesn t want to grow up and go to work. Finally, Sam travels to New Boston, the Moon colony, searching for another friend of his parents, Dulo the Moonie. At each of these locations, Sam is attacked by merciless robots out to defeat him and stop his inquiries. After having fully explored each of these areas, Sam finds a piece of a wax cylinder which, when all of its pieces are assembled , can be played back to reveal what happened to his parents.

The cylinder contains a warning message from Sam s parents: they think they have stumbled on a safety problem with the monorail system being developed by Max Zeffir, their employer. Unfortunately, Zeffir does not want to fix the problem because of its prohibitive cost and, as a result, has kidnapped Sam s parents to keep them quiet. The Electric Priestess will now be able to lend Sam an auto-gyro to take him to the Ikairus, Zeffir s massive airship. There Sam will battle still more robots before confronting and defeating Max Zeffir. Then, finally, Sam is reunited with his parents.