Space Cavern (1981)

Look: 9/10 Oooo, love the colors at the start, how they change. Apparently that was an Atari trend in '81/'82 and I'm here for it.

I think the upward-facing arrow vertical shooting sprite is cute. And honestly all the sprites are top-notch for this era, from the moving character to the enemies. And beautiful colors in general

Sound: 6/10 Mostly forgettable, but at least not particularly annoying or anything. It's going to be interesting to see how, when I was playing old NES and MSX games I would have sound off before, but now that I've gotten used to truly rudimentary sounds in Atari and early arcade games, I may appreciate those early actual soundtracks that much more.

Play: 8/10 You know I always love when you can shoot enemy bullets to destroy them. A somewhat innovative game, besides being another shooter game heh. Cuz you have both horizontally approaching enemies and the vertical ones. The controls are tight and responsive, tho it's kinda weird how after destrying a vertical enemy there seems to be a longer "cool down" time between bullets than when you're just spraying them off to the sky ha. I felt pretty good at this. It's nice to play an Atari game where you can just jump in and figure things out on your own. Only kinda confusing part, that did take a minute to get used to, was Up to shoot to Left and Down to shoot to Right. Eventually got pretty used to that. Oh, and you can't shoot while moving hence the change in sprite graphic to that funny looking upward-facing arrow thing (wish I could get a good screenshot of it heh). Perhaps the manual would clarify more, but I kinda like the "mystery" remaining intact so that there's actually an Atari shooter I might replay someday!

Feel: 8/10 The colors are great, the gameplay may be mostly your typical shooter but it felt pulled off well, just an all around good Atari style action shooter game.

Attachment: 8/10 This is definitely on my list of Atari shooter games to replay, up there with Space Invaders (well, that's arcade but you know). It may not have the novelty (tho it does do some innovations I haven't seen before) of those truly early shooters. And the challenge may not be enough till much higher points to most "true" gamers. But it was the right challenge level and gameplay and look for me :-p I suppose it could have benefited from a difficulty toggle (which it very well may have, again I didn't read the manual with this one). All the more reason to replay it someday, with the manual and potential higher difficulty levels.