| Space Dungeon | |
| Developer: | Taito |
| Publisher: | Taito Atari, Inc. (5200)[1] |
| Designer: | Rex Battenberg[2] |
| Programmer: | Arcade Rex Battenberg Atari 5200 Allen Merrell Eric Knopp |
| Released: | 1981: Arcade 1983: Atari 5200 |
| Genre: | Multidirectional shooter |
| Modes: | 1-2 players alternating turns |
| Platforms: | Arcade, Atari 5200 |
Space Dungeon is a multidirectional shooter released as an arcade video game by Taito in 1981.[3] [4] Designed and programmed by Rex Battenberg, it was available both as a conversion kit and full arcade cabinet. An Atari 5200 port was published in 1983.
Like (1982), but preceding the release of that game, the controls are a pair of 8-directional joysticks: one for moving, one for shooting. Space Dungeon is one of the first twin-stick shooters, released the same year as Mars from Artic Electronics.[5]
Each level of Space Dungeon consists of 36 rooms arranged in a six-by-six grid. Rooms are connected by open doorways of various sizes. One room in each level is the entrance, where the player begins, and another is the "Collect Bonus" room. Other rooms may or may not contain laser defenses, hostile aliens, or various bits of treasure.
The goal in each level is to navigate using an automap to the room containing the "Collect Bonus" area, visiting as many rooms and collecting as much treasure as possible along the way.
The player's only weapon is a laser cannon, which fires a pulsing, solid beam in any of eight directions.
Higher scores are awarded for exiting each level with more treasures. A 10,000-point bonus is awarded if the player visits every single room on the level, whether or not all treasures on the level have been collected. Since an extra ship is awarded to the player every 10,000 points, this, and the large point values of the treasures (especially the later ones) created an interesting tension between securing the treasures already collected or risking losing ships to acquire more.
If the player's ship collides with an enemy or any of their spore shots before reaching the "Collect Bonus" cube, all collected treasure is dropped in the room where the ship was destroyed. This room is designated on the map by an "X".
The game counts from level 1 to 99, and upon completing 99, rolls over to zero. Levels two through nine, and then levels that are a multiple of one hundred, are preceded by a rhyme:
On reaching level 10, the game then displays "Sorry. No more rhymes." No further messages appear until the player rolls-over the level counter by completing level 99. At level 100, the level counter resets to zero, and the message displayed is "You're a hero on level zero." Thus this same "level zero" message will be repeated every hundredth level.
The only contemporary home version of Space Dungeon was for the Atari 5200 system in 1983. The game cartridge came prepackaged with a dual-controller holder, allowing players to snap two stock controllers in and play like in the arcade. The game differs from the arcade original in that most of the objects are approximately four times the size, spores can be launched by enemies only in the eight ordinal directions, and the enemies are less aggressive.
The Atari 5200 version of Space Dungeon was reviewed by Video magazine in its "Arcade Alley" column where it was described as "such a triumph that not even the questionable 5200 controllers can spoil the fun."[6] Dawn Gordon of MicroKids called the port "yet another Atari Supersystem standout."[7] In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the Atari 5200 version 64th on their "Top 100 Video Games."[8]
Space Dungeon was later released as part of the PlayStation Portable collection Taito Legends Power-Up.