How to play Space Cavern online
- Move left and right: left and right arrow keys
- Fire upwards: Space bar
- Fire to the right: down arrow (pulling the joystick back); you don’t need the fire button for this
- Fire to the left: up arrow (pushing the joystick forward)
- Choose a game variation: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Speed of the enemy shots: F4 (Player 1 difficulty switch); B is slower, A is faster
Gameplay
According to the manual, you command a starship that has landed on an uncharted planet with caverns under its surface. The creatures overhead are called Electrosauri. Their horns build up charges that they fire at you, and a single hit costs you a man. Small Electrosauri are worth more points than big ones. The marsupods that run at you from the left and right are worth the most, but you can only stop them with your sideways disrupter ray.
| Target | Points |
|---|---|
| Large Electrosaurus | 115 |
| Small Electrosaurus | 165 |
| Marsupod | 200 |
You start with four men. Every 20,000 points you get a lost man back, but you can never have more than four at a time. In two-player games, the players take turns, swapping each time one of them loses a man.
Game variations
The manual lists 48 variations, built from five choices: one or two players, two or four Electrosauri on screen, blasts that fall straight down or at random angles, marsupods switched on or off, and three levels of play. The difficulty switch then controls how fast the enemy shots fall.
Tips
- Learn without the marsupods first. Pick a variation with marsupods switched off and only two Electrosauri, and leave the difficulty switch on B, until you can read the falling shots.
- Remember the sideways fire is reversed. Down fires right and up fires left. Practise it a few times before the side attackers are switched on.
- Glance at both edges after every shot. Marsupods are worth the most and are the easiest to forget while you aim upwards.
- Don’t stand still under a target. Slide in, fire and slide out again before the return shot reaches the floor.
The story behind Space Cavern
Games by Apollo was a small, short-lived publisher. Its founder, Pat Roper, liked Imagic’s Demon Attack so much that he asked Dan Oliver to make a game along the same lines, and Space Cavern was the result. Reviews were mixed: the graphics were praised, while the unusual sideways controls divided critics. Videogaming Illustrated called it “arguably the best space game on the market”, and it received an honourable mention for Best Action Video Game at the 1983 Arkie Awards.
Apollo was in serious financial trouble by then. It filed for bankruptcy protection in November 1982 and closed in 1983, and a planned Atari 5200 version of Space Cavern was abandoned. In 1983 the publisher Panda put out the same game under a new name, Space Canyon, which you can also play on this site.
Similar games to play next
- Space Canyon – Panda’s 1983 re-release of this game
- Demon Attack – the Imagic shooter that inspired Space Cavern
- Shark Attack – another game from Games by Apollo
- Space Invaders – the classic game of shooting upwards at attackers