Alien Hell

Atari 800 - Released - 1981

You are making your way through the murky depths of the mine shaft when you hear a disturbing sound. Paying no attention it, you step forward. However, in an instance you are completely taken aback as you look behind and see a blazing fireball speeding in your direction. In a splash second, you perform a huge leap towards an opening in the wall. „Phew“, you think to yourself, „that was close!“. Alien Hell is a top-down survival adventure game which stars a desperate human trapped on the planet Sol III. Inhabited originally by humans, this planet has been gradually taken over by an alien race to exploit the resources of the planet. Because of the harmful effect of the raw materials on aliens, the strange race has decided to use human labour for extraction instead. One day the force field that protects our hero’s jailcell begins to malfunction, and the man dashes toward the exit. That is only the beginning of the nightmare that awaits him. The protagonist of Alien Hell has no weapons and the only way to survive is to run. Alien guards, fireballs and toxic gas are some of the many things that the player has to avoid. Crystals can be found in certain places, however their utility is up for the player to figure out. There is a choice of difficulty level in the beginning of the game. Harder difficulty levels increase the agility of the enemy aliens and the velocity of many natural hazards. To finish the game, the player has to find his way out of the labyrinth.

Astron IV

Atari 800 - Released - 1982

Astron IV is pretty much a precursor to Astron IX except with more primitive graphics, and coded entirely in BASIC.

Devil's Caverns

Atari 800 - ROM Hack - 1980

Travel through the caves and collect as much gold as possible, then return to room 1 and type 99 (ends the game, gives rating based on gold). There are twenty rooms in each level. When you enter a level it is randomly created. A "Dropoff" is a one-way exit to the next-lower level (type -1 to take it) and a "slide" is a one-way exit to another room in the same level. Each room has 0-3 exits (sometimes exits are one-way even if they don't say so). When trapped, use your wand (99) which creates an exit, or might backfire and lower your speed/strength. Attack monsters with 0 to gain experience and release some amount of gold (maximum amount is listed before you attack). To get gold, move to another room. Return to room 1 (on any level) and type 0 to trade experience for speed and strength (1:1 relationship). If "demons" or "gas" are in the room, each turn they have a chance of hurting you. You can't hurt them. There are also random chances of tremors which either trap you or rearrange the level. On lower levels, monsters are harder, you lose stats faster, but gold rewards are higher.

Mar Tesoro

Atari 800 - Released - 1981

Mar Tesoro (which is Spanish for Sea Treasure) is a game which simulates the search for sunken treasure. You start with $10,000 with which you must hire a boat, crew and equipment of various sorts from the main port of "The Island". Then you can explore and bring back any treasure that you find. In port, you can hire a boat and select the type of equipment to use (scuba, diving rig or a diving bell). These allow you to reach treasure at increasing depths. You can also hire a historian who can estimate the worth of a treasure by a sample retrieved by the diver, without having to recover the entire treasure. Additional crew can be hired to assist in salvage operations. Once the daily hire charge and time has been determined, you can set out on your expedition. On leaving port, you may choose to look at the chart which shows the randomly generated island, the surrounding sea, and previously dropped buoys. You can move the ship, represented by an asterisk, from square to square in four directions. Movement uses time, which is shown below the chart. If you exceed the agreed upon rental time you will be nabbed by the coast guard. Other randomly occurring incidents such as bad weather and engine trouble may also use time. Once you have decided upon a spot to search, you may dive. This brings up a side view of the scene. You control the diver, who must visit the ocean floor and return a sample of any possible treasure. Treasure, which ranges from a shipwreck to an oyster bed with pearls, usually appears a different colour from the rest of the sea floor. It may also be guarded by a giant squid, which must be avoided, or you will lose a worker or perhaps your own life. Having brought the sample back to the boat, you have the option of retrieving the treasure. The historian (if you have one) will offer an opinion on the likelihood of a good treasure. The time it takes to retrieve a treasure depends on the depth. If you don't have enough time, you can mark the site with a buoy and continue elsewhere. After returning to port, you are offered money for all of your recovered treasures. Then you may either leave the game (and get you final rating), or continue the game to look for even greater fortune.

Maze of Death

Atari 800 - Released - 1981

Maze of Death is similar to Atari's Adventure (not the least visually) but has less puzzle solving and is more about collecting things and avoiding traps and enemies. The player controls an agent whose task it is to stop a cosmitron device from exploding. The device has become critical after a sinister scientist has removed it's radiation control cubes and the player has to retrieve a number of these (two to four depending on level) and put them back in the device. There is a time limit and if the cubes are not brought back in time everything will blow up. Making contact with various obstacles and enemies will also lead to failure. There are five difficulty levels which decide the time limit and which obstacles the player will come across. Enemies include roaming robots while traps include mines in dark rooms where sound is the player's only clue and lasers that randomly flash as the player passes through a room.