Caverns of Mars is a computer game for the Atari 8-bit computers, programmed by Greg Christensen and published by Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. Christensen, a high-school student at the time, won a $3,000 prize from Atari, and his first royalty check was $18,000. He would go on to receive over $100,000 in royalties from the game, making it the most popular APX title.

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  • 1981-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
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  • 1981-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
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  • Caverns of Mars is a computer game for the Atari 8-bit computers, programmed by Greg Christensen and published by Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. Christensen, a high-school student at the time, won a $3,000 prize from Atari, and his first royalty check was $18,000. He would go on to receive over $100,000 in royalties from the game, making it the most popular APX title. Caverns of Mars is a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up similar in concept and visual style to the 1981 arcade game Scramble. Christensen changed the orientation of the caverns from Scramble, having the player fly down into them as opposed to sideways through them. Using a joystick, the player controls a ship descending into the tunnels of Mars, firing at targets along the way. Unlike Scramble, the targets generally did not move relative to the map. There are several different sections of the map, with easier skill levels removing the more difficult sections from the areas through which the player has to fly. At the end of the map is a reactor, which the player lands on and thereby sets to explode. The player then has to reverse course and fly up and out of the cavern to escape before the reactor explodes. In 1983, Atari released Caverns of Mars on a cartridge (RX8021) as an official Atari product, one of the few user-submitted programs to ever become an official Atari product. In 2005, a version of "Caverns of Mars" was included on the Atari Flashback 2 classic game console. In 2006 a homebrew version of the original Caverns of Mars, titled Conquest of Mars, was released in cartridge form via AtariAge for the Atari 2600 system.
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  • Greg Christensen
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  • Greg Christensen
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  • Assembler
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  • Caverns of Mars
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  • Caverns of Mars is a computer game for the Atari 8-bit computers, programmed by Greg Christensen and published by Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. Christensen, a high-school student at the time, won a $3,000 prize from Atari, and his first royalty check was $18,000. He would go on to receive over $100,000 in royalties from the game, making it the most popular APX title.
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  • Caverns of Mars
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  • Caverns of Mars
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