I played through Caverns of Callisto last night. The game didn’t change much from what I’ve already described. The map was divided into 5 Levels and you need a key to get between each one. There are 8 panels in each section to be collected as well as the key + an ion drive on level 5.

New creatures are added in each level. By the final one, spiders are dropping down from above and little purple arrow things head straight for you all the time. I didn’t try to shoot these as a rule, they all vanish if you can move them off screen so its easiest to run away and come back again.

The image above shows the laser shooting device that guarded each key. These could kill you through the protective bubble, as could little mini volcanoes which had a nasty habit of shooting out fireballs every time I went near them.

The thing that strikes me more than anything else playing this game, is the insane level of difficulty considering you had to play through the whole thing in one go to win  This was nothing unusual for games at the time, but using savestates this game took me over an hour to finish.  There is no way I would ever have been able to finish this without them.

Once I’d retrieved all the panels and the ion drive, I had to head back to the start again to reach my ship. Thankfully all the fuel reappears in the first 4 levels.

When I finally get to the start, you get a very brief scrolling message saying you can now head back to earth with details of your exploration and thats it.

I quite enjoyed playing through this game, you never have time to get bored and the level of challenge keeps going up. This was a pretty good shooter for 1983, but doesn’t have much to set it apart from countless others. 

 Next: Moebius