Where It All Began - 1986
In 1986, I was a teenager fascinated by computers and video games. Like so many kids growing up during the early days of home computing, I spent countless hours with my Atari, discovering new worlds and imagining what it would be like to create one of my own.
Eventually, I decided to try.
I called my game Warrior Caverns.
Armed with graph paper, pencils, and my Atari computer, I began designing a fantasy adventure filled with dangerous creatures, mysterious caverns, hidden passages, weapons, and treasures.
I drew maps, designed characters, planned rooms, and wrote programs. Every piece had to be carefully considered because the computers of that era had very limited memory and processing power.
There were no modern game engines to make things easy. Creating a game meant figuring out how to make the computer do what you imagined.
And I loved it.
The Adventure Put on Hold - The 1990s
As the 1980's came to an end, the world of personal computing was changing rapidly. The Atari 8-bit computers I had grown up with were slowly giving way to a new generation of PCs.
Then came Microsoft Windows and Visual Basic.
I saw an opportunity to create something entirely different. Windows appeared to be the future, and I wanted to be part of it.
During the 1990's, I began developing shareware applications for Windows. Programming became a major part of my life, and the opportunities seemed endless.
But pursuing those opportunities meant making a decision.
Warrior Caverns would have to wait.
I packed away my sketches, maps, design documents, and source code. The game I had spent so many hours imagining and building remained unfinished.
At the time, I had no idea that nearly four decades after starting the project, I would return to finish what I had begun.
Rediscovering the Past
As the years passed, my Atari computers and the unfinished Warrior Caverns project became distant memories. But my love for those early days of home computing never really went away.
A few years ago, I began collecting the Atari 8-bit games and programs I remembered from my childhood. What started as a little nostalgia gradually became a growing collection of cartridges, floppy disks, and boxed software.
Eventually, I decided to set up my original Atari 800XL again so I could experience those games on the same hardware I had used decades earlier.
Hearing the familiar sounds, loading programs from floppy disks, and seeing those colorful Atari graphics brought back memories I hadn't thought about in years.
Then something unexpected happened.
I found my original Warrior Caverns development folder.
Inside were the maps, character sketches, handwritten notes, design documents, and even the original source code I had written so many years earlier.
Looking through those pages, I remembered the excitement of creating my own adventure. All the ideas, all the planning, and all the hours spent trying to make that little computer do something extraordinary.
And then a thought occurred to me.
What if I finally finished it?
I still had the original designs. I had the computer. And now, after all these years, I had something I didn't have back then.
The time to bring Warrior Caverns to life.
Bringing the Game Back to Life
Finding those original designs brought back something I hadn't felt in decades: the excitement of creating a game for the Atari.
But this time, things were different.
I had more experience, better development tools, and something I didn't have back in 1986, the opportunity to finally finish what I had started.
I decided to rebuild Warrior Caverns for the Atari 8-bit computers I had loved growing up. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my original game while creating something that could stand alongside the classic Atari games I remembered.
The original maps, characters, and ideas became the foundation for a much larger adventure. Six caverns, dangerous enemies, hidden passages, weapons, upgrades, and challenging bosses would bring that childhood vision to life.
Modern development tools made things possible that I could only dream about in the 1980's. But the challenge remained the same: creating an exciting adventure within the limitations of an Atari 800XL and its 64K of memory.
Forty years later, I was developing Warrior Caverns again.
And this time, I intended to finish it.
Forty Years Later, the Adventure Begins
What began in 1986 as sketches on graph paper and lines of code has finally become the game I imagined all those years ago.
Warrior Caverns is a complete adventure built for the Atari 8-bit computer, designed to capture the excitement and challenge of the games I grew up playing.
Across six mysterious caverns, players will encounter dangerous creatures, discover hidden rooms, collect powerful weapons, and battle increasingly difficult bosses. Every cavern brings new challenges and secrets waiting to be discovered. There are three difficulty levels to select from, allowing any skill level to feel progression.
Throughout development, I wanted to stay true to the original vision. The game needed to feel like something that could have existed during the golden age of Atari gaming, while taking advantage of everything I've learned over the past forty years.
Today, Warrior Caverns is more than just a video game to me. It's a piece of my childhood brought back to life, a personal accomplishment, and a tribute to the computer that first inspired me to create.
The adventure that began in 1986 is finally ready for a new generation of Atari players.
Crater Monkey
Warrior Caverns – Atari 8-Bit Digital Edition
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