Space Dungeon weirdness

[Big_Mo]

While trying to figure out some controller problems on a 5200, I was doing test cases with Space Dungeon and I discovered a few oddities.

 

First, I'd forgotten that if, after passing through a door, if you exit the room before the barrier that momentarily blocks the door is cleared, the barrier becomes a permanent wall. Funny that, but then I tried to see if I could quickly pop through doors and out of rooms fast enough so that I could close all the doors to that room, sealing it off. After a few tries, I managed to do it to the starting room on Level 2, but, when I got killed my new ship appeared in to room I'd sealed up, so I was trapped with no way out!

 

Realizing it was reset or nothing, I parked by ship at the vertical center against the left wall, left the "fire" stick tilted to the right, and watched for a few moments as an occasional enemy would pop in and run into my laser. I walked away. When I came back a few hours later, the screen was on Game Over, but this autofire setup I'd done had yielded over 35,000 points.

 

I tried the same trick later, but this time I only got about 3000 points.

 

Weird.