Not bad for a first game! Remaking the classics to learn from them is always a good idea :)

Hitboxes feel a little unfair, I suppose they are just the bounding rects of the sprites? As a rule of thumb, hurtboxes should usually never be at a point where there’s not also a pixel of the sprite present. The easiest way to achieve this here would probably to turn the hitbox into a circle with a certain radius. Pixel-perfect collision would also be a possibility.

Graphics are not bad, I particularily like the particle effects you added. You might want to try playing with alpha blending or rotating sprites, though that might slightly break the retro aesthetic.

I think you’re up for a game of your own now, or at least put your own spin on an existing game! Keep it up!

You started with cloning a classic aracde game - that's a nice decision! Was playing this game a lot on Atari console together with a friend - nice memories :-)

You already experimented with adding particles - if you want to push this even further, my suggestion would be to turn the classic look into some state-of-the-art glass/glow like art style.

Someone did that for Tetris (another classic game) and it turned out really fresh and great:

A second game I know with such a look is"Will You Snail?"