Asteroids (thing)

Asteroids was an old arcade game released by Atari Games way back in 1979.

Asteroids marked a whole new era in space games. It was unlike any previous title. This was Atari's second vector game, and it was such an instant hit that they were forced to halt Lunar Lander production simply to try and keep up with the demand for Asteroids (in fact over 1000 copies of Asteroids were shipped in Lunar Lander cabinets, complete with Lunar Lander sideart).

This game spawned three sequels (Asteroids Deluxe, Space Duel, and Blasteroids), and has been ported to several consoles (the Atari 2600 port was especially good).

The game is rather simple. You pilot a small wedge shaped ship, and you begin play in the middle of an asteroid field. Large slow moving asteroids surround you, when shot they break into two medium sized asteroids, which will each break into three small, fast moving asteroids. Shooting the small asteroids makes them disappear. Your goal is simply to eliminate all the asteroids from the playing field, while avoiding anything that would cause you to lose a life (touching an asteroid, or getting shot by a flying saucer).

The playfield consists of a single screen (which wraps around in each direction). Your controls consist of five buttons which are "rotate right", "rotate left", "thrust", "fire", and "hyperspace". The ship moves rather realistically for a zero gravity craft, which means that it keeps moving even after you stop thrusting. This takes a little practice to get used to, but it really enhances gameplay, as it allows you to do fly-bys of asteroids and enemy ships.

There are two types of flying saucers that you might encounter. The first type is large, slow moving, and stupid. These are quite easy to shoot down. While the second type is small, moves quickly, and is more intelligent in its actions. These are the highest point value objects in the game, but are dangerous to approach.

There are three basic strategies that you might use while playing this game. The first is the newbie method. The idea behind the newbie method is that you do not use the thrust button at all, simply rotate in place, and use the hyperspace button if things get too thick. This method actually works for the first few levels, but is useless later on. The normal method is just to simply play the game, you won't rack up the highest score, but this is the most fun way to play. The final method is known as "lurking". While lurking you should shoot out all the asteroids except for one (or two), and position your ship in a corner. Soon small flying saucers will start appearing regularly, simply shoot these down for points (the best way to hit them is to wrap your shots around to the other side of the screen). This method assures an outrageous score (after some practice), but can get boring fairly quickly.

The Asteroids cabinet was identical in construction to the Lunar Lander cabinet. It was a black upright with sideart that featured a scene of a starship in a blue field of asteroids (with several red explosions thrown in for good measure). The marquee featured almost identical graphics to the sideart (with the addition of the familiar yellow "Asteroids" logo). The control panel was a busy looking red, white, and blue affair that had no joysticks (only buttons). While the monitor bezel had kind of a nebula scene printed on it (this did not really seem to match the rest of the machine). Two different sets of coin doors were made on this title, with early cabinets having a unique design that was soon abandoned in favor of the same one that Atari had been using on Lunar Lander.

The cocktail version was a little uncommon, it was rather unremarkable in appearance. It seems that Atari put all the effort into the upright, and merely shipped a generic cocktail version as an afterthought.

You can play this title in a variety of places. The easiest way is on your home computer using MAME (or one of several other emulators). If emulation isn't your thing you can try one of the many PC ports, or simply spend a few dollars on the Atari 2600 version (assuming you still have an Atari 2600). You may also be able to find a working machine out in the wild. This is a very common game, but they are rarely seen on location anymore (my last spotting of a working unit out in public was at a roller rink back in 1996). Most of them have found their way into the hands of collectors. If all else fails (and you don't want to buy one), you can always visit an amusement industry auction, as there will almost assuredly be at least one Asteroids machine at any given auction (you can play them for free until the auction is over).

This is a great title to add this to your arcade game collection, but only if you can find it at a decent price. The collectors market has driven the price up unnaturally high (see my Ms. Pac-Man writeup), so you may want to really wait for a deal (or for the inevitable price drop). Asteroids is a bit problematic (like all vector games), but it is so popular that it is fairly easy to get repair work done (by someone who is actually familiar with the intricacies of this title).