Asteroids is a genuine classic and one of the first games to gain widespread popularity, and for good reason. It's just you, one screen that loops, a bunch of space rocks of varying speeds and sizes, and the occasional UFO that shoots at you. All you have to do is survive. It is certainly simple, but the amount of spatial awareness combined with solid understandings of the control mechanics make the game surprisingly deep to score in. There's no ending or any sort, so it's not really like this is a game you can ever truly "complete", but the fact that despite that I still want to put more quarters in the machine to get better and score higher definitely shows its quality. The game also looks fantastic when played on the original cabinet, with the very sharp and glowing vector lines across the screen. Definitely worth a try even if its just to see where things (sort of) began

Definitely can see why this is one of the most popular arcades games and for good reason, Asteroids still remains a great time even today.

The premise is simple: shoot down asteroids and any enemies you encounter along the way while not getting destroyed yourself. Shooting down things in an arcade is always fun and I was surprised with the momentum based movement that immediately reminded me of Lunar Lander for a bit.

Challenging and a reason to keep playing, sometimes what more could you ask for back then?

Arcade:
Iconic vector game where you avoid and shoot asteroids, it doesn't get more simpler than that to explain. The game is a classic and really awesome with it's inertia gameplay while controlling the ship's thrusters avoiding small asteroids from bigger ones.

It's a treat to play, it's iconic, it's asteroids.

Played on Atari 50.

One of gaming's earliest megaton hits. Even these days, it's not bad, if simple. Momentum on the meteors splitting up is actually a neat show of physics, since it's a fairly consistent defense to blast away a meteor coming at you. Wrap-around is a neat gimmick for this early into gaming, particularly since it impacts the player's shots as well as the player themselves. Hyperspace - a carry-over from Spacewar! - is rarely the best solution, so you mostly lean on it as a panic gamble. But it's cute that it exists, very much an element of early gaming that doesn't make sense to translate to modern conventions.

Arcade Week: Day #3

Yeah it’s good and all but it doesn’t have any adorable alien names. Clearly space invaders is superior.

Atari were quite the force in the early 80’s. So it only made sense to milk that force and create as many games as possible, but remember when Atari genuinely had ideas? This is one of them. Asteroids was a game that took people by storm with its simple yet addicting gameplay. The game was conceived by Lyle rains and programmed by Ed Logg, two people who aren’t given enough respect for their work on this brilliant game. Well let’s dive in already and see their brilliant work!

You play as a triangular ship, shooting down asteroids (the name of the game) and ufo’s once they appear. You can move left and right and turn left and right (obviously) and if you try going off the map you’ll end up on the other side. You can also hyperspace which makes you disappear and then reappear (the strategy is a tiny bit risky however). You get 3-5 lives and the maximum amount of points you can get is 99,990 before the game just decides to turn you in. They can’t stand the fact that you’re a fighter (I said I wouldn’t bring space invaders and asteroids politics into this god dammit).

Overall, asteroids is still a pretty fun game. It’s simple and has aged pretty well. The programming team clearly had a blast (literally) making this and I respect what they tried to do…but space invaders is better I’m sorry!

Simple, very fun, quite addicting, space invaders is better