Asteroids

The Good
Somewhere deep inside my brain there is an impulse that constantly tells me that if I want to play a classic “arcade” game that I need to go back to the very first manifestation of a game on a home console in order to get the most "authentic" experience. That is to say, in order to get the closest to the original game, I think that I need to find the earliest known version of that game and play it.

The Bad
Unfortunately, this impulse is seldom intuitive, and as such I am beginning to believe that, like my appendix, that part of my brain has lost most of it medical value and should be removed. For one thing must be understood about early console games that will give you a good understanding of why our parents were so respectful of arcades way back when. Porting “good” arcade games during the dawn of the console era was more often than not counter-productive and anti-progressive. One look at the arcade version and Atari version of Pac-man will give you a good idea of how almost all early “ports” back in the day unfolded. Old video game systems were simply not powerful enough to carry over the sleek graphics and tight controls of the arcade cabinets which make them so addicting.

Now if someone at the very start of the era of home-consoles started an anti-porting campaign to keep classic arcades open, Asteroids would probably be one of the poster-boys of this front. Asteroids suffers the typical maladies that came with early porting, from loss of controls to bad graphics.

As I turned on the game, I was unimpressed with the eye candy they gave me. The sleek, green, well-defined asteroids of the arcade had been replaced with pixilated, multi-colored diarrhea chunks floating around the screen. However, I soon realized that “floating” was somewhat of a misnomer, and I decided that “drifting vertically” was more precise, as that was what they all the asteroids did. At the start of each level, the asteroids only moved vertically, never horizontally or diagonally.

But wait, there’s more! I soon noticed the glaring lack of asteroids that reappeared in the center at the beginning of each level. I soon realized that the programmers were too lazy to come up with an asteroid generating system that did not spawn asteroids on top of you, and instead only chose to spawn them at the side of the levels to cover up their laziness. So at the start of each level I was faced with two vertically shifting strips of asteroids to the left and right of me, while I sat with my cute little space ship in the cold, empty center.

But lo, the geniuses forgot to take into account what might happen if you beat and level and you’re of to the side of the level instead of in the center. Your ship position does not reset to the center at the beginning of each round, and there’s no system stopping asteroids from spawning on top of you, meaning guaranteed death should you finish a level with your ship on in the center of the level.

What finally broke my patience was the fact that for some reason on my last life, my game froze and turned a dull shade of crap brown, which I finally accepted as appropriate considering that’s what I thought of the game after my experience.


The Bottom Line
There is truly a lesson to be learned from all of this, and that is the fact that if you really want to revisit your childhood and play some classic arcade games then just look for a free flash version on the GOD DAMN INTERNET. Seriously, if you can’t sleep at night knowing that you could be playing hours of your favorite classic video game, Asteroids, then don’t pull an all out effort trying to get the possibly unholiest of all its ports. In fact, what is truly sad is the fact that you possibly needed to read this review to tell you not to buy it, as if you were somehow debating whether this would be a worthy investment up until you read my enlightening opinion of it. Seriously, close this window right now. You’re wasting precious minutes of your life reading this quite pointless review.

The Good
The graphics, sounds control and feel of the game.

The Bad
Would have been nice to have a Hi-Score save integrated into the cartridge.

The Bottom Line
The game starts at the title screen with huge letters blazoned across "ASTEROIDS". I pressed the fire button on my trusty joystick and the game starts. The first thing I notice that really catches my eye is the colors. They are really used to a good effect. The asteroids each use multiple colors each to give a rendered lighting effect, they are also strewn with impact craters and rotate quite nicely. There are various colored asteroids, nothing like the blocky mess I came to love on the 2600 but nice rounded crater pitted asteroids. Your ship is a basic yellow and there are twinkling multi colored stars in the background (something Atari 7800 Galaga is sorely missing). The enemy UFO or Saucers that randomly come out have a distinct look and movement as well and really add to this already classic atmosphere and they come in two sizes as well.

The sound is basic but effective, you have your standard blaster sound as you shoot the asteroids. You also have the from previous asteroids games the familiar dun dun dun dun tones. When the UFO comes out besides looking really sharp you have the sounds it emits as well as eerie outer space sounds that would have been found in science fiction movies of the 50's. The Asteroid explosions are appropriately done, overall the sounds given the limitations of the Atari 7800 ala same sound as the Atari 2600 are really really good for this title.

The game has a nice progression. You will encounter more asteroids and the trajectories of each one is much more inline with the arcade than with the 2600 version. I have not noticed any slowdown with all of the action that goes on, this really shows the power of the 7800.

The last set of features that makes this a must own for your 7800 collection is the gameplay options. You can choose the following

1- Single player

2 - Two player (gameplay alternates)

3 - Two Player Competition (both ships are on the screen simultaneously fighting each other and Asteroids)

4 - Two Player Cooperative (both ships are on screen just blowing up everything besides each other and you are unable to kill each other as well)

There are multiple skill levels for each type of gameplay as well.

Overall all the game looks, sounds and plays much better than the arcade and is far and away better than any other offerings of this time. If you are a fan of Asteroids do yourself a favor and play this. If you don't yet own an ATARI 7800 then play it emulated it will be worth your time.

I would give this game a 95% overall.

The Good
In the Seventies, Atari released a number of cracking games including Pong, Breakout, and Lunar Lander. They were simple and straight to the point. They continued this tradition with Asteroids. I didn’t experience the game when it first came out in the arcades (I was just born), nor was I able to get a copy of it for the various home systems it was ported to (I only had a Commodore 64). I only discovered it through emulation.

You control a ship that can rotate left and right across the screen, fire from the front, and thrust forward. Numerous asteroids float across the screen, and your job is to break them up. The physics are amazing; if you keep holding the fire button down, your ship will keep zipping across the screen for a long time until it eventually slows down and stops. Your ship can also hyperspace, where you are transported to a random location on screen. It is likely that you will appear on top of an asteroid, especially if there are too many asteroids on the screen.

The asteroids wrap around the screen; when they go off the top edge, they re-appear at the bottom. This means that if you are close to the top or bottom, and you’re not paying any attention to your surroundings, then chances are your ship will be killed. I have noticed that if you do lose a life, your ship will not respawn if there are too many asteroids floating in the same spot; rather it waits until an area is clear of them.

When I played the original arcade version through MAME, I felt that when you fire upon one of the asteroids, the projectiles are very faint and you can’t see where they hit. This has been rectified in the Atari 2600 version. In my opinion, this version is superior to the arcade’s. For a start, there are sixty-six variations. Some of them let you use a shield instead of hyperspace, or face 180 degrees, allowing you to immediately fire upon an asteroid from behind. Then there’s the Deluxe variant. With the shield variation, it is designed to protect you while the asteroids float across your ship. Any more than five seconds, and your ship is destroyed.

One difficulty switch (in the “A” position) enables a blue flying saucer to appear and fire pot shots at you as it makes its way across the screen. Either it takes no notice of its surroundings, crashing into an asteroid, or it fires an accurate shot. If you make it to the later stages, you will be able to meet his little green brother who appears more frequently and is more accurate.

I am not a fan of Atari’s commercial for the game. An annoying, robotic voice I can hardly understand drowns out the dialogue between the actors. From what I can tell, the man of the spaceship went for a treasure hunt somewhere on Earth and managed to find a copy of Asteroids, which he returns to the spaceship to play with his children. They play for hours, to the point where his wife eventually gets so pissed off that she hurls a bowl of fruit at the TV screen. One positive thing I can say about this ad is that what you see and hear on the TV screen is what you’ll get.

The Bad
Why are the asteroids in different colors rather than just hollow like in the arcade version? This applies to all systems as well, not just the Atari 2600 version. Also, users who got the first revision of the machine or the Atari 2600 Jr. are unable to make use of this difficulty, since there is no such thing as a difficulty switch. Eric Schwartz’s “Asteroids Arcade” unofficial hack fixes both of these problems.

The Bottom Line
There is only one word to describe Asteroids: timeless. It can be played when you get home from work and feel like having a blast. If you love those classic Eighties shoot-em-ups, then give this game a try.