#0008 Asteroids

So! Continuing in my quest to play my way through video game history brings me to the celebrated hit, “Asteroids”. Developed in 1979 by Atari, this game, along with Space Invaders, ushered in the “Golden Age” of video games. It displaced Space Invaders in terms of popularity and became Atari’s highest selling Arcade Machine of all time with over 70,000 units sold, and was so popular, that some of the larger arcade operators had to install larger coin boxes to hold the amount of money that people were throwing at this game!

So yeah, this game was a big hit. So just what do you do in this game? You play as a triangle and you shoot rocks. Oh, and the occasional UFO that flies by… That’s it! There’s really nothing more to this game, very blue collar.

I remember as a kid there was a “Classics” section at my local Arcade and one of the games there was Asteroids and I remember playing it and not really being that impressed. Now, nearly 20 years later, I was reading about the hype for this game and thinking to myself “why didn’t I like this game as a kid”, well, after finally finding a version that works I can safely say, I remember now! The game has just no real challenge. Unlike Space Invaders, where the aliens would speed up as time goes on causing you to panic and hurry up and shoot them. Asteroids remains just as difficult in the beginning as at the end, the only real challenge is dodging the debris that comes your way. It is very easy to clear the entire screen which is pretty anti climactic. Something like that should be very difficult so that when you finally pull it off, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Now, do I think this game is bad? Of course not! In fact, I’d say the game is pretty legendary, and even fairly revolutionary as it is the first game that I’ve played so far that has an actual physics engine. I just didn’t like it as much as Space Invaders.

Next up! Galaxian!