Asteroids

"A real, real old game, still pretty fun though"

Remember the vector based graphics video game explosion back in the late 70s and early 80s? Well, many good games came out during this period, but to most people, one game stands out above the rest. This game is, of course, Asteroids, one of the most classic games of all time.

The object of Asteroids is simple, you're a space ship, and you have to destroy all of the asteroids. You have several moves at your disposal. You can turn in any direction, you can thrust, you can shoot, and you can warp. Warping was always risky cause you would just appear in a random spot on the screen, often times on top of an asteroid! Thrusting was difficult to control because of the lack of gravity, and the frictionless space, so it was usually best to just thrust when neccessary. There were three sizes of asteroids. There was the big slow type, the medium medium-speed type, and the small fast type. By shooting a big asteroid it'd break off into medium asteroids, shoot them and they'd break off into smaller asteroids, and shoot the small asteroids and they'd dissappear. Of course, touching an asteroid meant death, and it was pretty tricky to avoid them sometimes. Every once in a while a UFO would fly by shooting lasers in every direction. If you got shot you died, but it also shot down asteroids often too. You could shoot the UFO for big points too.

Well, it really wouldn't be fair to judge Asteroid's graphics by today's standards. The graphics were vector based, meaning that all they were were the same colored lines. But considering everything, the graphics aren't really THAT bad...The sound is mostly just exploding asteroids and stuff, nothing really that special.

I'm sure all of you reading this have played Asteroids before. However, it is a suprisingly fun game when you really get into it, and Asteroids has in many ways stood the test of time for almost 20 years. It can get pretty addicting too. You may have a tough time finding this one in an arcade nowadays, but if you do, there's a good chance that it's a nickel machine. You can also search the internet for asteroid clones, but the original is usually the best. However, considering this game's age, it's excellant.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 08/07/01