"It's a classic, its color, and its four player. What more could you expect?"

Asteroids was one of the first games to grace the arcade cabinets. It's simplicity made it easy to pick up while it's challenge left you putting more silver into the cabinet. This combination made it a perfect title to port onto any system. The VCS did a so-so job, but the 8-bit version was phenomenal in comparison. Heres why;

The game did a good job emulating the excitement of the arcade version, while adding a generous amount of features. The most obvious of these when you boot up is the addition of color. Asteroids have been turned to a light shade of blue, and your ship is now green. Everything is also filled in now, instead of being a simple outline. This makes the display much easier on the eyes. One complaint I have is the fact that asteroids black each other out when they overlap. This can occasionally mean that asteroids completely overlap each other, and become invisible for a moment. It doesn't happen much, however, and when it does its for a very brief amount of time.

To top off the improved graphics, there are also many more options thrown into the mix. Instead of having just the hyperspace option to protect your ship, for example, there is now a shield option, classic hyperspace, a flip over move (turns your ship 180 degrees), and no shields for an extra challenge. On the latter two, since you have no real safety net, you score double for everything, increasing the amount of free lives you get. There is also a "bounce" option which, instead of the asteroids going off one side of the screen and onto the other, they bounce off of the sides of the screen. There is also an easy mode and hard mode. These perks make the game much more enjoyable, and a better game as a whole, but this wasn't the best part.....

By far the best part of this game was its four simultaneous player capability. Thats right, long before Halo or Super Smash, you could duke it out between four people at once. Not only this, but there are also many modes of multiplayer. First (and most lame) is the one-at-a-time mode. Lets skip that, because nobody really would ever play it that way given other options and it only worked for two player. The second is Melee mode. In this mode, you have the ability to kill your friends for big points! Its not as fun as you would think, as it ends the game in seconds. The third mode is Coop. Here you work with all friends as a team, and as a result, games tend to last much much longer. The final mode, only compatible with three or more players, is team mode. Here you are paired up with one player, but duke it out with the other two (or one in 3p mode) Friendly fire is put in place so you can't accidentally kill off your teammate. Teams have the option of having free standing player scores and lives, or shared lives. Being one of the first home video games with four player compatibility, along with so many options, really jacks the score up for this game.

Diverting from the greatness, sound quality was as simple as it gets. A few novelty sounds for shooting, propelling, and destroying are pretty much all you will hear in the department of sound effects. Add to this the trademark background "heartbeat" noise, and you've got yourself some average sound for the era.

Control is a little loose, especially when you're trying to propell and have virtually no control over stopping your ship. If you stay put, then you are fine. Shields take a little longer to come up than I would have liked, but it really only adds challenge to the game.

Collision is a little off. Sometimes an asteroid will graze the side of your ship and have no effect, while other times it will only come close, but destroy you anyways. Nothing really major though.

As for the story, it goes a little something like this:
One day, you decide to ride your little green triangular space ship to the outer cosmos when suddenly, you are thrown into a never ending montage of asteroids. You must shoot them and destroy them to survive as long as you possibly can.

So what we have here is an excellent port of a classic that deserves a little more recognition than it had as of 3-1-07 (which is this review) If you happen upon this game and own an Atari 800 or 400 get it. If you own a newer 8-bit, the tough luck, they did away with the third and fourth player slots (you can still do two player though). You may not actually find the game in a store, but can easily find it on auction sites for low prices. To sum this bad boy up; its a classic, its color and its four player. What more could you expect?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/07