Asteroids

"Bad conversion of my favourite arcade game"

Asteroids was a great favorite of mine when it first appeared in the Arcades. I really liked the ''Vector Graphics'' style of it. For those who don't know that refers to graphics that looked like white outlines on a balk background. It made the game look very sophisticated and even some years later I still looks good enough and is enough of a cult image to be seen on T-shirts!

The consisted of a simple triangular ship, how started in the middle of the screen. Large hollow asteroids fell across the screen and each blast would split them into three smaller asteroids, hit each of these and they will split again into the smallest asteroids. Large or small, one touch of an asteroid can break your ship.

You could move about across the screen, swivel to fire and even make a desperate leap into hyperspace, All made simple by the full and elegant controls provided on the Arcade cabinet. You even had the tactics for high scores to impress your friends with, luring out the UFO and lurking in the corners to avoid the worst of the asteroids. It was an all round modern classic and still challenging fun today.

However the Atari 2600 version is not fit to stand in the shadow of this great game. There are many things wrong with it. Not least the loss of that distinctive black and white look, replaced by crude colored triangles and blobs.

The controls are also your worst nightmare. With the Atari one button joystick having to cope with a variety of complex inputs , controlling you craft becomes a real struggle. To swivel your craft move the joystick left and right, to start moving forwards press forwards and to jump to hyperspace, pull it back. Sounds easy? Well in the heat of battle try quickly swiveling around to shoot an asteroid behind you, unless you tap it through using left and right (which is too slow for a game like this), you intuitively want to pull backwards. Alas this zaps you across the screen usually into the path of an asteroid.

Once you have begun to drift about it is hard to bring your craft to a stop and again you'll spend alot of time lazily crashing into the high speed rocks around you. of course you may think you have dodged a rock, only for the execrable collision detection to kick in and blow you up after the fact.

Even the Asteroids act illogically. Some split into two pieces, others don't split they just shrink. I have no idea if this is related to he asteroids color scheme or a way to cut down on the amount of rocks flying about the screen. Either way it makes planning your shooting volleys much more awkward.

A game that requires quick reflexes and ultra-precise controls such as Asteroids, is one that is ill suited to a console with such a limited joystick interface. It maybe be in color, but its a pale imitation of the glorious black and white original.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/03, Updated 01/12/03