Astrosmash

"Oh! This game just makes you want to hook up your old systems."

Oh, Astrosmash! You are so fun filled and happy. This was THE game to own if you had the Mattel Intellivision. That was saying a lot, to a very simple game. Simple, yet addictive. Like sugar on toast, faithful readers. Sugar on toast. You should try putting sugar on toast. This is what classic game should be like: still playable right now, and gives even the pickiest of gamers an enjoyable experience. Though this could be called the Intellivision’s leading game, as it had no Pitfall like the 2600. Though it has a similar feel to Asteroids, it is something all it’s own. If you are lucky to have a cartridge of this, think about popping it into your old console.

Astrosmash really doesn’t have a story. But I’ll tell you one. It seems like these asteroids are falling on Earth. Very slow moving ones. You are in a tank. You can shoot these asteroids, breaking them into little pieces. You must make sure that no asteroids make it down to the surface, or you, will lose points (possibly from them hitting a city of some sort on the ground.). You also must face aliens who shoot down at you, from UFO like objects. It plays better then what I said, trust me.

The Graphical capabilities on Mattel’s console were tested by this game for the first time. Mattel wanted an arcade paced shooter, and because it had a slower CPU then the 2600, it wasn’t really up the task until Astrosmash came out. All the colors (all 6 of them) look like poo, but they should, when considering that is game is old enough to have children. The asteroids, you can tell what they are, along with the other enemy, the UFO. Most of the things are in white (like your tank) and don’t have any real feel to them. I know that this game is old, and they really tried there best, you really, REALLY, needed a very large imagination to think that you were a pilot shooting down the things that could destroy all humanity. After a while, when you have gotten a certain amount of points, the background changes colors, most purple to aqua to yellow etc.

Since Astrosmash is a “rail shooter” which means that you can only move your ship on a 1-D plane (just a line) but so where most of the shooters of the time, and I don’t think you could of done that on any console at the time of this game’s release. This was the standout shooter for the Intellivision, and it shows with it’s straight out destroy everything gameplay that has worked so well in others games (Contra anyone?) The game is different, from most of the others because of its unique scoring system. When an asteroid hits Earth, you lose points, not a life. You gain back points by destroying all the harmful things onscreen. The bottom rows of numbers move you, and the top shoot. Very simple for a controllers with many, many buttons. You can also use the overlays to help you, if you don’t believe me. If you were good enough, you could last for days (pausing to eat, sleep, drink, and go to the bathroom counts also) so people could have all those 9s up on the screen, and that is how the some great scores were made. However, no save feature was added (like any game until the late 80s) so you better have a camera ready when you die!

As with most games, for any console system in the 80s (even the late 80s, very few exceptions to the rule), the sound, along with most sound effects, sucked. This is in the middle. It doesn’t have any theme music, but it does have good sound effects for the system (the best ones, you would need a special thing called Intellivoice to get the best sounds) but these did have more then beeps and bloops. Mostly they were crash and bang. Also, I remember hearing a distinct whizzing sound that sounded like “whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpop.” I don’t know where that came from, and I never heard it the next time I played. Good sounds for a game this old.

If you grew up with systems that had wood grain on the front, then you had to have more gameplay then graphics, and more fun then if you had the best graphics in the world. So when you place a game like Astrosmash, into a console like the Intellivison, you imagined yourself in a tank, shooting down the evil UFO from destroying the Earth! This game was fun back then. Now, with today’s game, you go and play Bangai-O, and then you go and play Astrosmash, you see which game feels like it’s better. If you were to bring Bangai-O into the early 80s, people would get out torches and pitchforks about how the graphics look so good. People were acquainted with the riveting fun game called Astrosmash.

I highly doubt that you could find this game without going to many flea markets, or ebay, but it you do, and you want to enjoy games of your youth, then Astrosmash may be the game for you.

Reviewer’s Score: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/02, Updated 07/31/02