Asteroids Hyper 64

"Roidalicious"

Re-releases of classic games have become all too common these days. Couple that with the fact that we now have emulators to relive all of our Atari classics at the click of a mouse anyway. The result is that classic remakes had damn well better please the player enough to choose the developer's pricey rehash over the "free" original. One such remake is Asteroids Hyper 64.

Now, I'm not so young that I can't appreciate classic games. Yet at the same time, I'm not so old that I was even alive at the height of Space Invaders popularity. This gives me a unique perspective, because I'm able to appreciate old classics, but they offer me no real nostalgia to blind my judgment.

In fact, when I was younger, one of my best friends had an Atari. With that, I was able to play many games that I remember well. Space Invaders, Adventure, Kung-Fu Master, the list goes on. However, there was only one Atari game that managed to have me keep coming back. That was Asteroids. Of all the classic games, I wasn't a Pac-Man kind of guy. I wasn't a Defender kind of guy. Asteroids was it.

That being the case, I decided to track down a copy of Asteroids Hyper 64. I am not such a purist that I'm against having an update of a classic game. Well, perhaps "track down" is the wrong term. I was actually taking a trip to my local used video game store looking for either a rare SNES cart or perhaps a copy of Snowboard Kids. I didn't find either, but the people running the store were so nice to me that I decided to search for a purchase anyway. As soon as I spotted Asteroids Hyper, I remembered that I was considering getting the game for a while, so I did.

As soon as I booted up the game, I was greeted with underwhelming-looking menus and a really weird song. I didn't care too much about that, I just wanted to play. I hit the single-player mode, and it immediately gave me the "story." Yes, asteroids has a story now. Apparently, it's my job to clear out hostile galaxies full of asteroids so that commercial ships can pass through. Well, I never said it was a *good* story.

Asteroids Hyper looks and feels like good old Asteroids. They tampered very little with the base formula, other than adding in a ton of little extra things. First, you can actually choose from a number of different ships, based on how fast they turn, how fast they accelerate, firepower, and shields. Oh, did I mention there are shields now? Because there are.

Just like the original, you have a single fixed screen. When your ship or any other object goes off the screen on one side, it'll pop up on the other side. So standing close to the edge means you have to make sure nothing is going to pop out at you. In addition to breaking apart the asteroids into space dust, the infamous UFOs make their return, and oh man did they ever get annoying. No longer is their aim terrible, and no longer do they die in one hit. Blue asteroids are also unique, in that they can regenerate. If you blast one into three small asteroids, they can each regenerate back into a large one. Then, when you blast it again, it'll split up into smaller pieces once more, potentially multiplying an infinite number of times.

The Z button lets you use a shield to protect you. You don't even have to stop firing your weapon with the shield up, but there's a downside. Overusing the shield depletes it, and it won't do diddly squat if you get caught inside of an asteroid or other enemy for very long. It does recharge between levels though.

Speaking of those levels, there are a ton of them, enough to keep anyone busy for a while. It does get pretty monotonous though. For each area, there are a number of levels. They all take place on the same screen, basically just with different waves. At the end of each area is a boss, which is obviously a new feature. Unfortunately, the bosses can be cheap. As I said, the shield doesn't do much when you run into one of them, which I tended to do a lot. Only when you beat a boss do you finally get some new scenery.

The second area is terribly designed, since the background is so dark, you can barely see the asteroids. You'll probably miss a few when they hit the side of your ship. Whoops. Accidental deaths are a no-no.

I really have two main beefs with this game though. The first is that there's no music while actually playing. NONE. Now, I understand that the original didn't have music, and I also get that space is a fairly hollow place, but give me a break. In this day and age, there's really no excuse for not having any music. I still managed to have fun with the game, but I'm positive I could've enjoyed myself a lot more with some ambient music. I'll get to my second beef in a second.

One of the best features here, and one that's not really surprising, is that the original Asteroids is also within this game. Completely black and white vector graphics, with the original blip and bloop sound effects. To be honest, I may have had just as much fun playing the old asteroids again as playing the update. To unlock it, you simply have to blow up something in one of the waves of the first area. You can't miss it.

Now, you can save the game between areas, which is nice, but it does take a lot of challenge out of getting to the end. You can also save your "settings," which seems to include how loud you like the sound effects, as well as whether you've unlocked the original Asteroids or not.

This, however, brings me to my second big beef. It didn't let me save my Hi-Scores. Argh! Playing through the original Asteroids, I of course beat the defeat Hi-Score and entered my name. After saving the game, I turned off and on my system. It somehow remembered that my initials got the Hi-Score, but it didn't remember WHAT my score was, as it was mysteriously reset to 10000. If you can't save the score, then there's really no point in playing original Asteroids at all. Now-a-days, points are totally meaningless in video games, in the few that still keep that system. However, with arcade classics like Asteroids, getting the Hi-Score is everything. It's the proof that you're the best. It's the bar that you set for yourself to beat and for others. And they took it away from me.

Still, it is true Asteroids action, just with much better UFO AI and slicker graphics. So all in all, it's not a bad game. If you've never played Asteroids before, this game will look absolutely archaic and stupid. If you're a die-hard Asteroids lover, you'll probably get a kick out of it. It's simple and addictive, so you can always come back to it. Sheer replay value is what saves Asteroids Hyper 64 from mediocrity, but the replay would've been even higher if there weren't such an unforgivable glitch in the save feature.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/05