Asteroids is a multidirectional shooter Arcade game released in 1979 by Atari. It is a classic game and is part of the early years of Arcade games. Later thanks to the popularity of Asteroids it had sequels and became a series. Asteroids is a vector based game much like many games during the early era.
Description[]
This game is best described by the vector based Asteroids that float in space. The ship looks something like a arrow head and operates on inertia. You move the ship by pressing a button to activate the thruster, after which the ship will continue to move in that direction, even if stopped. The screen wraps around: if you exit one side of the screen, you will appear on the other side, as will the asteroids.
The goal of the game is to destroy the floating asteroids. Upon being hit, the larger asteroids will split into two smaller asteroids. Hitting the largest asteroids awards 20 points, medium asteroids 50 points, and small asteroids 100 points. On occasion, a UFO will appear, firing in random directions. Destroying it awards 200 points.
Asteroids also features "Hyperspace," a feature that teleports you to a random part of the screen at the press of a button. This can be used to quickly evade an asteroid, but has a chance of putting you in the path of another asteroid.
Ports[]
Asteroids has been ported to many systems, including the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and Atari Lynx. Atari 5200 never had an official release but AtariAge unofficially released it. Computer based version for Windows 3.1 was released in Microsoft Arcade package in 1993. Also, a new version of Asteroids was developed for PS1, Nintendo 64, Windows, and the Game Boy Color in the late 1990s.
In 2004, Asteroids was released including Atari 2600, Arcade, and Asteroids Deluxe versions in the Atari Anthology game collection for both Xbox and PS2.
Asteroids was released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on November 28, 2007.
External links[]
Glu Mobile released a licensed cellular phone version of Asteroids.
Also, a port for Rockbox was released, named "Spacerocks".