Asteroids

Asteroids was inspired, in a roundabout way, by the seminal Spacewar!, the first computer-based video game. In 1977 a stand-up arcade game version was produced as Space Wars, which included a number of optional versions and added a floating asteroid as a visual device. Asteroids is essentially a one-player version of Spacewar!, featuring the "wedge" ship from the original and promoting the asteroids to be the main opponent.

The game was conceived by Lyle Rains and programmed and designed by Ed Logg. Asteroids was a hit in the United States and became Atari's best selling game of all time. Atari had been in the process of releasing another vector beam game, Lunar Lander, but demand for Asteroids was so high they stopped further production of Lunar Lander so they could begin building Asteroids. The first 200 Asteroids machines were sent out in Lunar Lander cabinets. Asteroids was so popular that video arcade owners usually had to install larger boxes to hold all the coins this machine raked in.

One feature of the game was the ability for players to record their initials with their high scores, an innovation which is standard in arcade games to this day.

Asteroids was the first of several games to use Atari's "Quadra-Scan" vector-refresh system (although a raster-based full-color version was developed for the Atari 2600 home video game system). Later full-color Quadra-Scan games would include Tempest.

Game Play

The player's controls consist of thrust and fire buttons, and rotate left/rotate right buttons (actually rotate counterclockwise and rotate clockwise respectively). The momentum of the player's ship is not conserved, and it starts to slow down if thrust is not applied. There is also a hyperspace button, which randomly teleports the player's ship somewhere on the screen, with the risk of exploding upon rematerialization (or rematerializing inside an asteroid).

The player's ship appears in the middle of the screen, with 4 large asteroids drifting around. Each large asteroid (20 points) breaks into 2 medium-sized ones (50 points) when shot, which in turn breaks into 2 small (100 points) asteroids. The medium and small asteroids can travel at widely varying speeds. Periodically one of two types of flying saucers ("UFOs") will fly onto the screen: the big one (worth 200 points) shoots in random directions, while the small one (1000 points) attempts to aim at the player. They tend to appear more often when few asteroids remained on the screen and/or the player hasn't shot an asteroid recently.

The screen wraps around, allowing the player's ship, as well as asteroids, shots, and saucers to fly off the one edge of the screen and reappear on the opposite side. Once a level has been cleared of all asteroids and UFOs, a new set of large asteroids would appear, increasing by 2 each round up to a maximum of 12.

The maximum score possible is 99,990 points, after which it turns back over to zero A player who desires to get onto the top score list must be careful to shoot just enough asteroids/UFOs to reach this score without going over (including committing suicide with the last ship left to reach the final total!).

On some early versions of the game it was possible to hide the ship in the score area indefinitely without being hit by asteroids.

Source: Wikipedia




History Asteroids was inspired, in a roundabout way, by the seminal Spacewar!, the first computer-based video game. In 1977 a stand-up arcade game version was produced as Space Wars, which included a number of optional versions and added a floating asteroid as a visual device. Asteroids is essentially a one-player version of Spacewar!, featuring the "wedge" ship from the original and promoting the asteroids to be the main opponent. The game was conceived by Lyle Rains and programmed and designed by Ed Logg. Asteroids was a hit in the United States and became Atari's best selling game of all time. Atari had been in the process of releasing another vector beam game, Lunar Lander, but demand for Asteroids was so high they stopped further production of Lunar Lander so they could begin building Asteroids. The first 200 Asteroids machines were sent out in Lunar Lander cabinets. Asteroids was so popular that video arcade owners usually had to install larger boxes to hold all the coins this machine raked in. One feature of the game was the ability for players to record their initials with their high scores, an innovation which is standard in arcade games to this day. Asteroids was the first of several games to use Atari's "Quadra-Scan" vector-refresh system (although a raster-based full-color version was developed for the Atari 2600 home video game system). Later full-color Quadra-Scan games would include Tempest. Game Play The player's controls consist of thrust and fire buttons, and rotate left/rotate right buttons (actually rotate counterclockwise and rotate clockwise respectively). The momentum of the player's ship is not conserved, and it starts to slow down if thrust is not applied. There is also a hyperspace button, which randomly teleports the player's ship somewhere on the screen, with the risk of exploding upon rematerialization (or rematerializing inside an asteroid). The player's ship appears in the middle of the screen, with 4 large asteroids drifting around. Each large asteroid (20 points) breaks into 2 medium-sized ones (50 points) when shot, which in turn breaks into 2 small (100 points) asteroids. The medium and small asteroids can travel at widely varying speeds. Periodically one of two types of flying saucers ("UFOs") will fly onto the screen: the big one (worth 200 points) shoots in random directions, while the small one (1000 points) attempts to aim at the player. They tend to appear more often when few asteroids remained on the screen and/or the player hasn't shot an asteroid recently. The screen wraps around, allowing the player's ship, as well as asteroids, shots, and saucers to fly off the one edge of the screen and reappear on the opposite side. Once a level has been cleared of all asteroids and UFOs, a new set of large asteroids would appear, increasing by 2 each round up to a maximum of 12. The maximum score possible is 99,990 points, after which it turns back over to zero A player who desires to get onto the top score list must be careful to shoot just enough asteroids/UFOs to reach this score without going over (including committing suicide with the last ship left to reach the final total!). On some early versions of the game it was possible to hide the ship in the score area indefinitely without being hit by asteroids. Source: Wikipedia