Page 30 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #39 FREE Edition

3 30
9
0
E
R
R
M
M
A
A
G
G
A
A
Z
Z
I
I
N
N
E
E
•
•
I
I
S
S
S
S
U
U
E
E
#
ASTEROIDS
FROM ARCADE TO CONSOLE
By Eugenio Angueira
ARCADE
In November 1979, Atari, Inc released a monochromatic vector game to the arcades with the name
Asteroids. The game, programmed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg, is a multi-directional shooter in which the player controls a vessel that appears in the middle of an asteroid field with the goal of destroying all of the asteroids without being hit by any of them. But you are not alone in the asteroid field, flying saucers also are in the field and these will try to destroy you as well. It is either destroy or be destroyed!
The ship controlled by the player is triangular shaped and rotates right and left. It is capable of shooting
a laser forward as well as thrust forward. To emulate real space physics, the ship will continue moving in any given direction unless the player thrusts again in a different
direction or stops the ship’s motion. The ship also has the ability to do a hyperspace jump; however, the player does not control where the ship reappears and runs the risk
of appearing on top of an asteroid, leading to immediate destruction. I should note that the player controls the ship with buttons to make the ship turn, fire, or thrust.
The asteroids are able to “wrap” around the screen as they move randomly on the screen. Initially there are only large asteroids but these split into smaller and smaller asteroids
as the player shoots them until the smallest asteroids are completely destroyed. A level is finished when
all the asteroids are cleared. Before the player reaches a score of 40,000 points big saucers will randomly appear in the asteroid field, move about randomly, and shoot randomly. Small saucers will also appear but these are more accurate at shooting at the player’s ship. After 40,000 points, only the small saucers will appear to make the game more challenging. Of course, as the player clears levels, the asteroid field gets denser, which also increases difficulty.
Scoring for the game varies based on the size of the asteroids, with the smaller the size of the asteroids, the more points awarded to the player. The score also determines the level of difficulty. As mentioned before, at 40,000 points only small saucers attack the player, while the density
of the asteroid field increases to its maximum between 40,000 and 60,000 points. The player earns an extra ship at every 10,000 points. The game ends once all the ships have been destroyed.
Asteroids was among the major hits of the golden era of video games. It was Atari’s most successful game; it even beat Space Invaders in the US market in 1980. A number of sequels of Asteroids were also released, including Asteroids Deluxe, Space
Duel, and Blasteroids. This latter game did not use vector graphics but, rather, used raster graphics. Given the game’s success, several home ports were released for the Atari systems as well as the Nintendo Game Boy portable systems. Even the modern Atari VCS has seen an updated version of the game released.
ATARI 2600
The 2600 port of Asteroids was published in 1981 and it was programmed by Brad Stewart and
O
O
L
L
D
D
S
S
C
C
H
H
O
O
O
O
L
L
G
G
A
A
M
M
E
#
3
3
9