Review Date: January 14, 2021
Release Date: July, 1981
Platform: Atari 800
Genre: Shooter
Anecdotes: As I finish off the big four of arcade shooters, I realize that I just stumbled across the weakest of the four. I’ve played a few versions, but the Atari 800 will be the one reviewed. If you’re a big fan of Asteroids, I suggest you stop reading right now. This review will be getting ugly.
Description: Asteroids shares the same general shooting concept as other arcade shooters, but with two major differences: your shooter can go anywhere on the screen, including wrapping around the screen edges, and you can shoot in any direction. It also introduced video game “mitosis” to the world by having each rock split into smaller rocks when hit. The smallest size asteroids disappear when hit.
Positives: Being set in space, Logg understood that space is infinite, so your ship can go anywhere. You can loop around any border.
Negatives: This port is terrible. The sound is annoying. The pinging coming out of the shooter is high pitched noise; the background is just a “tick tock” that gets annoying after a while. The graphics are somehow worse than its 2600 counterpart. Every ‘roid is light blue and in a mostly circular shape. The background is a generic black. The colors just don’t work at all. Maybe the multiple player modes are better, but the single player version is a boring snooze. The play control takes some getting used to and it feels like movement is delayed. Gameplay is slow and boring even after hitting the F key. If you like Asteroids, play a different version.
Grade: D