Asteroids

The Good
Somewhere deep inside my brain there is an impulse that constantly tells me that if I want to play a classic “arcade” game that I need to go back to the very first manifestation of a game on a home console in order to get the most "authentic" experience. That is to say, in order to get the closest to the original game, I think that I need to find the earliest known version of that game and play it.

The Bad
Unfortunately, this impulse is seldom intuitive, and as such I am beginning to believe that, like my appendix, that part of my brain has lost most of it medical value and should be removed. For one thing must be understood about early console games that will give you a good understanding of why our parents were so respectful of arcades way back when. Porting “good” arcade games during the dawn of the console era was more often than not counter-productive and anti-progressive. One look at the arcade version and Atari version of Pac-man will give you a good idea of how almost all early “ports” back in the day unfolded. Old video game systems were simply not powerful enough to carry over the sleek graphics and tight controls of the arcade cabinets which make them so addicting.

Now if someone at the very start of the era of home-consoles started an anti-porting campaign to keep classic arcades open, Asteroids would probably be one of the poster-boys of this front. Asteroids suffers the typical maladies that came with early porting, from loss of controls to bad graphics.

As I turned on the game, I was unimpressed with the eye candy they gave me. The sleek, green, well-defined asteroids of the arcade had been replaced with pixilated, multi-colored diarrhea chunks floating around the screen. However, I soon realized that “floating” was somewhat of a misnomer, and I decided that “drifting vertically” was more precise, as that was what they all the asteroids did. At the start of each level, the asteroids only moved vertically, never horizontally or diagonally.

But wait, there’s more! I soon noticed the glaring lack of asteroids that reappeared in the center at the beginning of each level. I soon realized that the programmers were too lazy to come up with an asteroid generating system that did not spawn asteroids on top of you, and instead only chose to spawn them at the side of the levels to cover up their laziness. So at the start of each level I was faced with two vertically shifting strips of asteroids to the left and right of me, while I sat with my cute little space ship in the cold, empty center.

But lo, the geniuses forgot to take into account what might happen if you beat and level and you’re of to the side of the level instead of in the center. Your ship position does not reset to the center at the beginning of each round, and there’s no system stopping asteroids from spawning on top of you, meaning guaranteed death should you finish a level with your ship on in the center of the level.

What finally broke my patience was the fact that for some reason on my last life, my game froze and turned a dull shade of crap brown, which I finally accepted as appropriate considering that’s what I thought of the game after my experience.


The Bottom Line
There is truly a lesson to be learned from all of this, and that is the fact that if you really want to revisit your childhood and play some classic arcade games then just look for a free flash version on the GOD DAMN INTERNET. Seriously, if you can’t sleep at night knowing that you could be playing hours of your favorite classic video game, Asteroids, then don’t pull an all out effort trying to get the possibly unholiest of all its ports. In fact, what is truly sad is the fact that you possibly needed to read this review to tell you not to buy it, as if you were somehow debating whether this would be a worthy investment up until you read my enlightening opinion of it. Seriously, close this window right now. You’re wasting precious minutes of your life reading this quite pointless review.

The Good
I was born in 1985, so Asteroids kind of went by me. As did the Atari 2600 as a whole. My first real experiences with the 2600 can be pinpointed to the months before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released. I had run out of recently released games to play and had come with the marvelous idea to download an Atari 2600 emulator and have some fun with that.

And fun I had! Though it shines in simplicity and you are blasting away in space with ease in seconds, beating the game was quite a challenge. It was, however, the only Atari game I ever had the dedication for to beat! The premises is simple, just shoot asteroids and don't let them hit me, but it can get really intense.

I really liked the sounds in this game. And that's saying something, because for the most part I found the sounds that my emulator produced horrible and nauseating.

The Bad
Later I played the original Asteroids using MAME and I must say that the original version is (not surprisingly) superior, due to the minimal capabilities of the 2600 system. The new bitmap graphics do give it a nice distinct feeling, but everything feels smaller and more crowded.

After a while the game gets rather repetitive and boring. Some variations in the waves would have been welcome. But with the Atari you can't have high demands like that, I guess.

The Bottom Line
Asteroids is fun! You get to blow stuff up in space! You'll get tired of it after a while, but not without having your share of fun. In my opinion it's one of the better titles of the system. But that's a retrospective opinion of someone who missed the first age of video games.

The Good
Pure old school shooting action ! AKA blow stuff up. More specifically asteroids. That's about all there is to it. The controls were well tuned and and easy to figure out. The downgrade to pixel asteroids from vector asteroids was disappointing, but hey ! YOU GET TO BLOW THEM UP ! Who can argue with fun like that ?

The Bad
No gripes whatsoever ! Period !

The Bottom Line
If you'r in the mood to blow stuff up, I can recommend no other game ! After all these years it's ironic that this is still the game we all play to blow stuff up. Go figure.