No0b Game Reviews

For this week’s review, I’ll be reviewing…

Asteroids, for the Atari 2600. This was an arcade game released in 1979 by Atari Inc. It has been ported to many game systems(Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, etc.), but the version I’m going to review is the Atari 2600 version. You start off as a spaceship in the middle of the screen, and the object of the game is to destroy asteroids before they destroy you. This is a rather simple game, using a single button and single joystick for play. The button fires missles from your ship, while the joystick moves you in your prefered direction(to move in a direction, move in the direction, then hold up on your joystick. You can also use hyperspace by hitting up at certain times, having you appear randomly on the screen in a different location). There is a score counter in the upper left corner of the screen, and every 5,000 points, you gain an extra life. Every so often, another spaceship will come on the screen and try to destroy you.

Personal Preference: By far my favorite game by Atari, and for the 2600. A very well done port in my opinion. The graphics pale in comparison to the arcade original, but that’s to be expected with the Atari 2600′s primitive graphics. Graphics aside, this game is fantastic. Not to brag, but when I go to a pizza parlor with my friends(usually weekly) and I play Asteroids, I get the highest score. If I recall correctly, the highest I’ve gotten on the machine was 11,000 points, being the highest score on the machine. There is another arcade game I excell at, but we’ll save that for later.

For anything else you’d like to know about Asteroids or old-school arcade games in general, e-mail me at Ian@Gab3.net

~Ian

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