Asteroids

With all of the technical progress we’ve achieved since the fetal days of gaming, no other game has managed to convey the dark, empty void of space like this minimalist arcade classic.

I was ten years old when I first laid eyes on an Asteroids machine, one year after the game's release. It was located down at the local laundromat along with a couple of other cabinets and pinball machines. It looked exciting, but I was always hopeless at it. The combination of rotation and acceleration, along with the associated inertia, was too much for me to ever become accustomed to. It was never that long a time before I crashed into one of the big rocks or was picked off by one of those damn UFOs.

For its time the vector graphics were something new, and although being monochromatic in a world of coloured video games may give the impression of being behind the times, the simplicity actually lent itself well to creating a good sci-fi atmosphere. The sonics were good too, particularly the low bass boom of the asteroids being blown to bits. In spite of my ill-success with this game, I can still see a lot of merit in it. Not flashy, but the gameplay is what counts.

This is another classic that everyone's played some version of at some point in their lives. The premise is simple as you shoot at the asteroids (which look very primitive in the og arcade version) before they crash into you, you can allow this to happen three times before it's game over unless you're playing a version that gives a 1up for reaching a particular score in the game. A simple but effective time waster that once upon a time ate up the pocket change of kids from the 20th century.

Sting like a bee, flutter like a butterfly.

The arcade version offers a really aesthetically pleasing game visually. Black and white of course, but made with vector based graphics that offer a sweet simple look to the game. Miles ahead to the blurryness of pixel based graphics. Gameplaywise you control and ship that can destroy asteroids in order to look for the high score. Instead of being timer based, its a life based game, so its game over when you get hit by asteroids 4 times. It controls pretty well for a game of its time, and the physics of the game are quite impressive. There is momentum to everything, and as such it is a game that is hard to master. Its too simplistic though, and because of that it is not much than a small time waster nowadays. Worth playing for the historical importance.