Achieved at : 2022-12-30
Rank : 3
(71% worse)
Lups : 74
Approved :
Yes
Voting completed : 2023-01-12
| General Rules: |
Game must be played on the actual hardware. Play with default settings unless otherwise specified. No code modifications that give the player an advantage over other players. 1 credit. No continues. 1 player mode only. No use of trainers, cheats, auto-fire (when not default present in-game) , game saves, or cheat codes. Can be overruled by the Specific Rules. It is discouraged and may lead to voters not accepting your score to - excessively point farm - use glitches or other game exploits |
| Specific Rules: | Play the game in 1 player mode with default settings |
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TGP
Asteroids is a game which needs no introduction and neither did the Atari VCS / 2600 version - almost everyone who had one of these machines had this cartridge. Shoot the rocks until they are destroyed and another level appears. There are 66 variations for one or two players and the difficulty switches control the UFO's - B for no UFO's and A for UFO's. The variations mix up the various game options, slow or fast asteroids and when you get extra lives (or none!). Some games feature hyperspace, others shields, others a 180 flip and others nothing in the way of defensive options.
Game play is pretty good. The joystick response is very good and it is unlikely you can blame the controls for losing a life. The graphics are smooth but flickery (hardly surprising with so much happening on screen for the VCS to cope with). The asteroids are lacking details however, just being blocks of colour. Sound is of a standard, but decent, Atari type.
The only significant downside is the asteroids movement. This is primarily restricted to vertical movement with just a small sideways component. This differs significantly from the arcade original where the rocks would come at you from all angles. It simplifies your strategy somewhat and makes the game easier than it should be a lot of the time. This limitation was due to issues with programming the hardware and techniques for getting around the issues had not yet been developed. The Atari 2600 hardware was very limited and programming the machine to do anything like Asteroids took a lot of skill at the time.
This run was played on PC using the Atari Vault emulation package. The date of play was the 30th December 2022. The game variations is 1 (single player, hyperspace, slow asteroids and extra lives every 5,000 points). The difficulty switch is position A (UFO's). The final score was 56,250 points.
I sorted out the odd flicker capture in my video of Game 1, Difficulty B by turning off the flicker in Atari Vault.
Time stamps:
00:20 Game selected in Atari Vault. Options selected to show there is nothing to do there other than turn off the flicker.
00:39 Game loaded. Game 1 selected (the left hand 1 shows this) and difficulty switch is moved to A position.
00:55 Game started.
12:39 Last life lost. Game Over! Final score 56,250 points.
Game play is pretty good. The joystick response is very good and it is unlikely you can blame the controls for losing a life. The graphics are smooth but flickery (hardly surprising with so much happening on screen for the VCS to cope with). The asteroids are lacking details however, just being blocks of colour. Sound is of a standard, but decent, Atari type.
The only significant downside is the asteroids movement. This is primarily restricted to vertical movement with just a small sideways component. This differs significantly from the arcade original where the rocks would come at you from all angles. It simplifies your strategy somewhat and makes the game easier than it should be a lot of the time. This limitation was due to issues with programming the hardware and techniques for getting around the issues had not yet been developed. The Atari 2600 hardware was very limited and programming the machine to do anything like Asteroids took a lot of skill at the time.
This run was played on PC using the Atari Vault emulation package. The date of play was the 30th December 2022. The game variations is 1 (single player, hyperspace, slow asteroids and extra lives every 5,000 points). The difficulty switch is position A (UFO's). The final score was 56,250 points.
I sorted out the odd flicker capture in my video of Game 1, Difficulty B by turning off the flicker in Atari Vault.
Time stamps:
00:20 Game selected in Atari Vault. Options selected to show there is nothing to do there other than turn off the flicker.
00:39 Game loaded. Game 1 selected (the left hand 1 shows this) and difficulty switch is moved to A position.
00:55 Game started.
12:39 Last life lost. Game Over! Final score 56,250 points.