Asteroids (video game)

You fly a small ship in space.

You must shoot big rocks. When you hit them, they break into small rocks. These small rocks move fast. You must also watch for flying saucers. They can shoot at your ship.

The game gets harder as you play. You can even jump to a new spot in space. This is called hyperspace. Can you get a high score?

Asteroids is a famous video game from 1979. It was made by a company called Atari.

You fly a small ship in a field of rocks. Your goal is to shoot the rocks to destroy them. When you hit a large rock, it breaks into smaller ones. These small rocks move much faster. This makes the game harder to play. You must also watch out for flying saucers. Some saucers shoot at your ship.

You can also use a trick called hyperspace. This lets your ship jump to a new spot on the screen. But you might end up in a bad place! The game uses a special screen called a vector monitor. It draws the art using bright lines. This helped players aim very well. Asteroids was a huge hit. It was one of the most popular arcade games ever. Many people played it to get a high score. It even changed how other games were made later on.

Asteroids is a famous arcade game from 1979. It was made by a company called Atari.

In this game, you fly a small triangular ship. You move through a field of floating rocks called asteroids. Your goal is to shoot and destroy these rocks. You must also avoid flying saucers that shoot at you. The game gets harder as you play. More asteroids appear on the screen as your score goes up. This makes the game a very exciting challenge for players.

Playing the game requires quick reflexes and careful movement. You use buttons to rotate your ship and fire shots. You can also use a button to thrust forward. Once you move, your ship keeps drifting in that direction. This is called inertia. If you need to escape, you can use hyperspace. This makes your ship disappear and reappear in a new spot. However, you might accidentally appear on top of a rock!

When you shoot a large asteroid, it breaks into smaller pieces. These smaller rocks move much faster and are worth more points.

Two different types of saucers appear during the game. A big saucer flies by and shoots in random directions. A small saucer is much more dangerous because it fires at you often. As your score passes 40,000, only the small saucer will show up. The saucer also becomes much better at aiming at your ship. To keep the game moving, a timer makes the saucers appear more often. There is even a heartbeat sound that gets faster as you play. This helps you feel the excitement of the game.

Lyle Rains and Ed Logg designed this classic game. They used parts from an older game called Lunar Lander.

The game was based on an unfinished idea called Cosmos. The creators also learned from older games like Spacewar! and Space Invaders. To make the art look sharp, they used a vector monitor. This is a special screen that draws images using bright lines. This helped players aim their shots with great precision. The hardware used to run the game was very small. It was only about 4 by 4 inches in size.

Asteroids became a massive hit in arcades around the world. It sold over 70,000 machines and became a top seller for Atari.

Many people wanted to play it at home too. The version for the Atari 2600 sold more than three million copies. This game changed how people made video games in the future. It even influenced other famous games like Defender and Gravitar. Even today, people remember it as a masterpiece of game design.

Asteroids is a landmark multidirectional shooter video game released in 1979. Developed and published by Atari, Inc., it became a defining title of the golden age of arcade games.

In this game, players pilot a triangular spaceship through a dense field of floating asteroids. The primary objective is to destroy these asteroids and flying saucers using a laser. Players must simultaneously avoid colliding with rocks or being hit by enemy fire. As the game progresses, the difficulty increases by raising the number of asteroids on the screen. This creates a continuous cycle of escalating tension and skill requirements.

Gameplay relies on a physics model involving thrust and inertia. When a player presses the thrust button, the ship accelerates in a specific direction. Because of inertia, the ship continues to drift in that direction even after the player stops thrusting. To change course, the player must apply thrust in a different direction. The game also features a "hyperspace" mechanic. This allows the ship to disappear and reappear at a random location on the screen. However, this move is risky because the ship might reappear directly on top of an asteroid or self-destruct.

The asteroids behave according to specific rules of fragmentation. A level begins with several large asteroids drifting across the screen. When a player shoots a large asteroid, it breaks into smaller pieces. These smaller asteroids move faster than the larger ones, making them harder to hit. Because they are more difficult to target, smaller asteroids are worth more points. The game world uses a wrapping screen effect. If an object like an asteroid drifts off the top edge, it reappears at the bottom. This continues across both the horizontal and vertical axes of the display.

Players must also contend with two distinct types of flying saucers. The "big saucer" appears periodically and fires shots in random, unpredictable directions. The "small saucer" is much more aggressive and fires frequently at the player's ship. Once a player reaches a score of 40,000, only the small saucer appears. As the score climbs higher, the small saucer's aim becomes increasingly precise. To prevent players from waiting too long between actions, a steadily decreasing timer shortens the intervals between saucer attacks. A "heartbeat" soundtrack also plays, which quickens as the game progresses to build excitement.

The development of Asteroids was a collaborative effort led by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg. The project grew from an unfinished game called Cosmos, which featured an indestructible asteroid. Logg and Rains decided to refine the concept so that players could actually destroy the rocks. The game's mechanics were derived from earlier titles like Spacewar!, Computer Space, and Space Invaders. To ensure high image quality for precise aiming, Logg suggested using an XY monitor. This resulted in a vector display, where graphics are composed of bright lines rather than pixels. The hardware included a MOS 6502 processor and a specialized vector graphics processor called QuadraScan.

Asteroids was a massive commercial success for Atari. The company sold 47,840 upright cabinets and 8,725 cocktail cabinets. In total, Atari manufactured 76,312 units, including 21,394 Asteroids Deluxe units. The game was so popular that it displaced Space Invaders as the top game in the United States. It became the highest-grossing arcade video game of 1980 in the U.S. Atari earned an estimated $150 million from the game, while arcade operators earned approximately $500 million from coin drops. The game's popularity even extended to home consoles. The Atari 2600 version sold over three million copies.

Despite its success, the game contained a notable technical exploit known as "lurking." Because saucers could not aim across screen boundaries, players could stay near the edge of the screen. By keeping only one or two asteroids in play, players could shoot across the boundary to destroy saucers indefinitely. This allowed players to accumulate points with very little risk. Arcade operators complained about the loss of revenue, leading Atari to issue a patched EPROM. This event influenced how companies like Atari changed their development and testing policies to prevent similar exploits in future games. Asteroids remains a highly influential title that directly inspired games like Defender and Gravitar.