ROM Review - Asteroids

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

Loading ... Loading ...

Asteroids screen shot

Review
One of the greatest from the golden age of arcade games. A cousin to SpaceWar, this game has hours of replay value. If you haven't played it, you've probably played a spin off of it or a game derived from it.

The game is so simple, that there isn't much to say. Just play it. If you get frustrated, just keep trying a little longer. If you still don't like it, maybe old school games aren't for you. Even though what you see in front of you is simple, you would be surprised at the amount of strategy that can be used in the game. Strategies need to change as levels increase.

Like most vector games, this ROM looks even better in MAME than on the original machines.

Quick tips:

  • Don't shoot too many Asteroids at a once. Target one rock and all of it's offspring. This is easier said than done.
  • You don't want to be empty handed when that high speed rock comes right at you, so don't fire too many shots at once, unless.
  • an asteroid is really close to you. In that case, fire shots as fast as possible. If you do this, don't miss. :) It takes some practice, but once you are good at it, you can vaporize and entire asteroid in a second.
  • Sometimes you need to move. Try to avoid it.
  • Sometimes you need to hyperspace. Try to avoid that even more.
  • Shots wrap around the screen. Use this to your advantage. When the small ship comes to attack, stay on the opposite side of the screen and shoot through to the other side to destroy it.
  • Some people leave just one rock on the screen and destroy the small ship over and over again to obtain insanely high scores. That doesn't sound like much fun to me. In later versions of the ROM, measures were inserted to prevent this.

    • Fun fact
    The original arcade was released after the deadline that was set for it because the developers wasted so much time playing the game that they had trouble finishing it.

    For more info, see Asteroids on Wikipedia

    One Response to “ROM Review - Asteroids”

    1. root88, said:

      Obviously

    Leave a Reply

    Search Articles



    Archives

    Links you should visit


    RSS


    links

    Contact Info

    If you would like the ability to post your own reviews, have comments, or suggestions, please contact root88@ice.org.
    Apologies to the amature Future Pinball table designers out there for the harsh reviews. I know it's tough. Just trying to keep things interesting.