The player controls a triangular ship that can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. The objective of Asteroids is to destroy asteroids and saucers. Gameplay A ship is surrounded by asteroids and a saucer. The game was widely imitated, and it directly influenced Defender, Gravitar, and many other video games. In the 1980s it was ported to Atari's home systems, and the Atari VCS version sold over three million copies. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around both screen axes.Īsteroids was one of the first major hits of the golden age of arcade games the game sold 47,840 upright cabinets and 8,725 cocktail cabinets arcade cabinets and proved both popular with players and influential with developers. Asteroids was based on an unfinished game titled Cosmos its physics model, control scheme, and gameplay elements were derived from Spacewar!, Computer Space, and Space Invaders and refined through trial and error. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.Īsteroids was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains, who decided to use hardware developed by Howard Delman previously used for Lunar Lander. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers.

Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc.

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