Home > Asteroids

Asteroids is a popular vector-based video arcade game released in 1979 by Atari. The object of the game is for the player to shoot and destroy asteroids without being hit by the fragments.

The game was conceived by Lyle Rains and programmed by Ed Logg. Asteroids was a hit in the United States and became one of Atari's best selling games of all time. It was so popular that video arcade owners usually had to install larger boxes to hold all the coins this machine raked in.

One feature of the game was the ability for players to record their initials with their high scores, an innovation which is standard in arcade games to this day.

Asteroids was the first of several games to use Atari's "Quadra-Scan" vector-refresh system (although a raster-based full-color version was developed for the Atari 2600 home video game system). Later full-color Quadra-Scan games would include Tempest. The game was in itself based on the black-and-white raster game, Computer Space.

1 Legacy

The gameplay in Asteroids was imitated by many games that followed. For example, one of the objects of Sinistar is to shoot asteroids in order to get them to release resources which the player needs to collect.

Due to its success, Asteroids was followed by three sequels:

• Asteroids Deluxe ( 1980)
• Space Duel ( 1982)
• Blasteroids ( 1987)

However, the original game was by far the most popular of the series.

The Killer List of Videogames (KLOV) credits this game as one of the "Top 100 Videogames." Readers of the KLOV credit it as the seventh most popular game.