My friend, in the office next door, was a respected saucer hunter back in the day.<p>Saucer hunting was, essentially, the degenerate game play that base Asteroids reduced down to when you were playing for score.<p>The game was to leave a last, single, small rock floating about, and wait for the fast, 1000 point saucers to show up.<p>The trick was that the saucers were very fast, and very accurate. So the solution was to essentially hold down the thrust button, and race from bottom to top (since the ship rolled over the edges, rather than bounced off).<p>When a saucer showed up, you had to quickly react, point the ship in the right direction, just a bit off axis, and blast the saucer with a stream of bullets.<p>I was never particularly good at that myself, but my friend was. That's how you got on the high score boards in the local arcades back in the day.
Alas, thought the original article was going to have some juicy details about the vector hardware. But since it was a survey of games inspired by the original, I feel compelled to mention "Maelstrom" by Ambrosia.<p>For my money, this was the absolute best take on Asteroids since the original. Originally Mac, but the source was later released and was ported to PC. We even had a tweaked version that we called "Carnage" that generated many storms of presents, comets, spiky balls, etc.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)</a>
The original hardware, which I last played last year at Fun Spot, holds up surprisingly well. The responsiveness destroys modern systems completely, and vector displays are great.<p>Tangentially there was a niche but slightly notorious port <a href="https://www.spheresofchaos.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.spheresofchaos.com/</a> that is appropriately named.
This might sound stupid the fact that the picture of an "arcade cabinet asteroids" happens to be a emu-cabinet with non-asteroid controls and some other game on the screen made me wonder if this is either an AI generated article or an astro-turf article and not by an actual fan.<p>It's probably not but such is the times we live in that it was what crossed my mind.
An arcade game from the same era with many of the same features attribted to Asteroids (flying a ship in all directions, gravity/interia, vector display, shooting at things while other things shoot at you, no joystick) was Gravitar. Spent uncounted hours and quarters with a good buddy on this game while working on a graduate degree.<p>"<i>Gravitar is a color vector graphics multidirectional shooter arcade video game released by Atari, Inc. in 1982. Using the same "rotate-and-thrust" controls as Asteroids and Space Duel, the game was known for its high level of difficulty</i>"<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitar</a>
The humble Vectrex has a good asteroids - like game built in called Minestorm. But if you desire the original, someone has made an excellent version called Rocks and Saucers - free download.<p><a href="https://www.vecfever.com/faq/rocks-n-saucers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.vecfever.com/faq/rocks-n-saucers/</a>
And yet, Asteroids lives! The latest arcade incarnation is called Asteroids Recharged,<p><a href="https://atari.com/products/atari-asteroids-recharged-arcademachine" rel="nofollow">https://atari.com/products/atari-asteroids-recharged-arcadem...</a>
> Rather than using a joystick, Asteroids used buttons for all it controls. There was “rotate left”, “rotate right”, “thrust”, “fire” and “hyperspace”. That many buttons really messes with me!<p>This really hit home for me. Having gravitated toward games with "simple" controls like PacMan, Crazy Climber, Space Invaders, Tron etc., I never evolved to master multiple button games like Defender, Asteroids etc.<p>For modern platforms, like Switch/Xbox/PS series, I'm hopelessly lost.
Should mention the little known arcade game called Meteor that was a raster version of Asteroids.
Atari sued them of course. [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2012/12/17/3776272/meteors-arcade-cabinet-asteroids-clone-unearthed" rel="nofollow">https://www.polygon.com/2012/12/17/3776272/meteors-arcade-ca...</a>
My favorite version of Asteroids is a machine that used to be found on the Yahoo! campus. Someone had put in a new vector rom and the asteroid shapes now spelled the letters in eBay (I don't remember what caps). I don't recall the details, but it apparently was modified while Yahoo Auctions was invested in competing for the US market (which was before I was hired for Y! Travel).
my try for a kinda 3d asteroids, it got messy (but fun for a while, also retro tron graphics) <a href="https://asterioblocks.franzai.com/" rel="nofollow">https://asterioblocks.franzai.com/</a>
<i>I was never all that good at arcade Asteroids. I think it was the controls. Rather than using a joystick, Asteroids used buttons for all it controls.</i><p>I always wondered why it didn't use a 2 way joystick (or even a spinner). Was it just meant to be awkward because it was too easy with a stick? Were they trying to save money? Did they think it would look different to attract people? Were people at the time complaining that they didn't like sticks?
My favorite Asteroids clone was a game for the Macintosh in the 90s that featured hemispherical rocks, titled "HemiRoids".<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Llp_jHv1c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Llp_jHv1c</a>