695th played so far
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1987
Developer: Atari Games
Publisher: Atari Games
Asteroids is a classic, defining the 2D shooter genre in a major way. Its sequels don’t come up much on the list – although derivatives might have – and Blasteroids is the one official one that made it on – nearly a decade later.
The game looks different – gone are the vector graphics – and seems to have a proper level structure in it. We should see some progress here.
Our Thoughts
Blasteroids offers basic Asteroids gameplay as the game starts, shooting rocks one screen at a time. The graphics are different from the start – moving away from vector graphics gives it a more conventional look, losing some of what the original game feel unique.
The game itself becomes the better for it. After the first screen, we go into a mission map, which you can tune for your own difficulty (although you have to beat all of them eventually). It introduces more aliens that fly around, more challenges to deal with, and at the end of the map a decent boss fight – challenging but not difficult enough to put me off.
It makes for a more epic twist and really builds up the game – something you really need by this point in time, where the old gameplay wouldn’t do if you wanted to call it a modern game (for 1987). It’s just enough and tweaked enough that it is a lot of fun. This is genuinely a good game.