Asteroids (Arcade) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 112
8One astronaut's classic quest to kill all rocks
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Asteroids
Released 1979
Developer(s) Atari, Inc.
Platform(s) Arcade
Genre(s) Shooter
Jay's Thoughts
Up there with Pong and Space Invaders, standing as one of the most iconic video games of the golden era is Asteroids. Even if you've never played this game before, you've probably heard of it, and chances are you've played or seen some version or variant of it. Hell, Pixeljunk Shooter is basically a descendant of the gameplay that was shown off in Asteroids. Though I believe Spacewar might predate Asteroids with the concept of a multi-directional shooter... but I digress.
Asteroids is a relatively simple yet decently fun game. You take control of a random space ship stuck in an asteroid field. You have the ability to shoot at incoming asteroids, which breaks them up into smaller asteroids and eventually (if the asteroids are small enough) destroys them. There's a bit of strategy regarding how you want to deal with the asteroids though. They all move around the screen at different angles and bigger asteroids move slower than smaller ones. To dodge incoming asteroids you can choose to fly around manually to try your luck with a hyperspace jump. In a rather interesting twist, the hyperspace jump is really a "Hail Mary" button as it seems just as likely to jump you to safety as it is to jump you into the middle of an asteroid, and thereby killing you. But hey, if you're about to die, might as well chance it.
Ultimately, Asteroids is not that hard of a game but it is rather enjoyable for a quick, casual play, even after all these years. As with most of the older, classic games that I try out, I do recommend that modern gamers may want to check out an updated variant of this classic game. Though to be totally honest, the game is really not something you're going to play for days at a time.
➙ Must You Play It?
Asteroids is an enjoyable classic that helped further the shooting genre and really is worth a shot if you've never tried it before. That said, these days it is a relatively simple game and it likely won't be a game you play over and over again. So maybe give it a shot if you've never tried it, I mean it is a very classic game after all.