| ASTEROIDS 1981, Atari Corp. |
  In 1980 the arcade smash hit Asteroids was released, and quickly became a classic Arcade game up there with Space Invaders, Berzerk, Pac-Man, and Missile Command. Kids would flock to the arcades to play these things and pump them so full of quarters there has to be at least one Arcade owner with a money-bin full of $.25 pieces - or at least a pool full of tokens!Then in 1981, Atari - of course - ported it over to the 2600 and of course it became a classic cart there, much to the relief of scared by sensationalist news media parents everywhere afraid their kids were **gasp** listening to Motley Crue in those "heathen dens" full of evil "devil music" and "shady characters". Seriously, was the entire earth Alabama in 1981? So why not buy Jimmy and Jaimie a copy of Asteroids for $45 and now they can stay home and play it and leave the arcade demons to their lair. It apparently did very well because it's been an omnipresent and easy to get game since I started collecting in 1995 (technically 1989 if you consider a 2600 was my first console). Asteroids since then has been one of those games that's kind-of forgotten because of it's simplistic premise, and the fact that the vector graphics of the arcade, which did not carry over to the 2600 version, were a big draw of the game early on. As it stands now, there are lots of remakes, official, and not, out there to play, but I still like the 2600 version because that's what I grew up with.Construction Paper Cookies - My Experiences Asteroids was a game I was introduced to as a kid with my first Atari 2600. I never really got good at it until my teens though when I started ending up on hours long campaigns rolling the score counter over and over again just sitting in one spot chomping down asteroids on both sides of the screen like a maniac. I'm still able to do this, with my most recent game landing me with rolling the counter 3x until I got totally board. I also tend to do quite well on the regular varaitns closer to the arcade as well. Honestly, my favorite port would be Champ Asterock probably, but this one gets 2nd place.
Okay, so here's where I should probably discuss my views on certain types of video game for certain sistuations. This is what I call a "short spurt" game - ie - a game you play when you have 5-10-15 minutes to kill, or when you really want to campaign something simple. I put titles with Five Nights at Freddy's, Rad Racer, Tetris, and most top down shooters in this category (though sometimes I end up on some pretty long campaigns). Say, one of the ladies in the household is taking too long to get ready, so you pop this in and play it for a little bit, by the time she's done, the game is over and everyone's ready to go, and everyone's (hopefully) happy. To me, this is one of the TRUE essentials if you have a 2600. It's one of those I feel defined that platform and really put it on the map as what it was - a home Arcade machine - even though there was aa lot of othher things the 2600 could do that I appreciate (like side scrollers or the complex and entertaining low-res low-resource wackiness of Adventure). Videos Walkthroughs/Manuals/Reviews |
