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Asteroids is a vector-based video arcade game released in 1979 by Atari Inc. The object of the game is for the player to shoot and destroy asteroids and UFOs without being hit by the fragments. It was one of the most popular and influential games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games. A screenshot of the game Asteroids. ...
A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video games. ...
This article is about a corporate game company. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
This article is about a corporate game company. ...
A game designer is a person who designs games. ...
Lyle Rains was a co-developer of the video game Asteroids, with Ed Logg. ...
Ed Logg was a co-developer of the video game Asteroids, with Lyle Rains. ...
1979 1979 in games 1978 in video gaming 1980 in video gaming Notable events of 1979 in video gaming. ...
Video games are categorized into genres based on their gameplay. ...
It has been suggested that Scrolling shooter be merged into this article or section. ...
Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ...
This arcade cabinet, containing Centipede, is an upright. ...
It has been suggested that Vector monitor be merged into this article or section. ...
Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ...
1979 1979 in games 1978 in video gaming 1980 in video gaming Notable events of 1979 in video gaming. ...
This article is about a corporate game company. ...
253 Mathilde, a C-type asteroid. ...
UFO can mean: Unidentified flying object United Future Organization, a Japanese-Brazilian electronic jazz band UFO, the rock band that previously featured Michael Schenker UFO, the Gerry Anderson TV series United Farmers of Ontario, a political party that formed the government in Ontario from 1919 to 1923 U.F.O...
The Golden Age of Arcade Games was a peak era of arcade game popularity and innovation. ...
Description
Asteroids was inspired, in a roundabout way, by the seminal Spacewar![citation needed], the first computer-based video game. In 1977 a stand-up arcade game version was produced as Space Wars, which included a number of optional versions and added a floating asteroid as a visual device. Asteroids is essentially a one-player version of Spacewar!, featuring the "wedge" ship from the original and promoting the asteroids to be the main opponent. Spacewar! is one of the earliest video games for a digital computer. ...
Space Wars was the first vector-graphics arcade game. ...
The game was conceived by Lyle Rains and programmed and designed by Ed Logg[citation needed]. Asteroids was a hit in the United States and became Atari's best selling game of all time[citation needed]. Atari had been in the process of releasing another vector game, Lunar Lander, but demand for Asteroids was so high they stopped further production of Lunar Lander so they could begin building Asteroids[citation needed]. The first 200 Asteroids machines were sent out in Lunar Lander cabinets. Asteroids was so popular that video arcade owners usually had to install larger boxes to hold all the coins this machine raked in. Lyle Rains was a co-developer of the video game Asteroids, with Ed Logg. ...
Ed Logg was a co-developer of the video game Asteroids, with Lyle Rains. ...
Lunar Lander was an early computer game that originally ran on the DEC GT40 graphics terminal (frequently connected to a PDP-10 mainframe computer) in 1974. ...
arcade, see Arcade. ...
Asteroids is the first game to allow players to record their initials in a list of high scores, an innovation that would become standard in nearly all arcade games to this day. Asteroids is also the first game to use Atari's "QuadraScan" vector-refresh system[citation needed]. (A full-color version known as "Color-QuadraScan" was later developed for games such as Space Duel and Tempest.) High score of the Commodore 64 game Great Giana Sisters. ...
Space Duel is an arcade game released in 1982 by Atari. ...
Tempest is an arcade game by Atari Inc. ...
Gameplay The objective of Asteroids is to score as many points as possible by destroying asteroids and flying saucers. The player controls a ship that can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. As the ship moves, momentum is not conserved — the ship eventually comes to a stop again when not thrusting. The player can also send their ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen (with the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid). Ariane 5 lifts off with the Rosetta probe on 2nd of March, 2004. ...
In classical mechanics, momentum (pl. ...
Scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope depicting the inside of the Millenium Falcon when entering hyperspace. ...
Each stage starts with several asteroids drifting in random directions on the screen. Objects wrap around screen edges — for instance, an asteroid that drifts off the top edge of the screen reappears at the bottom and continues moving in the same direction. As the player shoots asteroids, they break into smaller asteroids that frequently move faster and are more difficult to hit. Smaller asteroids also score higher points. Periodically, a flying saucer appears on one side of the screen and moves across to the other before disappearing again. Large saucers fire in random directions, while small saucers take direct aim at the player. UFO redirects here. ...
Once the screen has been cleared of all asteroids and flying saucers, a new set of large asteroids appears. The number of asteroids increases each round up to a maximum of twelve. The game is over when the player has lost all of his/her lives.
Like many games of its time, Asteroids contains several bugs that were mostly the result of the original programmers underestimating the game's popularity or the skill of its players. The maximum possible score in this game is 99,990 points, after which it "rolls over" back to zero. Also, an oversight in the small saucer's programming gave rise to a popular strategy known as "lurking" — because the saucer could only shoot directly at the player's position on the screen, the player could "hide" at the opposite end of the screen and shoot across the screen boundary, while remaining relatively safe. This led to experienced players being able to play indefinitely on a single credit.[1] This oversight was addressed in the game's sequel, Asteroids Deluxe, and led to significant changes in the way game developers designed and tested their games in the future.[citation needed] In computer programming, an integer overflow is an anomalous condition which may cause a buffer overflow, resulting in a computer security risk where adjacent, valid program control data may be overwritten, permitting the execution of arbitrary, and potentially harmful code. ...
Asteroids Deluxe, the sequel to Asteroids, is an arcade game. ...
On some early versions of the game, it was also possible to hide the ship in the score area indefinitely without being hit by asteroids.
Technical description The Asteroids arcade machine is a vector game. This means that the game graphics are composed entirely of lines which are drawn on a vector monitor. The hardware consists primarily of a standard MOS 6502 CPU, which executes the game program, and the Digital Vector Generator (DVG), vector processing circuitry developed by Atari themselves. As the 6502 by itself was too slow to control both the game play and the vector hardware at the same time, the latter task was delegated to the DVG. Vector game refers to any video game that uses a vector graphics display. ...
Graphical displays for early computers used vector monitors, a type of CRT similar to the oscilloscope but typically using magnetic, rather than electrostatic, deflection. ...
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology in 1975. ...
Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ...
An electronic circuit is an electrical circuit that also contains active electronic devices such as transistors or vacuum tubes. ...
This article is about a corporate game company. ...
The original design concepts of the DVG came out of Atari's off-campus research lab in Grass Valley, CA, in 1978. The prototype was given to engineer Howard Delman, who refined it, produced it, and then added additional features for Atari's first vector game, Lunar Lander. When it was decided that Asteroids would be a vector game as well, Delman modified a Lunar Lander circuit board for Ed Logg. More memory was added, as was the circuitry for the many sounds in the game. That original Asteroids prototype board still exists, and is currently in Delman's personal collection. Lunar Lander was an early computer game that originally ran on the DEC GT40 graphics terminal (frequently connected to a PDP-10 mainframe computer) in 1974. ...
Vector game refers to any video game that uses a vector graphics display. ...
For each picture frame, the 6502 writes graphics commands for the DVG into a defined area of RAM (the vector RAM), and then asks the DVG to draw the corresponding vector image on the screen. The DVG reads the commands and generates appropriate signals for the vector monitor. There are DVG commands for positioning the cathode ray, for drawing a line to a specified destination, calling a subroutine with further commands, and so on. Look up RAM, Ram, ram in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Asteroids also features various sound effects, each of which is implemented by its own circuitry. There are seven distinct audio circuits, designed by Howard Delman. The CPU activates these audio circuits (and other hardware components) by writing to special memory addresses (memory mapped ports). The inputs from the player's controls (buttons) are also mapped into the CPU address space An electronic circuit is an electrical circuit that also contains active electronic devices such as transistors or vacuum tubes. ...
An electronic circuit is an electrical circuit that also contains active electronic devices such as transistors or vacuum tubes. ...
The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...
The main Asteroids game program uses only 6 KB of ROM code. Another 2 KB of vector ROM contains the descriptions of the main graphical elements (rocks, saucer, player's ship, explosion pictures, letters, and digits) in the form of DVG commands. A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-, meaning 1000) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to the decimal 1024 bytes (2 to the 10th power, or 1,024 bytes based in the binary system). ...
Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ...
Legacy Due to its success, Asteroids was followed by three sequels:
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. Asteroids Deluxe, the sequel to Asteroids, is an arcade game. ...
Space Duel is an arcade game released in 1982 by Atari. ...
Blasteroids is one of the sequels to the original 1979 shoot em up video game Asteroids. ...
The Killer List of Videogames (otherwise known simply as KLOV, pronounced Kay-El-Oh-Vee) is a website devoted to cataloging arcade games past and present. ...
Influences 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. Sinistar is an arcade game released by Williams in 1982. ...
Games featuring Asteroids This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it. - A single player level for Descent 3 was created as a tribute to Asteroids, Asteroids.
- Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac, and possibly earlier versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac, include a playable version of Asteroids as an Easter Egg in the included Microsoft Office Notifications application. [1]
- In Space Quest V, a sentry can be seen playing Asteroids on his security monitor.
Descent is a 3D first-person shooter computer game noted for popularizing the use of portal rendering technology and providing the player with six full degrees of freedom (often abbreviated 6DOF) to move and to look around. ...
Roger leads his crew of StarCon officers. ...
Ports Asteroids has been ported to multiple systems, including many of Atari's systems (Atari 2600, 7800, Atari Lynx) and many others. The 2600 port was the first game to utilize a bank-switched cartridge, doubling available ROM space. A port was in development for the 5200 and advertised as a launch title but never officially released, although an unofficial release was produced by AtariAge. Also, a new version of Asteroids was developed for PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Windows, and the Game Boy Color in the late 1990s. A port was also included on Atari's Cosmos system, but the system never saw release. Many of the recent TV Games series of old Atari games have included either the 2600 or arcade versions of Asteroids. Atari has also used the game for its other late '90s anthology series. Essentially, if one looks for this game, one will be able to find it somewhere. This article is about a corporate game company. ...
The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, is the video game console credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having a non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in. ...
The Atari 7800 is a video game console released by Atari in June 1986 (a test market release occurred two years earlier). ...
The Lynx was a handheld game console released by Atari in 1989. ...
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, or simply Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari as a replacement for the famous Atari 2600. ...
AtariAge is a website devoted to the video game company, Atari. ...
The Sony PlayStation ) is a video game console of the 32/64-bit era, first produced by Sony Computer Entertainment in the mid-1990s. ...
This section needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ...
Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ...
The Game Boy Color , shortened to GBC) is Nintendos successor to the Game Boy and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan and in November of 1998 in the United States. ...
The Atari Cosmos was a failed attempt by Atari to release a tabletop video game system that would utilize holography and LEDs to create a unique gaming experience. ...
TV Games are becoming popular as adults are able to play the nostalgic games, such as Asteroids, without the need for an Emulator. ...
In 2005, Asteroids (Including both the Atari 2600 port and the arcade original, along with Asteroids Deluxe) were included as part of Atari Anthology for both Xbox and Playstation 2, using Digital Eclipse's emulation technology.. The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, is the video game console credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having a non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in. ...
Asteroids Deluxe, the sequel to Asteroids, is an arcade game. ...
Atari Anthology is a collection of 83 Atari games released in 2005 for the XBox and Playstation 2. ...
The Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. ...
The PlayStation 2 , abbreviated PS2) is Sonys second video game console, the successor to the PlayStation and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3. ...
Asteroids is scheduled for release via Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 in 2007.
Screenshot of the level Asteroids for Descent 3. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
Descent is a 3D first-person shooter computer game noted for popularizing the use of portal rendering technology and providing the player with six full degrees of freedom (often abbreviated 6DOF) to move and to look around. ...
Clones and bootlegs There have been countless unofficial ports of Asteroids produced. These include near-copies such as Acornsoft's Meteors, as well as those with expanded gameplay and background, such as Astrogeddon, Stardust, and Astro Fire. Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd, and was a major publisher of games for the BBC Micro. ...
Stardust is a shoot-em-up computer game for the Amiga 500, released by the Finnish company Bloodhouse in 1993. ...
Record breaking gameplay -
On November 13, 1982, 15-year-old Scott Safran, of Cherry Hill, NJ, set a world record of 41,336,440 points on the classic arcade game Asteroids. He beat the 40,101,910 point score set by Leo Daniels of Carolina Beach on February 6, 1982. To congratulate Safran on his accomplishment, the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard searched for him for more than fifteen years, until 2002, when it was discovered that he had died in an accident in 1989. In a special ceremony in Philadelphia on April 27, 2002, Walter Day of Twin Galaxies presented a special award to the surviving members of Scott Safran's family, commemorating the Asteroid Champion's achievement. Scott Safran beating the Asteroids world record. ...
Twin Galaxiesâ„¢ is an organization which tracks video game world records through a website, a Book of World Records and through a diverse program of promotions designed to crown the champions of the electronic gaming industry. ...
Twin Galaxiesâ„¢ is an organization which tracks video game world records through a website, a Book of World Records and through a diverse program of promotions designed to crown the champions of the electronic gaming industry. ...
In March 2004, Portland, Oregon resident Bill Carlton attempted to break the world record for playing an arcade version of Asteroids, playing over 27 hours before his machine malfunctioned, ending his record run. He scored 12.7 million points, putting him in 5th place in the all-time Asteroids rankings[citation needed]. Nickname: Location in Multnomah County and the state of Oregon Coordinates: , Country United States State Oregon County Multnomah County Incorporated February 8, 1851 Government - Mayor Tom Potter Area - City 145. ...
Comedian Jim Norton (Frunkus) once got the record score for the game Asteroids. This led him to have his picture on a local New Jersey paper. Jim Norton (born July 19, 1968) is a professional comedian hailing from New Jersey, and is heard on nationally syndicated radio program The Opie and Anthony Show. ...
Official language(s) English de facto Capital Trenton Largest city Newark Area Ranked 47th - Total 8,729 sq mi (22,608 km²) - Width 70 miles (110 km) - Length 150 miles (240 km) - % water 14. ...
In July of 1982, two men in Hyde Park, NY played on one quarter and got a score of 48,830,930. They actually quit the game because they were just too run down. Matthew Collier and John Denver both of Hyde Park at the time, alternated every 100,000 pts which took about 12 minutes, trying to briefly nap on their off time. The lengthy session took 84 hours, as they played in a laundry mat after convincing the owner to allow them to lock themselves in at night. Both men were only 17 at the time, and tried to contact guiness, but they seemed uninterested at the time, because so many records were falling so often in the video game field. They did make the local radio and newspapers, but that was the extent of their 15 minutes of fame. Although John did not master many other games at the time, Matt had mastered almost all of them, spending almost every quarter he earned on video games.[citation needed]
Asteroids in popular culture
Song In 1982, Buckner and Garcia recorded a song titled "Hyperspace", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album Pac-Man Fever. Buckner & Garcia are the duo of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia. ...
Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. ...
External links MobyGames is a website devoted to cataloging computer and video games, both past and present. ...
The Killer List of Videogames (otherwise known simply as KLOV, pronounced Kay-El-Oh-Vee) is a website devoted to cataloging arcade games past and present. ...
An open surface with X-, Y-, and Z-contours shown. ...
Everything2, or E2 for short, is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. ...
Asteroids in the news - Missing Asteroids Champion to receive Posthumous Award
- Missing 'Asteroids' champ found dead in California, CNN.COM, March 19, 2002
- The Disappearing Asteroids Ace -- Newsweek.com, April 22, 2002
- After 20 Years, Master gamester Finally honored - Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA, April 28, 2002
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