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Astron Belt is an early laserdisc video game, released in 1983 by Sega in Japan and licensed to Bally Midway for production in the United States. It was actually the first laserdisc game ever made, with the prototype debuting at the 1982 AMOA show, but it was not the first to be released to the public. Dragon's Lair beat it to the arcades by a few months. A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. ...
This article is about the video game company. ...
Video game publishers are companies that publish video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. ...
Midway Games NYSE: MWY is a video game publisher known for such game series as Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Spy Hunter. ...
1983 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
This is listing of computer and video game genres with a brief description and examples from each genre. ...
This is listing of computer and video game genres with a brief description and examples from each genre. ...
This arcade cabinet, containing Centipede, is an upright. ...
Nineteen inch (48 cm) CRT computer monitor A computer display, monitor or screen is a computer peripheral device capable of showing still or moving images generated by a computer and processed by a graphics card. ...
Suppose the smiley face in the top left corner is an RGB bitmap image. ...
Joystick elements: 1. ...
In computing, a port (derived from seaport) is usually a connection through which data is sent and received. ...
MSX is the name of a standard for home computers in the 1980s (see also The Home Computer Era in the History of computing hardware). ...
A laserdisc video game is an arcade video game that uses pre-recorded video (either live-action or animation) played from a laserdisc, either as the entirety of the graphics, or as part of the graphics. ...
1983 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
This article is about the video game company. ...
Midway Games NYSE: MWY is a video game publisher known for such game series as Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Spy Hunter. ...
1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Dragons Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released June 1983 by Cinematronics. ...
A video arcade (known as an amusement arcade in the United Kingdom) is a place where people play arcade video games. ...
Overview
Astron Belt is basically a souped-up version of the simple space-shooters that were popular at the time. The player controls a lone spacecraft on a mission to singlehandedly take down the entire enemy armada. Enemy fighters and ships shoot at the player, and there are mines and other objects that must be shot or avoided.
The game is divided into waves. At the end of each wave is a command ship that must be destroyed. In later waves the enemy fighters move and shoot more aggressively, and their shots are more accurate. Some waves take place in open space, while others require the player to battle enemies while flying through narrow trenches and tunnels.
The player is on a timer at the beginning of the game, with an unlimited number of lives available. The length of the timer can be adjusted by the machine operator, but is normally 60 seconds. After the timer expires, the player is given a limited number of additional lives. When all of those lives are lost, the game ends.
Astron Belt came in both upright and cockpit cabinets. The cockpit version featured illuminated buttons on the control panel, a larger 25" monitor (the upright used a standard 19"), and a vibrating seat.
The background videos used in the game are a mixture of original artwork and borrowed material. In addition to the scenes created specifically for the game, the designers also incorporated footage from three science fiction movies: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Battle Beyond the Stars, and a Japanese movie called Message from Space that was released by Toei in 1978. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Paramount Pictures, 1982; see also 1982 in film) is the second feature film based on the popular Star Trek science fiction television series. ...
Battle Beyond the Stars is a Roger Corman produced science fiction film, directed by Jimi Muramaki and released in 1980 in order to exploit the popularity of the Star Wars series. ...
Toei can refer to: Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation Toei Animation This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...
A common complaint about laserdisc games is their linearity. Many, like Dragon's Lair, are glorified "rail" games where the player's path is predetermined by the program; to beat the game, the player only has to memorize the proper sequence of joystick and button movements for any given scene. In Astron Belt, however, the laserdisc only generates the images of the backgrounds and the enemy fighters. The hazards, including the enemy laser blasts and the space mines, are randomly generated by the game's main program in response to the player's actions. This makes Astron Belt much more player-driven than scene-driven, unlike the majority of laserdisc titles.
Technical Astron Belt used one of two laserdisc players, either a Pioneer LD-V1000 or a Hitachi VIP-9500SG. Two different versions of the laser disc itself were also pressed, a single-sided version by Pioneer and a double-sided version by Sega. However, both discs have the same information and may be used in either of the two players. Pioneer Corporation is a world leader in digital entertainment products, based in Tokyo, Japan. ...
Hitachi (Japanese: 日立製作所) NYSE: HIT is a global company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ...
Legacy Astron Belt performed modestly well in the arcades, but not nearly as well as Dragon's Lair or Space Ace, which set the gold standards for successful laserdisc games. Space Ace is a Laserdisc video game produced by Don Bluth Studios, Cinematronics, and RDI Video Systems. ...
Sega and Bally Midway released a sequel called Galaxy Ranger (also known as Star Blazer) in 1984. It had the same controls and very similar gameplay to Astron Belt, and one machine could be converted to the other by simply changing the disc and a few ROM chips. 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
ROM, Rom, or rom may refer to: Roma (people), whose members are called Rom (or Gypsy) Read-only memory Royal Ontario Museum Rom (Star Trek), the name of a Ferengi from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. ...
To date, Astron Belt has only been ported to the MSX Computer System. MSX is the name of a standard for home computers in the 1980s (see also The Home Computer Era in the History of computing hardware). ...
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