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Game Controls

Use the mouse to click Start. Arrows to move. space bar to shoot.

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History of Asteroids

Asteroids is considered by many gamers to be a true classic, a master piece. It remains to this day Atari's best ever selling arcade machine, with a total number of 57,000 units produced for worldwide distribution. Asteroids did something no other game of the era did, it introduced real world physics of inertia into the gaming experience.

The history of Asteroids: Vector Graphic Nirvana

Asteroids was first released in 1979. It was developed and published by Atari Inc. and designed by Lyle Rains and veteran programmer Ed Logg. The game was a single or two player alternating turn multi-directional space shoot 'em up.

As the player, you took control of a spacecraft surrounded by large asteroids that drift randomly across the screen. These large asteroids when shot, break into smaller pieces. The gamer had to clear the screen of all pieces before moving on to the next wave of attack. Occasionally various alien craft would also make an appearance. The larger craft would send out projectiles in random directions, while the smaller alien craft would aim directly at the players craft.

The beauty of the game was it's technical excellence to introduce real world inertia into the game play. This meant that the craft would continue to move even after the thrust button was released. This was a significant challenge for the gamer. To be successful the player had to affectively judge the stopping distance of the craft, while maintaining a safe distance from the asteroids, which when shot, would send smaller pieces hurtling in random directions at varying speeds.

Conversions and Sequels

The popularity of the game in the arcade led to it's release on various other home console and computers, including; Atari 2600,7800; Commodore 64; ZX Spectrum; Nintendo Game boy, Game Boy Advance and DS; Sony PlayStation; Sega Dreamcast and Saturn; Microsoft Xbox.

The game has also had four true sequels, including; Asteroid Deluxe 1981; Space Duel 1982; Blasteroids 1987; Asteroids Hyper 64 for the Nintendo 64 1999.

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To put Asteroids on your Blog, Website, Facebook or Twitter just copy and paste the code below into your html or edit box(myspace, friendster, tagspage). Please leave the link in to help us grow also we block sites that don't retain the link. <embed src="http://www.classicgamesarcade.com/games/asteroids.swf" width="500px" height="500px" autostart="true" loop="false" controller="true"></embed><br /><center><a href="http://www.classicgamesarcade.com">arcade</a></center>

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Rank.	Player	Score	Comments
1	plug	98620	finally
2	frankle	96780
3	frankle	89730	SO NEAR!!!
4	stanley	79450	ooohh
5	scf	79380
6	billo	75520	Surprise surprise!
7	stanley	73260	so near!
8	plug	72360	can't believe its not butter!
9	rachel	71980	cool
10	scf	71660
11	scf	68760
12	plug	66270	PB
13	stevef	61870
14	plug	56930	oh dear !
15	steve	53380	yes!!!
16	tpetertn	53070
17	vita	52820	yeaaaah...
18	asteroids	52130
19	ROBERT	51880	Fighter Pilot Bob
20	seve	51150	phew!

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