I love how the controls are so unique that it's an acquired skill, you have to learn it, you develop muscle memory. It's one of the reasons I love IIDX so much, there's a point where you don't have to think about what your fingers need to do, they just do it, and I imagine it's the same with Asteroids?

Check out the Four Quarters in Peck'nam Nick, they've got one in there.

nick_md wrote:

I love how the controls are so unique that it's an acquired skill, you have to learn it, you develop muscle memory. It's one of the reasons I love IIDX so much, there's a point where you don't have to think about what your fingers need to do, they just do it, and I imagine it's the same with Asteroids?

Pretty much yeah - I can rotate and thrust with a fair degree of confidence - I always was able to do that - it's probably why I like gravity shooters like Thrust.
The vector display allows for razor sharp collision detection so the game has lot of scope for getting really good at nudging around between rocks.

Reaching the shield button when you need it requires muscle memory. Mastery of its use and dealing with the 4 shots on screen limit are key skills. 

The ufos in deluxe are brutal - they were upgraded to stop you lurking and it's highly effective - you really don't want to be going one-on-one against the tiny saucer too often. They take out any stray rocks pretty quickly too. And they always hit the snowflake satellite that breaks up into homing missiles - so dealing with those while a saucer is on the screen gets really tough early on in the game.

The shield is finite - it wears out with use - you can tell how much of it you have left by its brightness. It's only renewed when you lose a life and start with a new ship. It's a brilliant update to the original's hyperspace which is really just a panic button.

It's proper shooting too - you need to lead your shots - something that the shooting genre left behind quite early on.

Ha ha ha ha!!

Splendid.




If only.

Same here.

The Atari was home to all those arcade classics for me. They might be gimped but they're what I know and love.

The 2600 version is , for all its shortcomings, an extremely good port. It doesn't look like the original very much and compromises are made - but what's important is that it felt like playing the original.  Most of the first party 2600 ports achieved that alchemy with extremely limited resources - Dig Dug and Berserk spring to mind as great examples, but Asteroids is close to being top of the pile.

I played a lot of the 2600 port in the 80s and playing the arcade game brings back some of the feelings of playing the 2600 game. Those Atari developers really were something special. Even the cabinet code is running on a 6502 with 8K or something. Sure it's helped with extra hardware for sight and sounds, but it's damn impressive.

Best home port of Asteroids is the 7800 version. It's quite brilliant. Atari built it into the PAL console - it plays when there is no cartridge in the slot. It benefits from the extra oomph the 7800 has (it's a great sprite shifter) and it also has unique 2 player co-op and versus modes.

Aye I've seen these vids pop up. As a former employee, it's common practice for them if a game gets traded in without a cover (and is over £8 in value). It'll then get shipped off to the cex labelling centre, they'll google the box art and print it and send it back to the shop.

Sucks, but that's business. Just be on the look out for telltale signs of toner.

It's a double rob as they'll dock the person trading it in on its value for not having a box, typically by quite a bit. There's generic "no label" barcodes for each console. Doesn't matter what game it is for that console that's not got a box, you get the same unboxed value. They then spend a couple of quid sending it back and forth for a relabel, then put it back out at max value.

That's shocking.

https://www.pomelopictures.com/home/2018/3/3/investigation-into-cex-printing-fake-game-cases

In words there if you can't spend 15 minutes listening to him blather on.

davyK wrote:

I don't think people would mind if they knew it was a repro and it was cheaper than genuine packaging. This seems to be misleading though?

Thing is its not cheaper. Also not stated obviously either. And as Gav said, they'll pay the person trading in less for unbozwd then charge full whack for a printed cover without disclosure.

Aye cex operate in a grey area re trading standards. We'd be told to laugh it off. Once you sign that receipt trading stuff in, it's a contract. You lose.

Duly noted. I've bought a few things from CEX but I always make 'em open up the boxes to make sure it's all there and legit (as far as I can tell). I've told 'em to put a couple of games back on the shelves after finding out that the disc was destroyed or the manual missing/shredded.

How much does it go for these days?

Might be time to pick Silent Hill up then.