You’re a lone triangular spaceship caught in the middle of an asteroid field you must shoot your way out of (by clearing the screen of asteroids). The gameplay of Asteroids needs little introduction.
The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: Asteroids. Asteroids was just one of those genius original ideas that spawned a thousand copies.
But this was 1980, before we had the dirge of sequels and movie tie-ins we have today. It was one button too far, and more often than not you would forget all about it just when you needed it. Far too many buttons in fact, Left Rotation, Right Rotation, Fire, Thrust and Shield, the latter being a (very temporary) invulnerability.
Even the interface was clunky, with buttons in place of a joystick. Asteroids certainly did NOT welcome you in, and certainly could’ve taken a leaf out of Namco’s book with regards to cabinet presentation and marketing. This was a class of two approaches, the serious and grey(Atari) vs the fun and colourful (Namco). AsteroidsĪnother 1979 video game I didn’t get to play until 1980, On first glance Asteroids seemed more like a science project than an actual game, especially when pitted against the perfectly formed, colourfully brash arcade thrills of Galaxian. With name entry limited to three characters, I etched ADY for the duration of my gaming life into the memory banks of video games history, from Tynemouth to Cullercoats, Whitley Bay and South Shields.
Getting to the top of the leader board was a huge achievement in those days, as there was a lot of competition. Talking about scores, Galaxian was the first video game where high-score competition became a ‘thing’ for me. Lastly we had the high-scoring yellows, closely guarded by their subservient reds that resolutely stayed in formation. Next in line we had the swirling, aggressively acrobatic purples that would often disappear off the bottom of the screen and back up again, causing many a fatality. Galaxian also increased the enemy types from 1 to 4, we had the blue ‘pawns’ similar to the Space Invaders. The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: Galaxian. The complexity came in the four blocky structures above that protected you from the alien hordes raining down from above, until of course, they were decimated by hostile (or friendly) fire.Ī simple green and black display still somehow managed to transport you into the blackness of space, with the structures above you giving you that comforting feeling of safety, before the panic of having nothing but you in the way an alien invasion.
You controlled a lone space ship at the bottom of the screen, with only left and right directions (thanks to the introduction of the joystick) plus a single shot laser cannon at your disposal. And Space Invaders really did keep it simple. Space Invaders also introduced the qualities that would go onto define other great games, the ‘one more go’ addiction, the ‘easy to pick up, but difficult to master’ gameplay mechanic. Just like the Fender Stratocaster in world of guitars, ask someone to draw you a video game, and chances are, they’d produce something like Space Invaders. For all intents and purposes, Space Invaders was, and still is, the quintessential video game.