My Asteroids Adventures

You might doubt if there's really something going on between me and Asteroids remakes, but if you look closer, you'll probably be suspicious the moment you look at the games I tried to make over the years: a good chunk of them might have been attempts at an Asteroids-themed game, and the one I completed was somewhat well-received too.

I don't think it's a coincidence; I'd easily contribute that to the numerous Asteroid-themed games I played back in the 90's. Let's dig in.

Drift (1994)

I only played this game a few dozen times, but I'm listing it first here it somehow become one of my core memories: I had very vivid recollection of playing it, all because its unique aspect of random level generation.

See, every time you advance to a new level in Drift, there's some random chance of this level being some kind of specal level, like "asteroid factory" or "black hole zone" or a few more... I need to compile a whole list! Much Later in my life I played a lot of Angband, the classic roguelike, and Angband had the same theme: you could randomly stumble upon a cavernous level, or a level with a vault or a pit full of orcs... So my memory happily combined the two concepts and reframed Drift as a "Roguelike version of Asteroids".

In retrospect that has largely been my imagination adding some colour to the game, but the truth is I remembered the game much later and spent at least 10 years (on and off) trying to find it again on the internet. I only remembered that it had vector graphics, a short name, and early-Windows user interface. Not much to work with...

This year I finally found a mention of Drift on Moby Games, and consequently found the game itself on a magazine CD on the Web Archive.

Anyway, if you were wondering why the individual levels in Beat Rocks have titles, this is exactly why: I took it straight from Drift.

If you'd like to play it today, you'll need an early Windows version that runs 16-bit programs. I use the 86box emulator and Windows 98 SE.

"Gravitar" (1990)

Just like in case of Drift, I found Gravitar in the freeware section of a cover CD and played it a good amount. It took me many years to realize that Gravitar is actually an Atari classic, and that the version I played is a DOS remake, not at all affiliated with Atari.

The whole theme of Gravitar is that instead of asteroids we're now attacking planetary bases! The planets have gravity, so controlling the ship is a bigger challenge. Some levels are larger than the screen, and there's a scrolling viewport! Additionally, there's a "hub" level where you choose the next location to go. This lets you choose your own difficulty to some degree.

Playing Gravitar convinced me further that the "asteroidslike" genre is pretty open-ended and can easily adapt a more extensive game design with multiple unique locations.

As of writing this I still haven't played the original arcade version of Gravitar, but I'm on the lookout whenever visiting an arcade! Maybe I should say hi to the folks behind the Warsaw Pinball museum, who knows, perhaps I'll be lucky...

I tried the recent remaster but it didn't vibe with me much. OTOH I had a blast with with Gravity Ace - not a remake but conceptually close; I recomend you give it a try! It's extremely polished and you can feel the author's love for the genre.

If you want to try the DOS version of Gravitar that I played, it's available on archive.org. For the arcade version, I suppose you could look for a retro gaming venue... :-)

Comet Busters! (1994)

Unlike the previous two titles, Comet Busters! (with exclamation mark) is a shareware game. Just like many shareware titles, it has a lot of polish: the physics feels just right, the level progression feels well-balanced and the sound effects fit perfectly.

The game didn't really bend the genre in any new way, but it had a perfectly workable multiplayer (up to 4 players, co-op or PVP depending on your settings). Naturally I'd try to coerce everyone to try and play it together with me on the same keyboard. (Do let me know if you're up, the offer still stands).

Mine Storm (1982)

Not to be confused with Minefield, this game is the launch title of the Vectrex home console. I got to play it a few times on various gaming events after moving to Warsaw.

It's a pretty solid and playable rendition of Asteroids, but the main reason I found it impactful is how amazing it looks and feels when played on the original console (if you get used to the awkward controller, that is).

See, the Vectrex uses a cathode ray tube display (in portrait). Unlike your usual CRT screen, however, the display doesn't do pixels or scanlines: it draws all the shapes exactly on the screen, not unlike an oscilloscope. It has effectively infinite "resolution" because all the shapes are geometrically accurate. Together with the game's smooth animation, it looks uncanny and deserves to be seen live. The screenshot above comes from duboracle's youtube video which portraits the game beautifully (do note that the vector display is notoriously difficult to film).

I encourage you to play Minefield in the Warsaw Museum of Computers and Games next time you're around!

Notable mentions

• Hyperoid (1991) - Another 16-bit remake with a few interesting twists.
• Stellar Frontier (1997) - A multiplayer strategy game with control scheme similar to Asteroids. I played it a lot over dial-up!
• Swarm (1998) - An extremely polished and playable space shooter from Reflexive Entertainment