Asteroids Deluxe

This is available today through the Atari 50 anniversary celebration. It runs completely smoothly with no issue.

The emulation is very straightforward and this does not offer things like rewind or save states although it's not like you find yourself wishing that it did.

It's been about three decades since I last played a game on an actual arcade machine but this does feel exactly like that from my memories.

This serves as an improved version of the original. I'm not sure that you could quite call it a sequel. Then again neither of these have any plot, not that they need them.

One of the things it adds is color. Now of course based on when it came out there are certain limitations to hardware.

So it's not an awful lot of it but what there is is quite appreciated. Besides which I don't really think that much more would work well for this. Part of the appeal in my opinion is the simplicity and minimalism.

After all the background being the pure pitch black of empty space makes sense and also helps get you in the mindset. If we could suddenly see a lot there it would lose a lot.

Other than that this also brings in another extraterrestrial in ships. I understand that one of the things they wanted to accomplish here was more advanced AI and they got there.

It starts out simply looking like a weird shape. When fired upon or hit with something else it starts to break apart. And then the pieces start following you trying to ram you.

By today's standards it may not sound like much but I am impressed that they were able to do something like that way back then and on one of those machines too.

Because I really do mean no matter where you go they will keep following you until destroyed or the like.

You may have noticed that the description makes it sound like they're essentially sentient asteroids since that's how they come across.

That is such a clever and fun way to add more challenges here. We already have the still present flying saucer with its at first seemingly random and unpredictable movement patterns that you have to learn in order to do well here. It would be silly to just have something very similar to that.

It can unleash aforementioned foe as well. And vice versa. And of course if you want to get the 10,000 points that it'll take to get a new life you'll want it to be you who is destroying these.

They did away with the hyperspace jump. That one was essentially a roll of the dice that could doom you or rescue you at different percentage chances.

So I'm really glad that they here replaced it with something much more tactical and dependable.

You now have a force field. You can activate it in a split second and essentially anytime you want. But there are some things to keep in mind about it.

One of them is that you cannot fly or shoot when you use it. So what you want to do is very quickly go between doing those and using it.

This of course does not mean that you can't be floating since if you don't stop it that is exactly what will happen.

You also only have an extremely short time where it can be used. I don't have an exact count but I believe it's less than 10 seconds.

It does not recharge and dying and using up another life does not reset it. Once it has been used it is simply gone.

So you'll want to use it extremely strategically, usually in short, rare bursts. When you are using it anything you come into contact with will be immediately destroyed.

As far as I could tell that means you don't get the points that you would have if you shot it so you don't want to rely on this it's more a backup.

And keep in mind that there's so many things flying around that also make it something you really don't want to use any more than absolutely necessary.

The sound design for the couple of new things remains a strong suit. There's a creepy nature to the new aliens. The hum of your new ability reveals its power.

I would definitely say that this brings in enough that it's worth playing even if you already played the regular one and I could absolutely see this costing a lot of kids their quarters nearly 45 years ago.

It is so great that we are still able to try this today. I am so grateful to the people making that possible because I really don't think we should forget this and its ilk.

There's just a charm to them that is not always present in stuff made today. I am being careful to not get lost in nostalgia. I realize that a lot of the best stuff is actually very recent.

Beyond that there's not an awful lot else to say. The control scheme has not changed. You can fly ahead and use tank controls to turn. If you want to come to a complete stop you'll have to turn 180 degrees and then hit the thrusters ever so gently.

At full speed you can go quite fast which is something you'll want to master because if you do it at the right time it saves the day and the wrong will get you killed almost immediately.

If you move off the left most edge of the screen you'll appear at the same spot on the right vice versa and the same for up and down. At least some of the time aliens only move from one end to the other. This is both useful information for if you're trying to avoid or destroy them.

There's no such thing as level design here; every level looks the exact same. The only thing that changes from one to the next is that the further you get the faster everything else moves and thus the greater challenge and more need for those hard earned extra lives.

It's very addictive. Once you've played for about 5 minutes you've probably seen all that it has to offer though you will have to go for longer to master it and that's of course where it can really be a time thief and originally also cost you a bunch of coins.

The fact that it is technically fair, the very best kind is also part of what makes it something you can really sink your teeth into. Really the aliens and asteroids will always behave in the very specific way even though at first it might appear otherwise you get to realize that as you improve your skill. 8/10.