Game Info
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Developer: Atari Games
Publisher: Atari Games
Year of Release: 1987
Game Review & Impressions
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Atari's official sequel to its own arcade smash hit, Asteroids, builds on the core gameplay of its predecessors, but leveraged the power of hardware available the time to introduce numerous new features. The vector-based visuals of old have been replaced by pre-rendered 3D sprites and more traditional 2D pixel art work. The graphical style is certainly a welcome change, and while I don't think it's the most attractive game to come out of Atari, it's still pretty cool.
The objective of the game is pilot your craft through successive levels, destroying all asteroids present before moving on to the next sector. Completing all sectors in a galaxy will lead to a showdown with Mukor, an intergalactic monstrosity hell-bent on the destruction of Earth and all humankind. Your craft has a limited amount of energy, which decreases not only over time, but also when taking damage from enemies. Certain rocks release energy crystals which restore a small portion energy collected, and you also get a small boost when completing a level, but supplies are often scarce, so speed and precision are the order of the day.
Key to success is switching between the three different craft modes at the your disposal. Ship type can be changed on the fly, with each possessing varying degrees of speed, manoeuvrability and firepower. Knowing where and when to use each craft type becomes paramount to the player's success, switching to speed mode to boost away from danger, or maximising offensive power to clear fields of space rocks quickly.
As you can expect from an Atari game, the difficulty is off the charts. The official product manual states that the average player will last roughly 110 seconds per credit, and I can believe it. The "Easy" difficulty restricts the game to clearing two galaxies only, with successive difficulties requiring not only more galaxies to cleared, but also more sectors per galaxy.
Those who wish to face the ultimate challenge can tackle the "Expect Mode". Players must clear four galaxies as before, but three of these are focused around specific enemy types, such as "seeker" 'roids, which home in on you when shot.
Although several longplays and videos of the game exist on KZread, they all cover the "Easy" difficulty. I decided to tackle expert mode because many of the games enemies and features only appear in the higher difficulties, and warping to special galaxies is exclusive to the expert mode.
If I'm being completely honest, the games Atari was turning out at this point felt a little lacklustre compared to those being published by Sega, Capcom, Taito, and the rest of the big Japanese coin-op manufacturers. Blasteroids isn't a bad game by any means, just one that doesn't excite me.
Information & Trivia
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Video Notes
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- Played on Expert difficulty
Related Longplays & Videos
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Chapters
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