Timeline | 1981: Asteroids for Atari 2600

Asteroids was a huge hit for Atari both in the Arcades and on the 2600

Following the success of Space Invaders, Atari released Asteroids in the Arcades in 1979. The Atari 2600 version came out in 1981. Asteroids took the adventure into outer space where the player pilots a star ship through an asteroid field, destroying the asteroids into smaller and smaller pieces and fighting the occasional alien spacecraft along the way.

Asteroids was an immediate hit in the arcades in the US, supplanting the behemoth that was Space Invaders after a short time. The Atari 2600 version wasn't quite as successful but did sell quite a bit and help to continue the success of the console.

A screenshot of Asteroids on the Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 version of the game had several key differences from the Arcade version. First and foremost was the raster graphics instead of vector graphics, this made the asteroids and ship movement much more jerky and contributed to lower graphical quality overall (which of course made sense due to the limitations of the machine when compared to Arcade machines of the time). An effort to make up for this was the inclusion of some color to the game in the form of multi-colored asteroids, even though this made little sense for asteroids to be pink and purple...

Like many early video game hits (Pong, Space Invaders, etc.) Asteroids had many 'clones' which were basically rippoff Arcade cabinets or game cartridges that were basically the exact same game. Unfortunately Asteroid clones were prevelant enough and of high enough quality that they actually cut into the real Asteroid's popularity, one Asteroids in Space on the Apple II computer was named the most popular software for that computer in 1980.

All-in-all Asteroids for the 2600 doesn't really hold up well, one would be better suited to play an arcade port on the computer or any number of other remakes/ports from later sources but it was very important for the time and still a great game.

In modern times retro gamers have developed a cult following for all things Atari including Asteroids. A recent remake/remastering of Asteroids by game designer Darrell Spice Jr. at AtariAge.com named 'Space Rocks' adds in many new and improved features in the graphics and the gameplay, and it plays on a real Atari 2600. This would be a great addition to any Atari 2600 collection (and I plan for it to be in mine soon).

Further Reading:

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)

AtariAge:
http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1026