Asteroids arcade game play involves controlling and navigating a spaceship in an asteroid field which frequently also features flying saucers. The aim of playing the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and flying saucers to collect points whilst avoiding colliding with asteroids and dodging the flying saucers counter fire.
After shooting an asteroid it will break into smaller pieces that float faster in random directions. These smaller pieces yield higher points if subsequently destroyed. Your spaceship is a small and agile triangle that has a fast acceleration and unlimited supply of ammo and fuel.
There are two types of flying saucer that fly across the screen. One is a large flying saucer which fires in random directions and the other is a small flying saucer that fires directly at your ship.
The Asteroids game was inspired by the first computer video game Spacewars. In the Spacewars game the asteroids merely featured as a background decoration and held no threat to the player. In Spacewars you faced a fellow player and both players attempted to fire and shoot down the opponent using a limited supply of missiles and spaceship fuel. Asteroids took ideas from Spacewars but instead of firing at and attempting to neutralize a fellow opponent the asteroids themselves became the main threat making it a solo playing game.
Asteroids became Atari's best selling and most played game having first been launched in the US. It was such a popular played 80s game that the owners sometimes had to build bigger arcade containers to hold more of the quarters being spent on the game.
Play the online Asteroids game for free now at Games Lunatic and discover why it was the best selling Atari game of all time! A record unlikely to ever be beaten.
The version of the game available to play here was created by the one and only flash talent Mr Paul Neave.