Asteroids

Gameplay

The player controls a small triangular ship in a wraparound asteroid field. Pressing the thrust button accelerates the ship; pressing the rotate buttons spins it left or right. The fire button shoots straight-line projectiles. Large asteroids split into two medium ones when hit, and medium asteroids split into two small ones. The field also spawns flying saucers — a large one that fires randomly and a small one with deadly accurate aim.

Historical Significance

Asteroids was the best-selling Atari arcade game of all time, with over 70,000 units produced. It dethroned Space Invaders as the highest-earning game in North American arcades. The game introduced the high score initial entry system — when a player earned a top score, they could enter three initials. This feature became standard across the entire arcade industry. Asteroids ran on Atari's Digital Vector Generator (DVG) hardware and demonstrated that vector graphics could produce a massive commercial hit.

Fun Facts & Legacy

The game's code fit in just 8KB of ROM. Ed Logg's initials were hidden in the game's high score table. The Asteroids cabinet was so popular that some arcade operators had to install larger coin boxes to hold the quarters. Scott Safran held the world record from 1982 with a score of 41,336,440, achieved in a marathon session. The game's physics model — with momentum and inertia — was groundbreaking for arcade games of the era.