Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
arcadeblogger.com
Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#2If you haven't seen an Asteroids cabinet in action, I suggest you find one at an arcade museum near you. Actual Asteroids is quite different from any port or emulation of it. The slow-decay phosphor leaves visible trails for your ship and shots, and the machine has control over electron-beam intensity in a way that raster units do not, which means that your shots and enemy saucers glitter in the dark, creating a "spacey" atmosphere that's hard to replicate on a raster display.
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#3If you like this, you might appreciate https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#4I love that the proposal fit on a one-page mimeographed form.
I also find it kind of funny that these are museum pieces now. I played a lot of Asteroids as a 12-year-old - the neighborhood indoor archery range bought or leased one, and nearly every day after school there was a small gaggle of kids playing it. This and "Battlezone" were part of my arcade gaming coming-of-age in the early 80s.
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#5I wish I had a quarter of all the quarters I dropped down the slot in an Asteroids arcade cabinet. I just know I would go right out and find another machine and start blasting rocks.
The 7-Eleven where I grew up was just a convenient place to get a Slurpee or a Big Gulp before they got their first Asteroids machine. Word got out in the small town where I grew up and we would all take any opportunity to go down and try to beat the latest high score. Having your initials on the leader board would create jealousy among my male peers and desire among the females. Who wouldn't want to be seen with the high-score holder? We spent hours trying to outdo each other. Competition was fierce and taunting was normal behavior.
The store had several other machines over the years including Frogger, Space Invaders, Supreme Commander (is that a real one - the nuclear bomber game), Centipede, etc. and periodically the owner would rotate new machines in and old ones out. The one game that he had two of was Asteroids. It was extremely popular. Other places in town also got in on the arcade games bandwagon and before long you could play at the pool hall (spent a lot of time there too), almost every beer joint, and even some fast food joints. Anywhere you might see a crowd of people waiting for something became a great place to give them a way to spend their time and their quarters before you soaked them on the main event.
While working with one crew in town we passed our time gambling by pitching quarters. The quarter closest to the line would win all. We even used the lane stripes on the highway in some spots if the traffic was low or non-existent. There was no better feeling than getting off work with a shit-ton of someone else's quarters to drop in the slot.
I love that game. I bought an emulator version for my kids when they were old enough to understand video game controls and they love it too.
I worked with a guy in Houston several years ago and we were shooting the breeze when he mentioned that he had just bought several pinball machines to restore. I asked him what his favorite arcade game had been while he was growing up. He told me he only played pinball. I was hoping he could be my new best friend and we could hang out and waste time with his Asteroids game but nope, just another Pinball wizard loser. ;)
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#6I wish I had a quarter of all the quarters I dropped down the slot in an Asteroids arcade cabinet. I just know I would go right out and find another machine and start blasting rocks. The 7-Eleven where I grew up was just a convenient place to get a Slurpee or a Big Gulp before they got their first Asteroids machine. Word got out in the small town where I grew up and we would all take any opportunity to go down and tr…
>>and desire among the females
Now I know you are being hyperbolic.
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#7I had always assumed that Asteroids was a spin-off of Space War, seeing as the latter also used vector graphics and one of the player ships was the same design as the Asteroids ship. I loved Space War, but it was incredibly rare (in the UK)
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#8If you love Atari vector games and haven't read Jed Margolin's primer on how they did it, this is a great technical read:
The Secret Life of Vector Generators: http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm
And it's companion piece, the Secret Life of XY Monitors: http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#9I wish I had a quarter of all the quarters I dropped down the slot in an Asteroids arcade cabinet. I just know I would go right out and find another machine and start blasting rocks. The 7-Eleven where I grew up was just a convenient place to get a Slurpee or a Big Gulp before they got their first Asteroids machine. Word got out in the small town where I grew up and we would all take any opportunity to go down and tr…
Ah man. Awesome stories. The thing I remember about Asteroids was that it looked like nothing else. The straight lines and glow of the vectors were hypnotic.
Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic
#10I love that the proposal fit on a one-page mimeographed form. I also find it kind of funny that these are museum pieces now. I played a lot of Asteroids as a 12-year-old - the neighborhood indoor archery range bought or leased one, and nearly every day after school there was a small gaggle of kids playing it. This and "Battlezone" were part of my arcade gaming coming-of-age in the early 80s.
Unlike a lot of other game companies of the era, Atari was actually very methodical and kept lots of records.
They would regularly go off-site and just brainstorm everything they could think of. It all went into a large binder. When someone needed a new idea or concept, the book was there.