atari releasing a new asteroids , premium price

Neat for younger players I suppose, who aren't familiar with such frivolous features, like having lighted buttons that change colors. Perhaps that's to be expected, with a $6,500 price tag. If the core gameplay isn't there, all that fluff doesn't mean anything.

Core game play is there, just needs a few tweaks for balance.
 
One thing I'll add: the team behind the game are genuinely passionate about it. They want it to be a good game for the likes of us and wanted feedback to make sure that happens.
 
One thing I'll add: the team behind the game are genuinely passionate about it. They want it to be a good game for the likes of us and wanted feedback to make sure that happens.

I noticed the same. They were asking questions and taking notes constantly as people played.
 
I approached the game expecting it to be like those "timed" Raw Thrill remakes. Reminiscent of a classic, but clearly set up to take your money, kick you off and spit out tickets. This, on the other hand, was setup to play like a modern Asteroids. Most importantly, the game has a difficulty progression! Crazy! Your game lasts longer the more skill you have, and the same skills that made you a good Asteroids player back in the day work here as well..... Most importantly, the game has a difficulty progression! Crazy! Your game lasts longer the more skill you have, and the same skills that made you a good Asteroids player back in the day work here as well.... Could easily see other challenge stages (ala Galaga) beyond the "kill 75 enemies" thing they have now.

"Oldworldman" in this thread mentioned it's a timed game, and you seem to be claiming it's limited as to how many enemies you shoot (at which point the game ends). Both indicate you hav e a maximum amount of time you can play it.

I didn't feel much danger as I cleared most of the rocks off the screen vs the original were the small UFOs would encourage you to finish.

That's what I gathered from just watching videos :) All the rocks move at the same (slow) speed, as do the saucers (which are quite large and easy to hit). I didn't keep Blasteroids long because it was too easy (even w/o using powerups).

As for rocks having UFOs inside of them, that's a weird idea but not exactly an original one. The Vectrex game Minestorm has later levels with rocks that shoot at you when you shoot them. The game also had rocks that followed you around, much like the 'snowflake' in Asteroids Deluxe when shot.
 
"Oldworldman" in this thread mentioned it's a timed game, and you seem to be claiming it's limited as to how many enemies you shoot (at which point the game ends). Both indicate you hav e a maximum amount of time you can play it.

The challenge mode is simply survive while killing 75 rocks/UFOs. Then it's over, and you continue.

The rocks get faster, more numerous, different spawning behaviors, and later versions of them add a more dangerous "explode towards you" behavior if you're too close when you shoot them. For end of wave, the game doesn't wait for you to clear everything before launching the next wave.

The rock+UFO looks like a UFO crash-landed askew into an asteroid, shooting it frees the embedded ship which then attacks you like other UFOs. I've a Vectrex with Minestorm and it really isn't the same.

One subtle difference that I loved... when a rock traverses the side of the screen, it vanishes completely for a second or two and "pops" back in on the other side, quickly growing to its normal size. That's neat for experienced players because you can hang out on the edges with a bit more confidence knowing you have a sec to get out of the way.
 
Been playing Asteroids(/Deluxe/Space Duel) since '79 and they are my favorite set of games behind Robotron. Can't speak to the desirability the game to a younger audience or if it would make money on location, but I came away impressed with the experience. Anyway, I won that AR cabinet yesterday at CAX.

I approached the game expecting it to be like those "timed" Raw Thrill remakes. Reminiscent of a classic, but clearly set up to take your money, kick you off and spit out tickets. This, on the other hand, was setup to play like a modern Asteroids. Some notes:
  • As a legacy (!) gamer, modern Asteroids-type games don't work for me with their control pad scheme. Rocking a d-pad for rotate, thrust on a trigger, and fire on a face button - it simply isn't as fast or natural feeling to me as the original. I can't overstate how important this is for the genre. (And I suppose this is sorta why Blasteroids didn't work for me ever.)
  • The graphics give a nod to the vector roots, but brighter, faster and more action.
  • Most importantly, the game has a difficulty progression! Crazy! Your game lasts longer the more skill you have, and the same skills that made you a good Asteroids player back in the day work here as well.
  • The power ups were fun, especially the black hole shot, which creates a sensory overload (sound, vibration, shaking graphics) that is just a joy.
  • The cabinet, forcing air over your fingers, rumble, pinball knocker, etc really add a depth to the game I didn't expect.
  • A few nits, likely tunable
    • too many power ups are rewarded. You never have to wait for a new one to be available.
    • the rocks with embedded UFOs are brilliant, but I think the game could use something like Deluxe's chase enemies to add variation.
    • I didn't feel much danger as I cleared most of the rocks off the screen vs the original were the small UFOs would encourage you to finish.
    • The shield power up didn't protect against everything and it wasn't obvious what it would deflect or let through.
    • I got a hint that there could be other wave types - like rocks in horizontal lines, or erupting from the corners. I'd like to see more of that.
    • Could easily see other challenge stages (ala Galaga) beyond the "kill 75 enemies" thing they have now.
Thumbs-up.
Sounds like you gave it a good review and as a result you won the game! What a win win! Also I am glad to hear that you were the only one who understood me when the game was timed or not.

I am glad it is like a retro arcade where your skill gets rewarded game time instead of like what you said. Kicks you off and spits out tickets.
 
Sounds like you gave it a good review and as a result you won the game! What a win win! Also I am glad to hear that you were the only one who understood me when the game was timed or not.

I am glad it is like a retro arcade where your skill gets rewarded game time instead of like what you said. Kicks you off and spits out tickets.

Seriously, I expected to hate it because I'm an old-school Asteroids snob. I loved it.

I've been working on my own version of Asteroids for a few years now. My design doc was basically Asteroids but with Robotron waves and quite a few different enemies. I technically made what I set out to, but I could never dial in the fun. So, while playing AR, I was really looking for the nuances on what it had vs. what I accomplished. Learned quite a bit.
 
The challenge mode is simply survive while killing 75 rocks/UFOs. Then it's over, and you continue.

The rocks get faster, more numerous, different spawning behaviors, and later versions of them add a more dangerous "explode towards you" behavior if you're too close when you shoot them. For end of wave, the game doesn't wait for you to clear everything before launching the next wave.

The rock+UFO looks like a UFO crash-landed askew into an asteroid, shooting it frees the embedded ship which then attacks you like other UFOs. I've a Vectrex with Minestorm and it really isn't the same.

One subtle difference that I loved... when a rock traverses the side of the screen, it vanishes completely for a second or two and "pops" back in on the other side, quickly growing to its normal size. That's neat for experienced players because you can hang out on the edges with a bit more confidence knowing you have a sec to get out of the way.

Oh, that's cool, I watched an older video of it (when it was first announced) and it seemed like the asteroids always moved the same slow speed regardless of size or if they'd been shot or not. Sounds like they changed that? Good.

Did they vary the UFO speeds? That was another thing from the older video that was very noticeable and annoying, seeing them crawl along and not be very challenging at all.

I wasn't a fan of the power-ups because, based on that initial video, there seemed to be too many of them. I commented at the time that there should be gaps where you're on your own, you better survive long enough to see the next ones.

I don't like the idea of endless power-ups, that's new school bullshit that makes these marginal newer gamers even weaker players. This is a common issue with these newer "gamers" who can't handle real game challenges or steep difficulty curves (they would have hated being in an '80s arcade, hahaahahaa). On another forum (AtariAge) there was some younger player who was talking up how certain home versions of Centipede were better than the arcade, and how the new Recharged version was the best ever. After a few back-and-forths it became obvious that he had never actually played an arcade cabinet, never even seen one. Which means he'd never played the damn game with a trak-ball. What?!? No wonder he thought the Recharged version was better (he hadn't even played the 5200 version with the trak-ball). I told him that until he found a way to play the original version correctly (MAME or cabinet, but with the right control scheme) that he was talking out of his ass about how much better the 2600 version of Centipede was, to say nothing of the plodding Recharged version. He seriously didn't see the problem even though a few us were trying to patiently explain to him how important the controls are for certain games (Defender, Star Trek: SOS, Tron, Missile Command, Tempest), how not everything is a goddamn joystick or joypad. Not sure it ever truly sank in, but he understood how far he was from the real experience.

What I'm saying is that I hope this Alan-1 version gets enough tweaks so that it gets close enough to original Asteroids in terms of the asteroids and the UFOs (closer than that early video), I know they were saying that they welcomed feedback and would make adjustments for the arcade version. My view is that if there are power-ups, especially lots of them and with different abilities, then there should be more/better/harder UFOs as the game goes on, have higher hurdles to have to get over. I would expect at some point that a version of one of those linked Space Duel UFO pairs should show up. I also suggested that there could be a menu option when you first start the game, you want this regular new version or a more classic (harder, more varied, less power-ups) experience? Sounds like at least they got the message about not having all the asteroids move at the same speed.

I can't remember, do the big asteroids split into 2 smaller asteroids when shot? It seemed from the initial video that they didn't, they just got smaller (but not faster). From what I recall that bothered me, too.
 
The devs told me that the limited rock directions were a bug, just fixed in the last couple of weeks. The asteroids do split, and it seems like the sizes vary more than small/med/large - but couldn't tell for sure. Too many power-ups, and I'd suggest they become more rare in their appearance.

One of the devs told me he has a "protect the power up" strategy. You break open a pink ufo, and protect the resulting power up from rocks hitting it until you need it. Rocks kill the power-ups, btw. Kinda cool, actually. Didn't get to try that.

One important thing, I'm no expert on this game. I played it probably 10 times yesterday and that's the first I've seen it or knew about it.
 
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It sounds like people well versed in the originals seem to like it so maybe best to withold opinion until one has played it themself?
Neat for younger players I suppose, who aren't familiar with such frivolous features, like having lighted buttons that change colors. Perhaps that's to be expected, with a $6,500 price tag. If the core gameplay isn't there, all that fluff doesn't mean anything.
 
Sort of like an arcade with pinball type physical effects. It was not enough that they could just rely on the graphics, they had to make it a physical experience to make it 21st century game play, so this day and age cultured people would not walk away and lose interest.

Kids these days need more than just a screen, sound and some buttons. How many people can attest that a 12 year old kid in today's world would go up to an arcade machine, lets take Robotron for instance, and then start playing and stand there until he dies? They usually walk away with the game still running. And, would they put a quarter in there, or in today's economy $1.00, to play it in the first place?

Not when they have been cultured with today's video graphics, we who come from the 1970's and 80's, it was all we knew and we would take Colecovision graphics as a methadone to our addiction because that was all we had.
$.25 in 1979 = $1 today.
 
So protests that $1 is too expensive to play a game make no sense since that is unchanged from when the classic games were released.

Also, given that some of our classic games cost $3000 or more BITD, holy crap, that means the factories were selling them for $12+K in today's dollars, making the $6K price for these reasonable by comparison (from that angle anyway).
 
If I could afford them back then I would have had as many games as I have now. I bought most of my games for hundreds of dollars not thousands, which when I was working in arcades you could buy a used pacman for 350.00, but I was a teen making 90 bucks every two weeks after taxes. I had rent and bills to pay or i would have been all over it!

If you remember, if you had these arcade games in your home in the 80's, then you were considered rich or well off. Remember the show silver spoons? They had like four of them in their house trying to project the richness of their family in that time period.

Why do you think the game show StarCade, which I applied for and was asked to come out and audition, did so well? Because every kid wanted their own arcade game!

Same as the giveaways on cereal boxes, etc. It was worth it! Because it was a 3000.00 game.
 
If I could afford them back then I would have had as many games as I have now. I bought most of my games for hundreds of dollars not thousands, which when I was working in arcades you could buy a used pacman for 350.00, but I was a teen making 90 bucks every two weeks after taxes. I had rent and bills to pay or i would have been all over it!

If you remember, if you had these arcade games in your home in the 80's, then you were considered rich or well off. Remember the show silver spoons? They had like four of them in their house trying to project the richness of their family in that time period.

Why do you think the game show StarCade, which I applied for and was asked to come out and audition, did so well? Because every kid wanted their own arcade game!

Same as the giveaways on cereal boxes, etc. It was worth it! Because it was a 3000.00 game.
Come on -- you're a Q, you're ageless, right?
 
I played this game at CAX this past weekend. My 16 yo son spent a lot of time with this game. His skills in Asteroids DX and Gravitar helped him gain decent scores.
For those saying the power ups were too many - in the Tournament difficulty, these were placed as bait. If you went for it and got dragged to the corner of the screen, likelyhood is you'd lose a life because asteroid activity intensifies in the area of the power up. So restraint played a big part in sometimes NOT going for the power up.
I was skeptical of the game at first, but it won me over. Not a fan of the new Atari, but the ALAN-1 guys are us - they played these games back in the day, they actively collect, they operate an arcade. I'm glad Atari has these guys to consult with to dial in the experience we all want. I attended the talk with Atari and ALAN-1 as well.
One other thing - no one mentioned the MLES app (Major League E Sports). You can record your score by scanning a QR code if you have the app already once your game is done. Then you walk away, and if someone beats your score, you get a notification to go back and compete again! Great way to add replay value! The tournament was all set up through the app which was cool - I imagine an operator could do the same over the course of a weekend and offer up prizes.
And the game is connected to the net so scores world wide are updated locally.
I can't wait to see how they "Recharge" the arcade experience for Gravitar and other games in the future.
 
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