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While researching for a book I learned that Asteroids was inspired by three different games: Spacewar! (the seminal PDP-1 video game), Computer Space (Atari's d
by sehugg 10y ago
While researching for a book I learned that Asteroids was inspired by three different games: Spacewar! (the seminal PDP-1 video game), Computer Space (Atari's derivative of Spacewar) and Space Invaders.
The control scheme comes directly from Spacewar; even the hyperspace button works the same way. Space Invaders inspired the "clear the level" aspect of the game. Nishikado cites Breakout as the inspiration for this aspect of Space Invaders. (Shooting games until that point usually didn't have levels to clear, you just ran up your score until the game ended.)
There's an old archived post with more trivia and design docs here: https://web.archive.org/web/20141222010537/http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-asteroids/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141222010537/http://www.edge-o... (might be display errors, maybe ad-block-detector caused)
- cyberferret 10y agoSpacewar! was one of my absolute favourites back in the day. My business partner at the time and I wasted many an hour side by side on the keyboard on an IBM PC/XT trying to outdo each other. I wonder if there is a browser version, or iOS version around these days?? Would love to revisit it for nostalgic reasons.
- mmjaa 10y agoThe original: http://spacewar.oversigma.com http://spacewar.oversigma.com
- laumars 10y agoThe thing that gets me about Spacewar is how gorgeous it looked compared to games released even much much later. The CRT effects and vector graphics really lift that game to a whole other level that pixel rendering and sprites could never match (and this is coming from someone who loves the pixel art of retro games). As much I sometimes grown when I hear people talking about CRT emulation of classic computers and games consoles, if there was any game that would benefit from CRT emulation it would be Spacewar!