7 ms·

Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

155 points by videotopia 8y ago

bitwize 8y ago
If 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.
- Theodores 8y ago
  Maybe you should invest in a Vectrex, the only vector console. I can remember it also came with a version of Asteroids. This had the CRT magic you describe but despite the charm it looked a bit like an oscilloscope to me. I played this in Woolworths circa 1982 when the thing to buy was a 'proper computer' even if that meant a ZX81 that you soldered yourself. If I can remember correctly the Vectrex was price competitive with the humble ZX81 when new, now they are bound to be worth a relative fortune compared to those allegedly more useful computers that are worth little. Size was also good, you could have a Vectrex on your desk, an Asteroids cabinet would be a bit too bulky for that.
- mgcross 8y ago
  And Tempest too - just isn't the same without the dial/paddle!
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I would say that Tempest is even more of a true classic. It's immediately accessible even to today's audience.
corysama 8y ago
If you like this, you might appreciate https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
ilamont 8y ago
I 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.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  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.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I was a volunteer at a video game museum. I was also a kid playing Space War, Asteroids, and Battlezone. There's a big difference between kids nowadays and kids back then, in terms of how much problem solving and science they're willing to do to figure out a game! Basically, most kids nowadays will just walk up to Battlezone, wiggle the sticks for 2 seconds, which just pivots/vibrates the tank for 2 seconds, then they give up. (A few adults were like this too.) Of the kids who didn't give up, there was one who didn't figure out the 3D world also existed out of the field of view. He asked of the radar screen, "What's that clock thing in the top?" ("It's a radar screen." -- blank look. "It's a minimap." -- Comprehension!) I have a MMO Asteroids style game up online. At one point, I hired a high school aged kid to do testing. His first reaction: It doesn't go where I point it! It's impossible to strafe! For the younger kids reading this comment 1) is the point of the mechanic and 2) It's not, if you grok basic physics. I've noted that the "Asteroids" movement mechanic is generally hugely bastardized and dumbed down for modern audiences in today's games, to the point that it breaks the expectations of anyone who has skill with the mechanic in Asteroids. "Heat Signature," and "SPAZ" are two examples of this.
  - ilamont 8y ago
    Basically, most kids nowadays will just walk up to Battlezone, wiggle the sticks for 2 seconds, which just pivots/vibrates the tank for 2 seconds, then they give up. (A few adults were like this too.) Of the kids who didn't give up, there was one who didn't figure out the 3D world also existed out of the field of view. Wow. And I thought the youngest generation was pretty quick when it came to figuring out interfaces and liked old-school games. Maybe the interest is limited to pseudo old-school interfaces based on blocky graphics, like Minecraft or Nintendo-ish platformers?
doodlebugging 8y ago
I 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. ;)
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  >>and desire among the females Now I know you are being hyperbolic.
  - 8y ago
tragomaskhalos 8y ago
I 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)
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Space War was the very 1st arcade videogame I played, ever!
joezydeco 8y ago
If 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 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 http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
blt 8y ago
If you have never seen one, I strongly recommend seeking out a real vector arcade machine. The monitor has a beautiful, otherworldly appearance that can't be captured in photos or emulation. Somehow the lack of the raster grid makes the image feel more tangible. In an arcade the vector machines have an aura that even the best raster machines don't have.
- cbm-vic-20 8y ago
  For me, it's the intensity and brightness that really stand out. In Asteroids, the ship and rocks are clear, smoothly drawn straight lines, but the shots from enemy ships are intensely bright points that actually make a small circle around it on the CRT also glow faintly.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    The first time someone sees what Asteroids really looks like is pretty special. Those ridiculously bright bullets burn themselves into your retina in a way that simply can't be emulated.
- gene-h 8y ago
  I can't recommend this more. Especially because the CRTs aren't made any more and eventually all of the current ones will die.
evo_9 8y ago
Stuff like this always reminds me of this amazing vector-based home gaming machine from the 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex
- stevekemp 8y ago
  That was a good machine! One of my cousins received a copy for a Christmas/Birthday present and we spent hours playing it. The gel-overlays were an inspired solution to making the displays more interesting.
- nmg 8y ago
  some really neat homebrew games for this system -- http://www.packratvg.com/vechbrews.html http://www.packratvg.com/vechbrews.html
dmbaggett 8y ago
If you look at the letter from Thomas M. Saunders, Esq. towards the middle of the page, you'll notice a handwritten reference to Skip Paul. This is the same Skip Paul who championed our game, 13 years later, while a senior executive at Universal Studios -- and who in fact decided the character of Crash should be a bandicoot rather than a wombat. (The article also quotes Mark Cerny, who was our producer, and who was brought in to Universal by Skip.)
mcshicks 8y ago
So are you gonna play ships or rocks?
- ddingus 8y ago
  Alternate
shove 8y ago
We had one at Quarter Horse here in Durham until very recently. Really wanted to keep it in the lineup but it didn’t get enough plays :(
tabtab 8y ago
Vector game monitors created a look that's either impossible or really hard emulate well with pixel-based monitors and scan-line-based CRT's. A beam of electrons can dwell on a single spot or narrow area for a relatively long period of time, making it glow mega-bright. It's roughly the same technology as a CRT, except instead of periodic scan lines, the "beam aimer" can dynamically point to wherever it wants on the screen. It's kind of like some laser shows. I'd love to see one again and show it to my (grown) kids.
- acomjean 8y ago
  You could get a laser projector and port asteroids to it (like this guy did) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHjG759ABY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHjG759ABY
  - smcameron 8y ago
    A buddy of mine built his own RGB laser projector for about $400 back in 2013 or so, and got MAME to work with it. But the games typically try to draw too many lines for a laser projector to keep up with, so you either need multiple, and split up the lines among the projectors and carefully align the projectors. Anyway we learned that filming laser projections is hard, and doesn't look like it does in real life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JKr-Vkz8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JKr-Vkz8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6pvAZ3nq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6pvAZ3nq4
    - acomjean 8y ago
      Very cool. A lot of games i forgot we’re cector based. Battle zone, tempest, Star Trek and some game with vector blimps and space squids (world war vi?). How did the mame output which is usually to a crt translate to your projector?
      - smcameron 8y ago
        Word War vi[1] is a little game I made long before the laser projector, and we were looking for things to do with the projector, so I converted word war vi to be able to use it. You can look in the commits here to see how MAME is hooked to the projector. https://github.com/jv4779/openlase-mame/commits/master https://github.com/jv4779/openlase-mame/commits/master I believe the jist of it is MAME already has to start with lines meant for a vector display and rasterize them one way or another for a modern computer. Before this happens, the data can sent to the openlase library[2] which generates signals on 5 channels of audio: 2 channels for control of X and Y galvos, and 3 channels for red, green, and blue laser power control. These signals then get sent to amplifiers and then to galvos and laser controls. [1] http://smcameron.github.io/wordwarvi/ http://smcameron.github.io/wordwarvi/ [2] https://github.com/marcan/openlase https://github.com/marcan/openlase
Domark 8y ago
When I was a kid, my parents would drop my off at a daycare called Kids Time Out. This was the early 80s and they had a cocktail version of Asteroids. I mastered it! I could play it all day! One of my favorites to this day, along with Gauntlet, STUN Runner and VR Racing/Daytona USA.

155 points by videotopia 8y ago

If 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.

Theodores 8y ago
Maybe you should invest in a Vectrex, the only vector console. I can remember it also came with a version of Asteroids. This had the CRT magic you describe but despite the charm it looked a bit like an oscilloscope to me. I played this in Woolworths circa 1982 when the thing to buy was a 'proper computer' even if that meant a ZX81 that you soldered yourself. If I can remember correctly the Vectrex was price competitive with the humble ZX81 when new, now they are bound to be worth a relative fortune compared to those allegedly more useful computers that are worth little. Size was also good, you could have a Vectrex on your desk, an Asteroids cabinet would be a bit too bulky for that.
mgcross 8y ago
And Tempest too - just isn't the same without the dial/paddle!
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I would say that Tempest is even more of a true classic. It's immediately accessible even to today's audience.

corysama 8y ago

If you like this, you might appreciate https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

ilamont 8y ago

I 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.

joezydeco 8y ago
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.
stcredzero 8y ago
I was a volunteer at a video game museum. I was also a kid playing Space War, Asteroids, and Battlezone. There's a big difference between kids nowadays and kids back then, in terms of how much problem solving and science they're willing to do to figure out a game! Basically, most kids nowadays will just walk up to Battlezone, wiggle the sticks for 2 seconds, which just pivots/vibrates the tank for 2 seconds, then they give up. (A few adults were like this too.) Of the kids who didn't give up, there was one who didn't figure out the 3D world also existed out of the field of view. He asked of the radar screen, "What's that clock thing in the top?" ("It's a radar screen." -- blank look. "It's a minimap." -- Comprehension!) I have a MMO Asteroids style game up online. At one point, I hired a high school aged kid to do testing. His first reaction: It doesn't go where I point it! It's impossible to strafe! For the younger kids reading this comment 1) is the point of the mechanic and 2) It's not, if you grok basic physics. I've noted that the "Asteroids" movement mechanic is generally hugely bastardized and dumbed down for modern audiences in today's games, to the point that it breaks the expectations of anyone who has skill with the mechanic in Asteroids. "Heat Signature," and "SPAZ" are two examples of this.
- ilamont 8y ago
  Basically, most kids nowadays will just walk up to Battlezone, wiggle the sticks for 2 seconds, which just pivots/vibrates the tank for 2 seconds, then they give up. (A few adults were like this too.) Of the kids who didn't give up, there was one who didn't figure out the 3D world also existed out of the field of view. Wow. And I thought the youngest generation was pretty quick when it came to figuring out interfaces and liked old-school games. Maybe the interest is limited to pseudo old-school interfaces based on blocky graphics, like Minecraft or Nintendo-ish platformers?

doodlebugging 8y ago

I 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. ;)

felipemnoa 8y ago
>>and desire among the females Now I know you are being hyperbolic.
- 8y ago

tragomaskhalos 8y ago

I 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)

stcredzero 8y ago
Space War was the very 1st arcade videogame I played, ever!

joezydeco 8y ago

If 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 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 http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm

blt 8y ago

If you have never seen one, I strongly recommend seeking out a real vector arcade machine. The monitor has a beautiful, otherworldly appearance that can't be captured in photos or emulation. Somehow the lack of the raster grid makes the image feel more tangible. In an arcade the vector machines have an aura that even the best raster machines don't have.

cbm-vic-20 8y ago
For me, it's the intensity and brightness that really stand out. In Asteroids, the ship and rocks are clear, smoothly drawn straight lines, but the shots from enemy ships are intensely bright points that actually make a small circle around it on the CRT also glow faintly.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  The first time someone sees what Asteroids really looks like is pretty special. Those ridiculously bright bullets burn themselves into your retina in a way that simply can't be emulated.
gene-h 8y ago
I can't recommend this more. Especially because the CRTs aren't made any more and eventually all of the current ones will die.

evo_9 8y ago

Stuff like this always reminds me of this amazing vector-based home gaming machine from the 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex

stevekemp 8y ago
That was a good machine! One of my cousins received a copy for a Christmas/Birthday present and we spent hours playing it. The gel-overlays were an inspired solution to making the displays more interesting.
nmg 8y ago
some really neat homebrew games for this system -- http://www.packratvg.com/vechbrews.html http://www.packratvg.com/vechbrews.html

dmbaggett 8y ago

If you look at the letter from Thomas M. Saunders, Esq. towards the middle of the page, you'll notice a handwritten reference to Skip Paul. This is the same Skip Paul who championed our game, 13 years later, while a senior executive at Universal Studios -- and who in fact decided the character of Crash should be a bandicoot rather than a wombat. (The article also quotes Mark Cerny, who was our producer, and who was brought in to Universal by Skip.)

mcshicks 8y ago

So are you gonna play ships or rocks?

ddingus 8y ago
Alternate

shove 8y ago

We had one at Quarter Horse here in Durham until very recently. Really wanted to keep it in the lineup but it didn’t get enough plays :(

tabtab 8y ago

Vector game monitors created a look that's either impossible or really hard emulate well with pixel-based monitors and scan-line-based CRT's. A beam of electrons can dwell on a single spot or narrow area for a relatively long period of time, making it glow mega-bright. It's roughly the same technology as a CRT, except instead of periodic scan lines, the "beam aimer" can dynamically point to wherever it wants on the screen. It's kind of like some laser shows. I'd love to see one again and show it to my (grown) kids.

acomjean 8y ago
You could get a laser projector and port asteroids to it (like this guy did) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHjG759ABY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHjG759ABY
- smcameron 8y ago
  A buddy of mine built his own RGB laser projector for about $400 back in 2013 or so, and got MAME to work with it. But the games typically try to draw too many lines for a laser projector to keep up with, so you either need multiple, and split up the lines among the projectors and carefully align the projectors. Anyway we learned that filming laser projections is hard, and doesn't look like it does in real life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JKr-Vkz8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JKr-Vkz8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6pvAZ3nq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6pvAZ3nq4
  - acomjean 8y ago
    Very cool. A lot of games i forgot we’re cector based. Battle zone, tempest, Star Trek and some game with vector blimps and space squids (world war vi?). How did the mame output which is usually to a crt translate to your projector?
    - smcameron 8y ago
      Word War vi[1] is a little game I made long before the laser projector, and we were looking for things to do with the projector, so I converted word war vi to be able to use it. You can look in the commits here to see how MAME is hooked to the projector. https://github.com/jv4779/openlase-mame/commits/master https://github.com/jv4779/openlase-mame/commits/master I believe the jist of it is MAME already has to start with lines meant for a vector display and rasterize them one way or another for a modern computer. Before this happens, the data can sent to the openlase library[2] which generates signals on 5 channels of audio: 2 channels for control of X and Y galvos, and 3 channels for red, green, and blue laser power control. These signals then get sent to amplifiers and then to galvos and laser controls. [1] http://smcameron.github.io/wordwarvi/ http://smcameron.github.io/wordwarvi/ [2] https://github.com/marcan/openlase https://github.com/marcan/openlase

Domark 8y ago

When I was a kid, my parents would drop my off at a daycare called Kids Time Out. This was the early 80s and they had a cocktail version of Asteroids. I mastered it! I could play it all day! One of my favorites to this day, along with Gauntlet, STUN Runner and VR Racing/Daytona USA.