Amiga Games - Blasteroids - Classic Commodore Amiga Game

• Blasteroids Amiga
  Ahh, now this is so retro, it's classic retro. It's golden age retro gaming.
  
  It was already part of classic gaming folklore when it was released in 1987. This was an update to the then already classic Asteroids.
  
  Asteroids was old hat by 1987, but this was a nice update for your Commodore Amiga, and if you were a fan of the original arcade game then you couldn't go far wrong with this one...
  
  Let's have a quick look at a simple yet playable game that graced most home computers at the time...
  
  

The gameplay for this arcade game is basically the same as for the original asteroids - the player (or players as the game was for one or two players) controlled a spaceship viewed from 'above' in a 2D representation of space.

The ship was controlled by rotating it and using thrust to give the ship forwards momentum (in the direction it was pointing). To slow down or completely stop moving, the player had to rotate the ship to face the direction it came from, and generate the right amount of thrust to nullify its momentum. The inertia effect was very cool, and once you got the hang of it some rather splendid moves could be made by the player.

The ship had a limited amount of fuel to generate thrust. This fuel came in the form of 'Energy' that was also used for the ship's shields which protected it against collisions and enemy fire. Once the energy supply was deleted the ship was kaput.

The ship could shoot to destroy asteroids and enemy ships. The ship could also be transformed at will into 3 different versions, namely the 'Speeder', the fastest version, the 'Fighter', which had the most firepower, and the 'Warrior', which could take more of a pounding.

The conversion from the arcade original to the Commodore Amiga was pretty well done and on the whole the game remained faithful to the coin-op version. All of the powerups were in there, including:

Shields - gave a limited amount of protection, indicated in HUD .
Blasters - gave the ship double shots, nice!
Extra Shot Power - Allowed shots to penetrate everything, nicer!
Ripstar - Caused the ship to spin furiously, firing in all directions.
Extra Fuel Capacity - increased fuel capacity, indicated by the HUD. Depleting fuel reserves to critical with this increased capacity reverted the ship to normal fuel capacity. Boooo.
Booster - increased movement speed for all ship forms. Cool!
Crystal Magnet - attracted loose Power Crystals to the ship. Cooler!
Cloak - ship turned invisible to enemies, preventing them from detecting the ship.



The only real issue with the game was the fact that it was basically a souped up version of Asteroids. No matter how many bells and whistles there were, different ships, powerups, 2 player co-op mode and pretty-ish backdrops, games had moved on a lot since the likes of Asteroids had first wowed us.

So - the game was fun to play, especially with 2 players, but after a while it did tend get a little repetetive.



I would say that the game was overpriced when it was released too, at £24.99 it was probably about a tenner too much.

We recommend getting hold of the real Amiga hardware - but if not then download an Amiga emulator and download Blasteroids. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

Please see our other Amiga retro game reviews - all links are listed in alphabetical order. Cheers guys

GENRE: Arcade game (Shoot em up)
RELEASE DATE: 1987
RELEASED BY: Mirrorsoft
DEVELOPER(S): Teaque Sofware
PRICE: £24.99 (UK)

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