About Asteroids, Atari's biggest arcade hit
47 comments
·May 15, 2025whartung
dfxm12
This is called "lurking". You can only do it on older versions of the game, because arcade operators complained that people were playing too much on one credit, which forced Atari to make an update. Eventually, it became best practice from arcade game designers to ensure turnover.
Interestingly though, years later they had to similarly release an update to Gauntlet Legends for just about the same reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)#Lurking...
Arcade operators began to complain about losing revenue due to this exploit. In response, Atari issued a patched EPROM and, due to the impact of this exploit, Atari (and other companies) changed their development and testing policies to try to prevent future games from having such exploits.
whartung
> because arcade operators complained that people were playing too much on one credit,
Other scores did other things, including opening all of the levels to the end game (that was a fun week when that leaked, all of the high score boards all over town were wrecked).
But the 40 credit one was, I mean, freakin jackpot.
I remember when the operator at the student union at college cranked the game to its hardest difficulty. Didn't matter. That poor guy was lucky to get $2 a week from that machine. We'd crack it open every morning and just keep it that way all day long.
vunderba
From what I understand the tempest bug was accidentally introduced at the last second because the Atari logo was slightly off-center and when Dave Theurer (the creator) adjusted it, it introduced some subtle bugs into the game related to interactions with the anti-piracy code which was based on strict positional placement of objects.
Quote from him:
If players got something like 179,480 points, the game would crank a 40 into the coin counter. It would do other weird things, too, like double the vector generator multipliers so everything would be twice as big, but nobody wanted that. They just wanted to get the 40 free credits, so the kids figured out how to do it.
burningChrome
>> Other scores did other things, including opening all of the levels to the end game (that was a fun week when that leaked, all of the high score boards all over town were wrecked).
Kind of crazy to think one of the coolest things back in the day was battling other unknown or sometimes known teenagers for the highest scores on video games in arcades. I remember being really good at Pengo at one of the local pizza joints that my cousins loved going to. I remember saving as many quarters as possible as an 11 year old to make sure I could hold that high score until we came back a few weeks later.
ASUfool
>if you ended with the game with specific scores, different things would happen. The most notorious, was it would grant 40 credits to the game.
I must thank you for that nugget as a HS friend and I inherited the 40 game jackpot a couple times and had no idea how. Any memory of what some of those specific scores were?
BuildTheRobots
> Interestingly though, years later they had to similarly release an update to Gauntlet Legends for just about the same reason.
Useless tech point, but Gauntlet Legends was actually "new" enough to keep the game data on an IDE HDD. 1979 vs 1998 was a massively long time in technology terms, interesting to see some of the non-technical issues persisted.
ourmandave
Geez I hated those little bastards. They were so small and stupid good at leading their shot to hit me no matter how fast I was going.
fidotron
The original hardware, which I last played last year at Fun Spot, holds up surprisingly well. The responsiveness destroys modern systems completely, and vector displays are great.
Tangentially there was a niche but slightly notorious port https://www.spheresofchaos.com/ that is appropriately named.
joezydeco
Jed Margolin, ex-Atari engineer, did a great pair of articles about the secrets of the Atari vector games. Highly worth your time if you're curious.
The Secret Life of Vector Generators: https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm
The Secret Life of XY Monitors: https://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
criddell
A common complaint for modern Atari retro systems is that they are laggy and I think it's because ultimately they are all emulating the original systems.
It seems crazy to me that modern hardware emulating 50 year old hardware can't match the performance characteristics. What could the problem be?
vunderba
Not directly related to Atari, but there's always going to be additional lag on modern "mini consoles" since most of them force you to go through HDMI.
If you grew up playing Punch-Out on an old NES with the RF module to TV, you'll know how brutal even 20-30 ms of added latency can be if you play on the NES Classic Edition.
fidotron
In modern systems everything is buffered, often way too much individually, let alone in aggregate.
If it were not for the games industry it would be much worse, they are the only force incentivizing keeping latency within somewhat acceptable bounds. Things like FreeSync can help a lot.
fennecbutt
Analog vs digital
bongodongobob
It's not a 100% digital thing. Timing has to be correct in order for the display to work properly, at the very least. The full hardware emulation includes emulating analog stuff.
squeedles
Alas, thought the original article was going to have some juicy details about the vector hardware. But since it was a survey of games inspired by the original, I feel compelled to mention "Maelstrom" by Ambrosia.
For my money, this was the absolute best take on Asteroids since the original. Originally Mac, but the source was later released and was ported to PC. We even had a tweaked version that we called "Carnage" that generated many storms of presents, comets, spiky balls, etc.
UncleSlacky
Woohoo! All right!
Came here to mention Maelstrom. It's also in most of the main Linux distro repositories, too.
duderific
> Rather than using a joystick, Asteroids used buttons for all it controls. There was “rotate left”, “rotate right”, “thrust”, “fire” and “hyperspace”. That many buttons really messes with me!
This really hit home for me. Having gravitated toward games with "simple" controls like PacMan, Crazy Climber, Space Invaders, Tron etc., I never evolved to master multiple button games like Defender, Asteroids etc.
For modern platforms, like Switch/Xbox/PS series, I'm hopelessly lost.
socalgal2
This might sound stupid the fact that the picture of an "arcade cabinet asteroids" happens to be a emu-cabinet with non-asteroid controls and some other game on the screen made me wonder if this is either an AI generated article or an astro-turf article and not by an actual fan.
It's probably not but such is the times we live in that it was what crossed my mind.
Aachen
That picture was stolen from here:
> Building a 1979 Asteroids arcade replica —https://www.henningludvigsen.com/index.php/2022/09/10/buildi...
I see no license, only a copyright notice. OP does not seem to give any credit for the image or mention it was used with permission
But it's not CGI..! Celebrate the small wins
HumblyTossed
I got to the bottom and realized it's an ad.
marcellus23
An ad for what? The author links to his recreation of Asteroids but it looks like just a hobby GitHub project.
butlersean
Xojo.com
null
djmips
The humble Vectrex has a good asteroids - like game built in called Minestorm. But if you desire the original, someone has made an excellent version called Rocks and Saucers - free download.
PopAlongKid
An arcade game from the same era with many of the same features attribted to Asteroids (flying a ship in all directions, gravity/interia, vector display, shooting at things while other things shoot at you, no joystick) was Gravitar. Spent uncounted hours and quarters with a good buddy on this game while working on a graduate degree.
"Gravitar is a color vector graphics multidirectional shooter arcade video game released by Atari, Inc. in 1982. Using the same "rotate-and-thrust" controls as Asteroids and Space Duel, the game was known for its high level of difficulty"
MegaDeKay
My buddy and I bought a Space Duel machine from a local pool hall many years ago for $100. I'd consider that game to be Asteroid's spiritual successor. You've still got a ship floating around in space, but it is colored vectors instead of B&W and most of the objects are 3D wireframe things like cubes.
There is a two player game mode that is incredible: both players play simultaneously and there is a short rod connecting the ships together at all times. Chaos ensues as players thrust pointed in different directions, causing the two ships to spin around wildly. Good times.
lordfrito
Should mention the little known arcade game called Meteor that was a raster version of Asteroids. Atari sued them of course. [0]
[0] https://www.polygon.com/2012/12/17/3776272/meteors-arcade-ca...
toast0
My favorite version of Asteroids is a machine that used to be found on the Yahoo! campus. Someone had put in a new vector rom and the asteroid shapes now spelled the letters in eBay (I don't remember what caps). I don't recall the details, but it apparently was modified while Yahoo Auctions was invested in competing for the US market (which was before I was hired for Y! Travel).
ljf
Yahoo Auctions - not thought about that for ages - as a huge Yahoo auctions fan (and seller) it was really frustrating to see eBay win - when yahoo was free, had better features and at least in the UK had a better user base too in the early 2000s.
I remember images were free on yahoo auctions so I'd add images to those auctions, then hot link to the files on different places, like forums and basic sites where the hosting didn't allow for free images. Fun days!
dfxm12
FWIW, yahoo auctions is strong in Japan. If you're into videogames or arcade games (like Asteroids), you've almost certainly asked a proxy to bid on something for you over the years.
kabdib
one of the managers at Atari Coin-op disliked turtles
there was a special ROM, a version of Asteroids just for him, where the rocks were changed to big, medium and small turtles
dfxm12
I was never all that good at arcade Asteroids. I think it was the controls. Rather than using a joystick, Asteroids used buttons for all it controls.
I always wondered why it didn't use a 2 way joystick (or even a spinner). Was it just meant to be awkward because it was too easy with a stick? Were they trying to save money? Did they think it would look different to attract people? Were people at the time complaining that they didn't like sticks?
markx2
My guess is inertia.
The movement of the ship was not stop/start or spinleft/spinright.
A stick (left/right) or spinner (Tempest!) you expect instant results. The inertia of Asteroids would not have worked that way. The game needed more judgement, built on experience, of when to press and when to release.
dfxm12
The inertia of the ship is based on its thrust, not the direction buttons. The game works the same in arcade and home versions (with digital d pads/sticks). The left/right buttons and a 2 way joystick are identical in function from a technical perspective (sticks are digital, taps and holds are the same on sticks and buttons). They're also in my expectations (and seemingly the author's).
Yes, a spinner would be functionally different (spinning is different from holding), but the question is really about the design choice from the beginning.
doodpants
My favorite Asteroids clone was a game for the Macintosh in the 90s that featured hemispherical rocks, titled "HemiRoids".
snerbles
Mine was Hyperoid, which was left as a goodie by the local system builder who assembled my parents' 486:
franze
my try for a kinda 3d asteroids, it got messy (but fun for a while, also retro tron graphics) https://asterioblocks.franzai.com/
My friend, in the office next door, was a respected saucer hunter back in the day.
Saucer hunting was, essentially, the degenerate game play that base Asteroids reduced down to when you were playing for score.
The game was to leave a last, single, small rock floating about, and wait for the fast, 1000 point saucers to show up.
The trick was that the saucers were very fast, and very accurate. So the solution was to essentially hold down the thrust button, and race from bottom to top (since the ship rolled over the edges, rather than bounced off).
When a saucer showed up, you had to quickly react, point the ship in the right direction, just a bit off axis, and blast the saucer with a stream of bullets.
I was never particularly good at that myself, but my friend was. That's how you got on the high score boards in the local arcades back in the day.