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As the pilot of a lone space cruiser, you must try to clear the spaceways of a
swarm of free-floating (and yet somehow deluxe asteroids, but the job
isn't easy - Newton's laws of motion must be obeyed, even by asteroids. When
you blow a big rock into little chunks, those chunks go zipping off in opposite
directions with the speed and force imparted by the amount of energy you used to
dispel them. To that screenful of bite-sized chunks o' death, add an
unpredictable hyperspace escape mechanism and a pesky UFO that likes to pop in
and shoot at you, and you're between several large rocks and a hard place. Only
this time you have shields.
(Atari, 1980)
One of few sequel games ever released by Atari, Asteroids Deluxe was a
somewhat less-than-successful attempt to cash in on their most successful vector
game to date, the immortal Asteroids. Even
though Atari, just like everyone else, had its fare share of flops, few flopped
as grandly as Asteroids Deluxe. The game has only recently been reborn
thanks to collections such as Infogrames' Atari Anniversary Edition.
Asteroids Deluxe also featured a background mural behind the game
graphics, making the obligatory animated sequence below possibly the hardest
graphical task I've ever had to pull off for a Phosphor Dot Fossil.
Rating: 
Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that
might alienate less patient arcade veterans.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
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