Asteroids Deluxe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Asteroids Deluxe | |
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| Developer(s) | Atari |
| Publisher(s) | Atari |
| Designer(s) | Dave Sheppard |
| Release date(s) | 1980 |
| Genre(s) | Multi-directional shooter |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players, alternating turns |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Xbox 360 |
| Input | Five buttons |
| Arcade display | Vector 1024x768 (Horizontal) Colors: black and blue, Size: 19" |
Asteroids Deluxe, the sequel to Asteroids, is an arcade game. It was produced in 1980 by Atari. It is scheduled for release via Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 in 2007.
It is practically the same as Asteroids, but with a few changes:
- The graphics are light blue instead of white, and the player's ship is redesigned. Also, the asteroids rotate, and the game has a background (not shown here).
- Instead of hyperspace, the player has a shield that is activated by pressing a button. The shield will gradually wear out during use, however.
- There is a new enemy: the killer satellite. When shot once, it will split into three smaller craft that will home into the player. When these are shot, they will split up again into two arrow-shaped ships that also home into the player. When the arrow-shaped ships are shot, they will be destroyed.
- The saucers have a pattern to their shots. Large saucers fire three shots in a row at asteroids and the fourth at the player. Small saucers fire two shots in a row at the player, and the third at an asteroid. This was designed to prevent the "lurking" strategy used by many experienced players of the original Asteroids.
[edit] Trivia
- Its sequels were Space Duel and Blasteroids.
- As the Asteroids "lurking" strategy is made difficult in this game, another high scoring strategy is to hunt the killer satellites. The killer satellites appear when three asteroids (or two asteroids and a saucer) remain on the screen. Ideally the player will attempt to take out huge rocks one by one until three large rocks remain. In addition to clearing the screen "cluttered" by small asteroids, it provides more opportunities for three asteroids to remain again as the big rocks are broken up, causing the killer satellite to reappear more often during a wave. As the killer satellites become faster and more dangerous every wave, it's advisable to hunt as many killer satellites as possible during a wave rather than shoot the remaining asteroids and move on to the next one. This strategy is valid in the early waves of the game until the killer satellites are too dangerous to shoot.
