Random Game O' the Day: Astrosmash

[digitalpress]

Day 7.

Yeah I know. Day 6 was a week ago! I was out of commission for awhile there, remember? So let's get back on track here with our continuing series of "what do you think of this one" random daily gamechat.

It was a big seller on the Intellivision. A major event that pre-dated Nintendo's World Championships was held to determine the Astrosmash champion, details below. So what did you think? Was this game underrated in the history of gaming? Overrated? Any personal "championships" held at your home? Write me your own mini-review of the game.

DP guide sez:

Astrosmash (Intellivision, by Mattel/INTV) $2/R1
Designed by John Sohl. One of Mattel's most popular games, an "Astrosmash Shootoff" was held in Houston, Texas to determine the greatest Astrosmash player. The grand prize was $100,000 The entrants competed in 1 hour of timed play. 18-year-old Manuel Rodriguez of Stockton, California won the $100,000 top prize with a score of 835,180. The game itself is rather common since Mattel offered the game free upon purchase of specially marked Master Console boxes (in 1983 Astrosmash replaced Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack as the pack-in game for the Intellivision console). The original design of Astrosmash was much more true to Asteroids with the ship in the middle of the screen and everything! Programmer John Sohl was forced to differentiate it from Atari's Asteroids for obvious legal reasons. c1981 Mattel. #3605.

[NoahsMyBro]

I was always an Atari fanboy, back in the days before the term existed. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the Intellivision games, particularly the sports games and Sea Battle, but regarded the arcade games with disdain due to the lack of speed and the controllers.

At the time I didn't understand the fuss about Astrosmash. To me it seemed like a too-easy rip-off of Space Invaders.

Having said that, I rediscovered the game a few years ago when I was in one of my eternal, occasional attempts to get my wife to try some games and discovered that she liked Astrosmash as a kid. So I hooked up the Intellivision and tried it out. About the same time I learned that the 2600 version could use either a joystick OR a paddle. Well, that was too cool to not investigate!

So I began playing Astrosmash and found I really liked it! I still think the Intellivision version ramps up the difficulty far too slowly, and it's better on the 2600, but it is a fun game.

[klimatron8]

I believe I had heard there were 3 million Intellivision units and 1 million Astrosmash carts. This game was the shiz-nit! Between that and Star Strike your brain would be totally scrambled for hours. This game was amazing in that it featured very simplistic gameplay -yet was highly addictive. Also this had to be one of the first games which was a true -whole family game. I remember my mom even loving this game -and she was definitely not a gamer. Good thing there was a time limit on that contest or they'd still be playing.

[asharru]

I LOVE this game. For me it has aged considerably well over the years. Yes, it's very similar to other shooters of its time, but there was something about the Intellivision controller that made the fell of this game incredible. I know most people hate the Intellivision controller, but for this game, it really works well. You slide your thumb from left to bottom to right back to bottom to left etc... It felt natural to me for some reason. I could honestly play this game for hours on end.

[Alex Kidd]

I only ever played the 2600 version.

T'was pretty fun, but I never knew the name of it for so long becuase I got it second hand and the title label was peeled off! I used to just refer to it as Asteroids 2!

My friend had a joystick with an auto-fire switch, that helped a lot, 'till we realized that the difficulty switches turned on and off auto-fire, so we didn't need the joystick after all!

My highest recorded score is only 4,905!

Alex Kidd

[Nature Boy]

I have to admit that, of the Intellivision games I own (which are few) this is the one I play the most. I agree that it's too easy at first - but I'm okay with easy sometimes.

On a somewhat related note: the VCS version is one of the first games I started playing around with from a graphic hack point of view. I changed the gunship to a Yars and the big asteroids to pumpkins. Not that I've done much (with this or anything else) since then (this was a month or so ago).

Why Pumpkins? Because I could

[kainemaxwell]

I have the 2600 version and I used to play this for gours when I was younger- learning the falling rates, making sure not to miss everything, trying to be quick and beating myprevious high scores.

[Anonymous]

I have the intellivision version of this game emulated on my cell phone, and it is one darn addictive game, to be sure.

[Raedon]

Astrosmash was the 2nd game we purchased for out INTV. It was the first game I was REALLY good at. It's an amazing game and takes queues from Space Invaders (sound quickens raising the urgancy of the game) as well as the early 80's love of astaroid smashing.

[CrazyImpmon]

I really liked Astrosmash. I played some at the store demo at Meijer but I haven't been able to find the game until some years later when a load of M-Network games for a dollar each turned up at a local Big Lot store. That was back in '87 or '88 so I don't think there are any M-Network games left anyway. (I got Adventure of Tron and Armor Ambush and I don't remember if there were any other titles I didn't get)

[YoshiM]

I had played this at my cousin's a few times and when I got my own system and both times I wasn't overly impressed. I found it to be "okay" in my book: good to kill time but not good enough to get wrapped up in it. I think this was mainly due to the controller. For something this intense, I preferred a joystick. I found Astroblast to be a bit more fun.