Gpasteroids


WarmFluffyUK

The Big Wad Bolf.
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GPAsteroids Review

Epilogue
Deep in the cold of space, alone in the darkness and with only a laser cannon and a limited shield to protect you. You’re fighting for your life against all odds, against all manner of ancient alien technology. Amongst the carnage your worst nightmare comes true, ROCKS IIIIIN SPACE……… :huh:

Yes it’s time to shoot some rocks again, in this the latest incarnation of the famous vector scan Asteroids game. This little gem is the product of one giffel (Martin Geisler, buhauus@yahoo.com). And what a lovely job He’s done too!


What is Asteroids?
For those of you who were born recently or had your head in the sand over the last 25 years or so, here’s a quick rundown of what Asteroids actually is:

Asteroids is a very basic game created by Atari back in 1979. You control a little wedge shaped space ship that has a big gun. Your goal is simple, destroy all the asteroids, and avoid colliding with anything as this would result in the slight damage of your wings. When I say slight damage, I actually mean total inhalation of your space craft, I just said slight to soften the blow a bit.

The graphics are monochrome vector scan, what this means is, instead of little sprites that are built up from dots called pixels, vector scan can only draw lines on the screen. Quite a few games used this technique after Asteroids, one of the more famous was Battlezone.

The sound was pretty impressive considering the age of the game: Your ship’s thrusters sounded like it should, Explosions go with a bang, and the warning sound of the UFOs that attack you were alarming enough to get the heart going. Not exactly cardiac arrest kinda stuff there, which is a good thing really as we don’t want game players dropping dead with all them 10 pence’s still left to spend now do we! :ph34r:


GP32
I have played Asteroids on loads of different consoles and computers. One of the BEST versions I have played was on the Amiga and was called Stardust, and that was because of the pumping music and amazingly designed graphics, but the game was incredibly hard. Most other versions have tried to emulate the look of the original arcade version, but have pretty much failed to capture the feel of the game.
In steps GPAsteroids, and it’s very good. It has a feel that rivals the original Arcade game, and adds one or two little twists too. For instance, when you die, the original version would wait until there were no rocks near the centre of the screen, then it would then materialise your ship and away you go. With GPAsteroids, your ship appears, but emanates a force field outwards, pushing all objects away, neat!


Graphics
The original game had a black backdrop with white vector graphics. GPAsteroids is the inverse of this, and emulates vector graphics quite nicely. I can imagine having a white background would show things up better on an FLU etc. The rocks are rocky, the ships are shippy shape and the enemy UFOs are unidentified…All said, it’s a pretty good looking game! :)
Gameplay.gif

Screenshot

Sound
Sound is kewl, lots of crashes and bangs etc. I would put a screenshot off the sound here but it kinda lost something when viewed…


Game Play
This is totally shinning. If game play was food, then this would be a rump steak with all the trimmings, no Big Macs here folks, only the top notch nosh.
It’s incredibly easy to pick up and play, the difficulty level doesn’t increase to quick, and the different rocks and UFOs are great fun.
Look out behind you, it’s a BIG ROCK!
Made ya look… ;)


Overall
A fabulous romp through space blasting rocks and UFOs. The only thing that’s missing is a fluffy dragon called Spyro, er, that’s another game SIGH :unsure: .


Score
10/10
 
bringoutthegimp posted on Oct 15 2004 at 12:43 PM said:
good review, but the 10/10 score ruined it. try and mark it realistically

I did, I play this game all the time and I feel that fans of the original would love this game. In my oppinion this game deserves the 10/10 because it's such a good version of the classic compared to other versions. And I'm not trying to compare Asteroids to Doom here :lol:

Clare.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just for those of you who are interested, I did a review of this as well a long while ago for GP32emu (along with about 8 other GP32 specific games, iirc). Not sure where the link is, but I think I ended up coming to the same conclusion - brilliant game, and tha lack of mind bending 3D graphical effects doesn't detract from it in the least. If anything it *adds* to the atmosphere of the thing!

Thanks for another great review Clare :)
 
Great Review WarmFluffyUK!

I like your style. However, I think you overrated it just a little bit. a 9.5/10 would have been better..

I also like the GPAsteroids logo on top of your review, it shows, that the game´s title looks good already.
 
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