Asteroids : Atari 2600

By Austin Grundman
April 17, 2020

Asteroids on Atari 2600 is considered to be one of the most successful video games of all time. This game came out in 1979 and was an instant arcade hit. There were all sorts of people coming from all over town to go to the arcade even if they had a console of their own to play when at home. So why was Asteroids such a popular game? 

The thing about Asteroids was it was super easy to play, but incredibly hard to master. In the game you would pilot a small ship on a 2D surface with asteroids of various sizes come at you. Your job as the pilot would be to shoot the asteroids and destroy them before they reach you. Thousands upon thousands of people competed against each other with their high scores to prove they could stay alive the longest. This gave them drive to play more to be the best. Arcades were known to be the best place to showcase your Asteroids skills.  

For people with at home consoles, they would practice Asteroids on these for hours at their homes and develop different skills for the next time they went to the arcade. Arcades attracted more gamers since their high scores would be recorded and displayed to a more public audience. This increased competition among users which enabled the game to grow in popularity. It is noteworthy that the machines at the arcade would run much more optimally than the at-home consoles; this gave players a better chance of achieving their personal best score. ¹  So why was it so popular? Because people wanted to keep getting better.

Asteroids was one of the best constructed forms of entertainment of its time. This drove people to learn the game and also want to progress in their personal skills to the highest degree.