Playing rules:

Difficulty: 2 (Medium). Start: 3 lives. Bonus: 1 life at 40,000 points. Freeze Frame: Normal.
Dip-Switch: 1=ON; 2-3=OFF; 4=ON; 5=OFF; 6=OFF/ON; [English/French] 7-8=OFF. 

Current Record holders

1st: 6,840,850 - Jerry McCloskey- 1983
2nd: 3,333,300 - Mark Robichek - 1983
3rd: 262,700 - Mike Miller - 1983
4th: 121,040 - Andrea Prioria - 1984
5th: 67,220 - Gregory S.Erway - 2004 

There’s a rumour I heard as a kid that it was illegal, proper lock you up in jail and bum you illegal, to make a film that finishes with the bad guys winning. It’s alright having a film that has loads of terrible things happening, but there needs to be a good or at least an ambiguous ending or that’s you in the slammer. Sounds mental but it’s exactly the sort of thing you believe when you’re a kid. Actually, thinking about it now, it’s pretty hard to think of a film where the bad guy clearly wins at the end, but I digress from the point (which I haven’t made yet, hold the bus).

Similarly, games these days rarely have you control the bad guy. Ok, maybe a few of the more inventive games allow you to *become* evil as you play, do evil stuff and all that as you go and even a few have revelled in the fact you’re a bad guy, but often it’s in some fantasy world and there’s usually some sort of opportunity for redemption. Very rarely do you get to play a proper villain, an absolute cunt of a man if you will – Welcome to Bagman.

Bagman though? Sounds ace doesn’t he? Sounds like the sort of guy who makes small bags in his spare time to help kiddies everywhere carry their toys or perhaps the harmless old guy that enjoys nothing more than collecting tin cans in supermarket carrier bags. He’s none of those, oh no. Bagman is a low-life thieving bastard who thinks nothing of stealing bags of money, bashing the shit out of old security guards (probably “this” close to retirement) with pickaxes as he goes. That’s right, pickaxes. The massive sharp metal bastards used for digging up rocks and shit. Talk about harsh.

Hang on though, I’ve learnt something today and I shall share it with you. Wikipedia has the following definition for a “bagman”:

Nice. So we’re not even playing as a bad guy with balls, we’re just a bloody delivery boy not even getting to keep the money for ourselves. Nobody likes to hear the word “fraction” when it comes to divvying up your share, what a rip – get the slag locked up and let’s move on to a more wholesome game.

Oh, go on then – seeing as we’re here (and we’ve waited so long to get into the Bs after all) – crimewatch can wait, let’s have a little look at the game why don’t we?

First off, the scores and I think it’s fair to say that there is quite a range on display. 6.8 million at the top, halved to 3.333 million for 2nd (nice triple nelson there incidentally). Third place? 260,000 – course it is. Looks like the top boys know something the rest of us don’t. That or it takes days to marathon the bugger or some such nonsense. Hey ho, let’s see if I can get involved with the 5th place 67k – that seems a good place to aim at.

Being nothing if not that bastion of honesty, I must admit, I have a bit of “previous” with this game. That’s not to say it’s one of my favourites, or even one that I’ve played particularly much – just that it has piqued my interest on more than one occasion. Rightly so too as it’s a much more detailed game that it first appears, as you’ll find out. What does that mean in real money? Well it means that this is less an adventure of discovery than usual, but oh we have so much to explore.

First of all though, I always recommend that you have a watch of the attract screen to get a general idea of what the game is all about. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s another thing that modern games are missing on the whole, a good old attract screen. True, the environment is entirely different and arguably there is no need to attract people to play your game when they have it sat in front of them in a console, but still…a good attract screen is a beautiful and informative thing indeed. Colour me angry at no-one in particular.

Anyway, let’s have a look what we have here. Ah look, there’s the chap that must be our “bagman”, happily pulling his wheelbarrow slowly across the screen. Is pulling a wheelbarrow easier or harder than pushing it? I would have thought pushing was the ideal method for such a thing? I’m already finding it hard to relate to this guy I’m supposed to be controlling – if he can’t even use a bloody wheelbarrow properly why should I want him as my avatar? Hang on, what looks like a park keeper has stopped him reaching the edge of the screen and now has given chase back the other way. now *that’s* how you efficiently use a wheelbarrow son, just look how much easier that looks. What is that park keeper guy waving at us as he chases? Looks like one of those spiky sticks you pick up litter with? Bit dangerous that fella, we’re only borrowing your wheelbarrow, I’m sure we’ll bring it back when we’re finished. No matter anyway, the old coot is so slow we’re going to escape long before he reaches us – and there we go, safely off the screen and he isn’t even halfway. Ah bless, we get to watch him waddle all the way, go on fella, you can do it. A bit of the theme to Steptoe and Son wouldn’t go amiss here, go on son!….Here we go, nearly there, good work fella…hang on, what’s this? Here’s the bagman again. What do we have in our hand? WHAT! OH! WHAT THE FUCK?

Just as the old parkie finally get’s to the edge of the screen the bagman re-appears but now he has a bloody great pick axe in his hand, slapping it square in the old guy’s forehead. He’s down and clearly dying a horrible writhing death while our man stands over his twitching body, pickaxe raised and ready presumably in case he dares get up again. Told you the guy was an absolute cunt.

*This* is how the game wants to introduce us to our hero? Wow. Barely able to carry on, I watch regardless as the attract sequence continues to the game itself. There’s the screen we saw earlier and bagman goes straight up the first ladder, only pausing to pick up a moneybag on his way to the top. That’s where the true use of a wheelbarrow comes in as he throws the bag in and pushes the barrow onto the next screen. A weird bit of self doubt there from bagman before he pushes the wheelbarrow, if he’s looking for old men to twat, there are none to be seen – nor are there on the second screen, although there seems to be a lift and all manner of what look like mine carts whizzing about. Ok, he’s left the barrow now and is waiting for the lift – where is he going? Ah, straight to his trusty pick axe I see – still no old guys but fair enough. What’s this? He’s digging through a wall towards a differently coloured from the rest blue money bag. Hang on, he’s stopped one stroke short (that’s what she said) and off he goes again. Now he’s dropped his pick axe as he appears to be doing a chin up on a bar mounted on the ceiling. What is he doing? As a mine cart rolls by down he drops and he’s riding! Looks like fun, but he’s straight off again (what was the point of that, he went about 10 yards) and up the next ladder and on to a third (!) screen. Where he loses the pick axe and walks straight into a mine cart, dead.

Now, I have often wondered how people decide exactly what to include on the attract screens, but this one is even more baffling than usual. As I mentioned before, I know a bit about this game and what that has just shown you was a combination of a surprising amount of gameplay tips along with a load of nonsense. Maybe I’m being harsh, but showing you how to dig the special blue moneybag out is a very rare example of a machine giving up it’s secrets a little too easily. It’s shown you all three of it’s screens as well so there goes the usual sense of discovery. Or has it?

You see, this game is actually massively complex, with so many nuances and techniques I’m amazed it came out as early as 1982. Let’s briefly run through how the game works shall we? The idea of the game is to get all of the moneybags into the wheelbarrow and and escape from the extreme right of the third screen. Easy right? Actually, no. The parkie guys we saw in the intro are a rather persistent bunch and they get increasingly faster and craftier as it goes on. By the time you get near the third screen there are loads of them as well – what’s worse (although not for them) is that they’re a pretty hardy bunch and the pick axe attacks only leave them slightly dazed; a daze from which they awake with renewed vigour in only a couple of seconds. I mentioned crafty because that’s exactly what they are. No mindless wandering for these guys, they track you down like the dog you are, and you know what that means? That’s right, it’s actually a well disguised bloody maze game – the bane of my life.

So let’s jump straight in with my first go.

As ever with with games like this, I am immediately panicked by the pursuing parkie guy even though he is limping away slowly at the top of the screen minding his own business. After that comes the panic of just how I am going to approach this. See, that’s the thing with this game – It’s not massively obvious which bags you should go for first. Should you make sure you load all of the bags into the wheelbarrow before rolling it to the next screen, or should you use a combination of the screens to try and confuse the parkies? Let’s try the “clear each screen at a time” approach – starting with what I shall imaginatively call “screen1″.

Looks bloody complicated if you ask me. For those new to the game, let’s go through a few of the bits and bobs.

- The wheelbarrow that all the cool kids are talking about is at the top and there are 5 bags you want to be putting in it for this screen, easily done by simply standing over it and dropping the bags.

- The pickaxes are used donkey kong styley, although in this you can put them down again. They do seem to run out after a while mind you.

- Sacks of (NOT YOURS) money. As big as a man, each of this sacks must contain plenty of money and going by the small amount your mister slows down when carrying one, they’ll be notes as well. Would have to be I guess – It’d be a shit old game if it was filled with coppers and you couldn’t even pick one of the buggers up.

- Mine carts. Loads of these slags rolling about, fatal to touch but as you saw in the attract sequence, you can hang onto the bars and drop into them if you so wish.

- Old security guards (parkies). These buggers may look old, but they are sure footed and wiley with it. They don’t just follow a certain path, these buggers are onto you.

Ain’t learning fun? Anyway – off I go. Although I have no idea of a decent tactic, even considering I have played this before. Blindly picking up bags is all well and good, but by the time I have fetched the second bag, the parkie guy has sped up a little and is on my tail. Bagman is faster than these old codgers, but not when carrying a bag – so it’s really quite tricky. Pick up a pickaxe then maybe? Wisely they run away as soon as you arm yourself and even if you do manage to give them a massive old twat on the head, by the time you have got back to the bag and picked it up, the fuckers are up and on their feet again. I know I said hitting people with pickaxes was bad, but *if* you’re going to do it at all, at least do it properly and keep the guy down surely!

A right old mess and I’m down to my last life with only 2 bags in the wheelbarrow. Shit!

Then a game changer – I remember that you can hurt the guys by dropping the moneybags on them as well, so I do just that – when closely pursued up the main ladder I let the bag drop and it knocks the parkie on his arse and right down to the bottom. Unfortunately the bag goes with him (makes sense, damn you gravity!), but still – I feel better armed for the job. I also remember that you can slide the bags down the slopes at them as well, which is great for a laugh and all that (and very clever) but doesn’t really help much as it takes too much effort to engineer the situation. Well it does for me anyway.

Without any focus, that’s me soon knackered.

14,620

Nadgers. That wasn’t easy at all and just look at that stupid score.

Ok, new plan. I reckon most of the time is spent travelling around carrying the bag you are focusing on while trying to escape the clutches of the still completely innocent security guards (although I’m already beginning to dislike them). How about we instead try and move all the bags together, a little bit at a time like. Everytime you are caught up, drop the bag and move to another, inching all of the bags slowly towards the wheelbarrow, making the final loading of the barrow a lot easier.

Sounds ace, let’s do it.

11,020

FUCK! Hang on though, that wasn’t the fault of the tactic, that was me being a spacker. Even though you get points for walking about (weirdly) the big money so to speak is in the loading of the bags into the barrow and although I got a few of them close, only one actually went in by the time I was dead. Try again properly this time!

20,940

Ok, better. I reckon this tactic is a winner, although I still struggle – especially when other guys start appearing from the other screens.

So, let’s try bringing the other screens into it. You can move between the three screens as much as you like and the guards follow so perhaps using the whole playfield to lead them on a merry chase will be easier? Before we do that, let’s look at screen 2.

What a mess that is! That thing in the middle is a lift and it makes things rather tricky indeed. Also note hilariously that in the screenshot above the parkie guy on the right is currently falling to his death (well daze) after trying to pursue me by falling down a rather large hole. That’s right, falling is also death in this game and now I’m bringing lifts into it, that happens a lot.

Also note the blue bag eluded to in the intro. This baby is not only worth loads of points, but is also much heavier than the rest, so you tend to walk like a guy who’s messed his pants as you try and heave it towards the wheelbarrow. Worth it? Well I couldn’t bloody get it.

34,220

I’m missing something rather fundamental here and unfortunately it would appear that it’s “skill”. This really does play like a maze game and for that reason, I’m out – or more truthfully, for that reason, I’m shit.

Let’s have a glance at screen 3 anyway why don’t we?

Another bloody lift, and full length of the screen too. Nice.

I find myself  just under half my target score with very little chance of much improvement if I’m honest. Looking at some of the videos of people playing this properly it’s clear that playing in a blind panic, as I do, is *not* the way to go and the key seems to be getting the misters almost trapped in areas while you move the bags about. Way beyond me but interesting all the same.

With a game that has such an obvious “end game” you do wonder what actually happens if you *do* manage to lug all three screens worth of bags away into the sunset? In fact I bet you’re sitting there naked from the waist down wondering just like me. Well – the massive top scores suggest that the game simply loops (as so many old games do) but I can’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe there is a nice ending with a chunky old bonus awaiting us instead. Who knows or dares to dream?

Playing it one last time I wonder whether there is actually a way of getting away from it all, repent from the life of crime and escape with just expenses (I’m not greedy). I decide all I need for a good life is a single bag of money – so off I trot for the end of the third screen, bag in hand. Embarrassingly it takes a few lives to even manage this simple task, but finally there I am, ready for the life of a good clean man.

Clearly bagman doesn’t agree. On reaching the edge of the screen he just stops refusing to go any further. One bag not enough for Bagman, oh no. What a cunt.

Aztarac is next – a lovely looking vector game from 1983. Was *really* looking forward to it let me tell you, until……This happened

What do I mean “and then this happend”?

Well, what you see there is a picture of the arcade machine controls and yes, that’s right it has an analogue stick AND a bloody dial!

Try as I might i couldn’t get any sort of configuration working in MAME that allowed me to play the game properly – nearest I got was the stick on the arrow keys and the dial on the mouse but it was just so so clumsy.

So alas my shiney friend I have to skip you – and with that we LEAP into the “B’s”!

Hold me.

Playing rules:

Difficulty: Factory default. Start: 3 Misses per game. Bonus: Extended play at 450 points. Extended Play: Enabled

Dip-Switch: 1-3=ON; 4=OFF; 5-6=Not Used; 7=ON; 8=OFF.

Current Record holders

1st: 2,453 - David Nelson - 2004
2nd: 1,334 - Jason Cram - 2004
3rd: 597 - Shawn Cram - 2004


1978 – When I were a lad, all this were fields – and by ‘eck it were grand. Lucky then that I was way too young to go anywhere near an arcade, because little did I know Atari had created the absolute terror that is “Avalance”.

Alright, alright – I can hear you from here; Absolute terror? Just look at that screenshot, it looks about as scary as a care bear in a trance. Well don’t you be fooled young traveller – this is by far the most stressful game I have played in years and if it doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you then you truly are dead inside – or at the very least you don’t have the sound turned up. We are still only in the “A’s” yet we’ve already had some bloody scary sound effects thrown at us along the way; well they are *nothing* compared to this game, believe me.

Anyway enough of that for now, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts…aaaahhhhhh that’s better, thank you Felicity Kendall you can go now.

Where was I? Ah yes – 1978 (thirty years ago!).

Video games were still very much in their infancy all that time ago; one of the first recognised video arcade games, Space War, had only been out a year and Space Invaders was yet to arrive (albeit only by a matter of months), so realistically we should expect this early Atari effort to be quite simple. Well, simple we certainly get as you can see by the screenshot – in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar looking game running on an oscilloscope. What’s an oscilloscope I hear you ask? Well, find yourself a scientist and ask him. Can’t find one? Ok, at the very least find a man with a beard, he’s sure to be able to tell you.

We also get simple with the controls; In fact if I didn’t know better (and I don’t) I would imagine quite a few PONG and Breakout spinners found their way back into the limelight with this game, as that’s all you get – no buttons, no joysticks, just a spinner. The control method isn’t the only familiar aspect either, the trusty pong bat is back, fresh from his last adventure “breaking out” and this time he’s brought some friends with him, six of the buggers altogether. What adventure could possibly require SIX pong bats for goodness sakes? Surely with that number you can take over the world!

Well, you see there is a major problem in pong-bat town (which is of course where they live in case you were wondering). Previously all the pong bats had to worry about was losing their precious ball, be it playing a nice game of tennis or fannying about vandalising walls. Well fuck your ball son, we are talking about a mother freakin’ AVALANCHE here. Why is it down to you bats to save the town? Well funny you should ask actually – y’see this is no ordinary avalanche with snow and shit, this is an avalanche of BALLS. Yeah that’s right, while we’ve been grafting dahn t’ pit doing proper jobs, sticking food on your table every night, you’ve been prancing about playing ball games all day long. Well now the tables are turned pal, time for you to earn your keep. Yeah ok, I know the avalanche won’t really effect us as we are underground in the pit as previously explained, but let’s not ruin the little story eh? If you want to question anything why not question who the hell “we” are, if not bats, and why are we looking after bats? Do bats even eat? Why are non bats living in pong-bat town at all as a matter of fact? Look, no time for that – avalanche on it’s way remember, loads of rocks about to plummet on our heads? There we go…ok, we better work out what we’re supposed to do i suppose.

The game is extremely simple. Using the spinner (or the mouse under MAME) you control all 6 bats at once, all tied together, and are able to go left and right as much as you like ( that’s all mind, don’t be getting greedy). The idea of the game is to simply prevent the “rocks” from reaching the bottom of the screen, which sounds easy enough – and it is. All of the rocks are visible from the off and they slowly start falling off one by one. Once you catch a rock it doesn’t bounce about or anything funky like that, it just disappears with a “beep”, surrendering itself to your mighty bat. That’s it! Easy – let’s get cracking!

First of all though let’s take a peek at the scores. As ever it’s hard to tell what’s a good score at the moment but it’s quite clear that some buggers suddenly found one of these rare machines in 2004 and proceeded to slap it about a bit as all three records are from the same time. A nice spread of scores as well so looks like we could be in with a chance.

Righto then, I’m ready to save batsville or whatever the place is called so off we go. No music, no fanfare nothing – straight away the rocks start to fall, really rather slowly. With a satisfying beep I hoover all of them up; occasionally I miss one with the top bat, but I have 5 others lined up that more than happily make up for it. Piece of piss this. Oddly though I notice a soft slow rumbling sound in the background which I assume is the best that they can come up with in the way of atmospheric sound effects – it does sound a bit like an avalanche I have to admit…..ahhhh how sweet – nice touch Atari.

It’s this “sweet” sound that for the past week has caused me to wake up every night with the sweats on something rotten.

You see, of course the game speeds up as you go – surprisingly viciously in fact, but that isn’t the main concern. The slow rumbling sound effect ramps up, not just in volume, but in intensity as well. Within a single minute the sound that this fucking game makes is entirely terrifying. It’s running on 30 year old hardware for christ’s sake yet it somehow has the technology to get INSIDE your head. Like when you watch a Cronenberg film you find yourself hitting your own head with a shoe, pleading desperately with yourself WHY you are putting yourself through this horror? I cannot believe that this machine ever lived in an arcade,  a lovely family place, uttering such evil, surely not. Maybe it sat in its own sound proof box, like an old fashioned circus freak show – that I can believe. “Come and witness the scariest fucking thing ever, roll up roll up!”.

As you may have gathered the sound is pretty intense.

The bats however, decide that they aren’t happy playing second fiddle to the sound, oh no. “Why not get intense too?” they think. “I know, what we’ll do is start shrinking in width, eventually doing legs, one by one until there is only a single skinny bat left. Yeah that’ll do it”.

“Hang on though you slags”, think the rocks. “Why should we miss out?. What *we’ll* do is start falling faster and faster leaving the smallest of the small rocks till last. That oughta do it, yeah let’s do that.

All of this happens at once in the space of about 45 seconds. ALL AT ONCE.

I’m an absolute jibbering wreck by the time my first go is over, my three lives were all a blur (although I did notice that on losing a life the sound resets giving you a few seconds of peace before it revs up again). What was my score? Do you get a score? What is my name? hang on, what does that say up there?

Score: 256

Fuck. My. Old. Boots.

That is one crazy game. It takes literally 20 seconds to start going mental and then it’s just a case of hanging on in there. I can’t see *how* anyone scores highly on this game as by the time you are a minute in the rocks are tiny and the bats almost as small. 256? I’ll take that and leave now if that’s ok? No? bugger.

If only to avoid going straight back in for another game I have a look around the screen. That’s interesting – “Extend play for 450 points” – wonder what that means? Also I see that you can play two player, one after the other though rather than together, which is a shame. Mind you, at least if you play two player you have someone to hug the tears away once it’s all over.

Ok, I’m ready let’s go.

Score: 378

An absolute blur. I managed to last about 15 seconds longer this time, mainly due to turning the volume down slightly and not messing my pants to distraction. It really is rock hard though, once the rocks speed up and the bats start disappearing you really are in trouble, proper proper trouble.

Ok, let’s go again (volume down a bit more)

Score: 364

Ok, again

Score: 356

Shit. Getting nowhere, let’s get the volume back up again.

Score: 228

Fuck that, back down again

Score: 397

Ok, focus now – focus. FOCUS!!!!

Score: 488

YES! I managed to reach the extend play, which surprisingly works just like a pinball machine. Once you reach 450 points, the screen flashes and you get a free game. The current game plays on though so don’t celebrate too hard if you get there, especially as the 3rd place score isn’t that far past it.

The good thing with this game is that it is over really quickly. Once you’re over the shock of it all (although the sound NEVER goes away) you can whip through games of this without even pausing for breath.

So I do, for another 10 goes – never getting to the extend score again. Shit.

So how does someone get over a thousand? I for one want to know what happens if you manage to clear the screen (i.e all rocks have fallen). For my highest score of 488 there could only have been a dozen or so rocks left to fall, I assume it resets but I don’t want to assume, I want to know!

It takes me a while to notice the scoring as well. Score wise the rocks start off at 1 point each, which I assumed would be the same all the way through, 450 points = 450 rocks etc… But It’s not. As the rocks get smaller they go up in value – when you reach 450 points or so the rocks are worth 5 points each, which makes my score of 488 all the more painful as 597 and third place actually isn’t that far away.

How do people get the high scores though? I just can’t see how you can manage the rocks once you are a single tiny bat and they are thundering down at you, the size of a pea? There must be a technique, there just must be.

And then it struck me – what about if you swaz the bats left and right as fast as you can, effectively making an impenetrable wall in the process? GENIUS! Worth a stab and it certainly looks the part as the bats whizz side to side with impossible speed, this is going to work!

Score: 122

No it isn’t. Fucking stupid idea – idiot.

Oh well, back to the old way

volume UP…

ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Playing rules:

Difficulty: Factory default. Start: 3 lives. Bonus: 1 life at 10,000 points.
Current Record holders

1st: 56,330 - Fred Pastore - 2006
2nd: 41,680 - Donald Hayes - 2006
3rd: 39,880 - Brian Miller - 1983


Right that’s it SEGA, to bed with you without any tea – I’ve told you before about this astro obsession and now it’s gone TOO far. Oh wait, what? Stern? oh. Ok SEGA, you were lucky this time.

Ahem.

So 1980 and we have another Astro game to play, this time “Astro Invader”. Now, this game is a funny bugger and no mistake – I don’t think I have ever seen a game that offers so much originality and yet copies so blatantly all at the same time. You see, the “Invader” in the title isn’t an accident, oh no. We’re back in the wonderful days of “everything goes” game development, whenever a game is released that proves to be successful it’s a mass bundle for every other bugger to try and cash in and make a copy.

Stern HQ:
“Space Invaders selling like hot cakes? We need to make an Invader game and quick!”
“Let’s call it “Space Invaders”
“Don’t be stupid. Firstly we can’t completely copy the name, secondly its 1980, every other fucker is making a game with astro in the title we need us some of that”
“Deal! We’re going to be bloody loaded, I’m off to buy a yacht.”

Funny thing is, as derivative as the naming goes, it seems that nobody told the game’s programmers as this game is *nothing* like space invaders when you actually play it. Well I say that, taking a look at the MAME roms you find that the game uses the same sound effects as Space Invaders. I don’t mean similar ones, it actually uses the *exact* same files. Madness I tells you. Also you do control a space ship shooting invaders, but apart from all those things it’s nowt like it honest. Ok I can see you don’t believe me; that’s fine, at first I was just like you – but mark my words I shall prevail.

First though, the scores. Well, score wise we don’t have much to write home about; only the three scores listed with the top two being recent funspot efforts (interestingly Mr Pastore also holds the record for the last game Astro Fighter) and the bottom score being the original record from back in the day. However, again I get a sinking feeling as my chances are knocked into a cocked hat before we start as all three of those scores look a bit meaty for my liking, especially when you consider how points are typically hard to come by from this era of gaming.

No point crying about it though, so let’s get on with it – here comes another bloody version of space Invaders and all that.

Pretty much immediately the game throws my cruel initial dismissal right back in my face. As if by way of punishment, the game goes out of it’s way to throw a whole array of foreign game ideas at you from the off – this would be jarring for even the most open minded player, but as someone who clearly expected a simple shooter it’s a right old carry on. First thing that strikes you is the enemy formation. If you thought Space Invaders or even Galaxian were a bit “rigid” in their enemy formations, you ain’t seen nothing yet. As the game starts a massive blue mothership rolls onto the screen and before you can say “ah, look at that they’ve even written STERN on the ship, bless ‘em” it starts spitting out Invaders left right and centre.

Invaders! Invading our very own earth! Panic! Batten the hatches! PANIC!!!……….right?

Well no actually. These are truly the most polite invaders you ever will see. There is no shooting, no swooping, no flying about giving it all the big – no, slowly the invaders drop down individually and in order into the tube like rack above you where they proceed to have a bit of a sit down and possibly even a nice cup of Earl Grey tea. How very civil. This of course leaves me rather confused, so after what felt like cruelly shooting the first few I just sat there watching them fill the tubes. Now, the invaders must be English as when the first row is full up they simply start up small little queues behind them (us English love a good queue you see). Still no aggression at all and it all becomes rather surreal. I thought these guys were supposed to be invading for goodness sake and unless they consider queueing up in front of us a an act of downright hostility, they aren’t really doing a great job.

Hold on though, maybe that’s exactly what they *want* us to think, the clever buggers –  soon they will all break free of their queueing tubes and before we know it swarms will be upon us as we are well and truly invaded. I’ve got your number pal and I’ll be ready. But what’s this? Almost apologetically a small pink flying saucer flies down the opposite side of the screen making a silly shrill noise as it goes. At last an attack! Ok it’s absolutely no threat as I’m nowhere near it, but still it’s a start. Choosing to ignore the fact that after the game made all that effort with the mothership, this pink fucker appeared out of bloody nowhere, I watch as the ship slowly moves down the screen on its wasted and wildly inaccurate attack.

And then I die.

What? Hang on, WHAT? As the ship reached the bottom of the screen, rather than disappear and regroup for the next attack it crashes into the line behind me, creating what I assume is a massive aftershock which kills me stone dead even though I am nowhere near the bloody thing. What makes it worse is that not only do you die but the whole screen flashes red, whilst all the time letting out a shrill noise that I’m man enough to tell you made me shit my very pants. Not cricket, AT ALL.

It’s fair to say that the death display won’t be appearing in anyone’s “scariest moments in gaming” lists, but as with all good horror it was the absolute contrast that scared me titless. Best comparison I can make are those extremely annoying animations that went round the internet a few years ago – “look really closely at this picture to see if you can find the kitten or whatever…. closer…. closer….. GRAAAAARGHHHHHHH Big scary screaming face fills the screen!” (ok it doesn’t work so well in text form I admit but you know the ones I mean). All in all most unexpected.

And it only gets worse. Resuming my next life and the invaders that were already queued up are still there and the mothership continues on it’s merry way shitting new invaders out willy nilly. Still nothing happening with the invaders, but I’m on the watchout for those pink fuckers that’s for sure. Not a moment too soon another pink ship starts coming down the screen, this time on the far left – I’m after you ya shit and off I go to shoot him before he makes me change my pants again.

And then the whole world goes to bits.

It just so happens that while the second pink ship starts it’s decent, the queueing invaders on the left hand set of tubes decide that enough is enough and nigh on simultaneously all five of the lowest fuckers stream town towards me. All too much for me this and besides I am already halfway on my way to stop the pink doombringer so I’m right in the middle of it all. BOOM. Last life is more of the same as if you remember the invaders don’t reset so within seconds I’m blanketed by another assault and it’s game over.

Score: 560

Ok, time to work out what the bloody hell is going on – and soon enough I begin to get an idea of how the game works. While it is true that the invaders sit there all nicely queued up, there is only a very finite queue length (of five) before the first in line gets pushed out and makes a bid towards the bottom of the screen. Thankfully though it turns out that it is nowhere near as bad as I feared as if you let one of these invaders reach the bottom of the screen you don’t die regardless of where you are – no, you only get killed if you are within a rather small, yet hard to define “splash zone” around each one at the time of impact. The pink ships that appear every now and then are still instant death if they reach the bottom so the challenge seems to be thus: Keep the invaders trimmed down and make sure you don’t miss any pink buggers. Sounds easy, let’s crack on.

Second go and it’s a completely different story. As each invader calmly slots in to its little tube I follow soon after and shoot the fucker. Granted, even though I know the horrors to come they do look kind of serene and calm, but I know now that they should be afforded no mercy at all costs. The tactic seems to work as well and by the time the first pink ship appears most of the tubes are still empty – nice and easy, what a contrast! Even though I miss a few it really is quite organised even now, as the invaders continue to stream forward in a nice orderly manner – from left to right and then back again, meaning I can simply follow the line picking them off as they drop. The only time this rhythm is broken is when a pink ship appears, usually on the opposite side of the screen and I have to break off from the invaders and stop him getting to the bottom. A few invaders get loose but nothing I can’t keep away from and it’s a whole new ball game.

It’s only now that I have wrestled some sort of control back from the game that I notice that the mothership has a counter on it signifying how many invaders are left until it is empty. I can’t remember exactly but I’m sure it started off on about 200 or so, but it isn’t long before it gets to 0. i wonder what happens now? Maybe it’s the next level? is it balls. Once the mothership is skint the whole screen freezes, bullets in mid-air the lot, while we watch the empty ship slowly trundle off the screen only to be replaced with a new full up one, which we now watch come back to the middle, still frozen like a tit in a trance. Once it’s slow journey ends the game resumes rather abruptly without warning – so much so that I actually lose a life before I get the chance to move as I was in the middle of dodging an invader at the time, the slags. Yeah, don’t mind us Mr Important Mothership, you pop off for a refill, we’ll wait. Wanker.

Anyway, all of my cockiness soon disappears with this new ship as they obviously cotton on to the major flaw in their battle plan. Rather than fill the tubes in order making it easy for the dirty earthship to follow us about, why don’t we fill up randomly? That’ll learn ‘em – and learn me it certainly does as I am very soon overwhelmed.

Score: 2,180

A better score but still comically far off even last place in the records. For some reason I’m really struggling with this game, it is just so easy to get overwhelmed as the filling of the invader tubes is rather swift and completely relentless. I have a few other goes but they are pretty much the same – as soon as the second mothership load appears and they start coming randomly I’m simply buggered. Scratch this down as “one of those games” that I just can’t get on with then? Maybe.

But wait, a few further goes and I spot a pattern. From the second mothership onwards the invaders are not actually random – they purposely filter to which ever side of the screen you are on at the time. This may not seem like much of a revelation but believe me it is. While before I always found myself overwhelmed by falling ships, blocking my route to the all important pink ships more often than not, now I have an element of control meaning I can actually start to find safe routes when I need them. Pink ship appearing on the right hand side of the screen? No problem – I simply move left of centre and the invaders start pouring that way leaving a free route for me to rush over to the right, slap pinkie and get back to the middle again (which invariably seems to be the safest place to hang around most of the time). It starts to make sense!

This changes the game as I now get past the second load and indeed the third. The method stays the same as well, but the speed increases each time. At last I have a method for playing the game that sort of works and my third score is much better.

Score: 7,610

Still nowhere near the records but considering how it was looking at one stage it’s a vast improvement that’s for sure. Still, I don’t think this game is for me. Even though at first you fall into the trap of thinking the strict formation and tube like mechanic is an advantage, each and every game soon descends into a situation where all queues are full and every single invader unloaded is one that will stream down the screen at you. It really is quite a job keeping the fuckers weeded out and one that I think causes some inner child to panic all too often where a calm methodical head is needed.

So Astro Invaders, I doff my cap to you sir! In an era where all shooting games were starting to get a bit samey you dared to do something a little bit different. Ok, so the name is a cop-out (although interestingly it is called Kamikaze in some places which makes a lot of sense game wise, if not politically across the eastern world) but the game truly is unique. I don’t want to say I told you so at the beginning of this post, so I won’t.

No, I won’t – you trusted me anyway right?

Playing rules:

Difficulty: Easy. Start: 3 lives. Bonus: 1 life at 5,000 points.
Dip-switch: 1-7=ON; 8=ON/OFF [Stand up/Cocktail]

Current Record holders

1st: 26,670 - Fred Pastore - 2006
...
5th: 18,280 - Robby Jensen - 1983
...
11th: 2,210 - Justine Barker - 2005


Ah, here we go – a nice quirky early 80s shooter from good old trusty SEGA. “Astro Fighter”? Sounds like a cracking title as well, let’s get stuck in.

Hang on, what?

Man alive. Someone in SEGA obviously had the horn for astros, “Astro Blaster” and now “Astro Fighter” both within a few years of each other…….actually let me look something up.

Would you adam it?! It even carried on past the 80′s, bloody Astro Boy – bastard son of Astro Fighter and Astro Blaster no doubt. SEGA and astro, just get a room will you? While we’re on the subject, beginning the names of your games with “A” and hence being near the beginning of the virtual school register will get you nowhere either son (erm, apart from on this blog earlier…ahem), you took the piss with 005 which isn’t even a proper bloody name and now you’re overloading the A’s, shame on you SEGA, shame on you.

Anyway, I digress as usual - time to try and get beyond the name and actually give the game a chance, all’s fair in love and Astro war after all.

Astro Fighter is a curious beast, especially when compared to it’s namesake “Astro Blaster”; the games really are worlds apart. On one hand you have the 1980′s Astro Fighter which looks like it is running on a Spectrum (it even has the colour clash for goodness sakes) and on the other, just one year later, you have 1981′s Astro Blaster that looks like the FUTURE by comparison. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure technology improved in the year 1980 but with this it’s all a bit much. To compound matters a similar gulf can be found with regards to how the games play, but we’ll come onto that a bit later.

So, as you may remember (it was only last week after all) I quite liked the other Astro game – what chance does this relic stand when put in the spotlight? Well first let’s get the science bit out of the way.

First thing that demanded research was the whole “SEGA / Gremlin / Data East” thing, where do Data East come into it? Unusually the ever trusty klov.com comes up a little short with no explanation so it’s off to the less reliable wikipedia for our answer. This is actually Data East’s first game and apparently came about as a collaboration with the lovely chaps at SEGA. One for the trivia fans only that I suppose but at least it does clear up why the game a year later is so radically different sans Data East. On the same Wiki page it also cites the record score, correctly attributing it to young Fred Pastore but otherwise getting the score wrong (only by a few hundred admittedly) and also claiming that his score is the “maximum possible” score. This is by no means unusual, loads of games plateau out at a maximum score, but checking on twingalaxies tells me that it’s all a load of bollocks. Nearly a nice start there then, never a good sign when you find out early doors that the record can only be equalled (don’t you just love my positive attitude regarding the scores before I actually play the game?).

Seeing as we’re talking about the scores, you’ll notice a few interesting things about the ones for this game. Firstly the bottom end score looks nice and small so getting on the board *should* be achievable, which is nice. Also however, you will see that the top score is a recent one, 2006 in fact. This is rather rare for an obscure game and for comparison you’ll see that I have included the “original” top score from the 80s which just happens to be good enough for 5th. A game that’s still being played then eh? Now that is unusual. 

Unusual, how we love unusual. Shame then as once again I regret to inform you all that this game is by no means unusual gameplay wise, in fact it’s pretty bloody standard fare by the looks of it. You control the ship at the bottom of the screen as ever and you’re job as Mr Astro Fighter is to fight the nasty villains that come down the screen towards you. You shoot them, they try and shoot at you, they get faster as their numbers are thinned out until they all die or you do, blah blah blah. Add the fact that it looks like it’s running on a scientific calculator and we don’t have a great time on our hands. SEGA, SEGA, SEGA, what were you thinking? These Data East monkeys are obviously dragging you down! Still, let’s temper our disappointment and give the game a chance, people are still playing it after all so it must be worth a go right? Like I have a choice anyway…..

Loading the spectrum MAME emulator up greets me with a slowly populating menu style score table – let’s see what sort of score this record really is. Ah, so it’s one of them is it? Score ranges from 20 points all the way to a massive 60 points per enemy hit – ballbags. What’s this though? There seems to be a big guardian fella that’s worth 300 – now we’re talking, how rather exciting! Next up is a title screen filled with what appear to be several large Japanese characters. After quickly checking that I am using the correct english rom (I am) I set about keenly trying to see if I can translate any of them (I’m currently learning Japanese see). This is hindered in two ways – firstly it would appear to be written in an alphabet I haven’t been taught yet (arse) and secondly this little ship appears at the bottom of the screen and starts shooting the letters one by one. Oy, you little shit, I’m trying to read that! By the time he’s shot them all I’ve managed to recognise the number “10″ in there and that’s it. Looks like it will remain a mystery then – I don’t know, you *try* and broaden your horizons a little bit, get in a bit of culture and what happens? A space ship comes along and fucks it all up. How often have we all heard that classic story eh? If I had a pound for every time etc…

Perhaps because of this, when I start the game I feel little connection to my ship, as it’s the same vandalous slag as on the title screen. I console myself that perhaps it was a rogue pilot that caused such destruction and get on with the job at hand, which predictably is shooting the advancing horde of very threatening looking light blue things. What am I talking about, of course they don’t look threatening, they look like little thin weedy ships – surely the runt of the enemy fleet being sent out first. And despite the odd sod shooting diagonally at me they don’t pose much of a problem, although they really do speed up like buggers as you get them down to the last few I have to say. The next wave are even more laughable, they look like the fat lads who couldn’t fit into their costumes properly trailing behind the very end of the annual gay pride march (I used to live in Brighton, I know what that looks like so trust me on that one. Believe me the sight of dozens of overweight men trying to wear a costume when the theme is “gold cowboys” is one you don’t forget in a hurry – All I’ll say is this: “cheekless gold leather chaps”).

Anyway, I digress.

Several things of note jump out at me while I am playing this – firstly the sound. The sound effects when you fire are wonderfully sci-fi while the explosion sound is very loud and bold indeed, surprisingly so in fact. Now, I don’t know how the actual machine sounds but I did discover that MAME doesn’t actually emulate the sound effects, it uses the “shortcut” of samples so maybe it’s just that they were sampled quite beefily or something? Whatever it was it sounds great. The graphics though, as I have already alluded to, are awful – proper Spectrum awful. Colour clash is EVERYWHERE, including some crazy colour squares appearing when an enemy happens to overlap with one of the background stars; the bloody background! I may be being a bit picky here, but surely on seeing the clashing going on all over the place the development team would at least tone it down a bit or something? But no, they clearly love a bit of clash these guys, love it….the gimps.

And it gets even worse. By the time you get to the third wave the clash is laughable, the green space ship fellas all mould into one ridiculous mess of overlaps and it really is quite distracting. So distracting in fact that I died a final death.

 Score: 2060

Oooh so close to nicking last place there, which tells you something about the value of that bottom score as it was my first pretty poor attempt. That means top 10 is a possibility so straight back in I say! As I start my second go I make a point of paying attention to the busy panel at the top of the screen. As well as your usual lives and all that gubbins, there is a nice little “menu” showing you which wave is next (from right to left) which tells me that I died on the green buggers who were pretty much halfway towards to guardian lad presumably at the end. Fair enough, nowt groundbreaking about that – but hang on, what’s this? a bloody FUEL gauge that’s what. Now, the other astro game also had a fuel bar and that proved to be a particularly bastardy one if you remember, robbing you of any lives you may have left with an immediate game over if it ran out - although It wasn’t all bad as you could shoot the asteroids to refuel slightly along the way. Happily this game has asteroids as well, loads of the buggers in fact throughout every level - but hold them giddy horses, these ones DON’T seem to refuel at all when you shoot them. Oh no, these little shits just get in the way and give you a pathetic 60 points when shot, no fuel, nothing. wankers.

I’m halfway through my second go when the game falls apart and it becomes clear that this game is a pox upon all gamers. It’s not only a pox but it revels in it’s poxiness, poxxing you at every opportunity until you can be poxxed no more. “Please game, I beg you, no more pox, I truly cannot stand a further pox!” you cry, yet it carries on regardless like a man possessed. Ok, you get the picture. So what causes such horror? Well, as we have discovered you have a finite and actually rather stingy fuel gauge forever counting down. That in itself would be ok but for what happens on the third wave during my second go. The green buggers certainly love a diagonal you see, and they are forever probing forward at you while you try and shoot them and it was while I was chasing the last remaining ship, which was really rather speedy at this stage, that he reached the bottom of the screen and disappeared from view. “No matter” thought I, “I’ll catch him as he appears again at the top”. Well he *did* appear again at the top (after a pretty bloody long pause considering the fuel is still ticking down) but he also managed to bring all of his fucking mates back to life in the process, the complete shit! And this my friend is where it breaks as it is now next to impossible to reach the guardian as you simply don’t have enough time/fuel. As right enough I get a few waves on to the little yellow beggars and my fuel runs out. 2 lives left? fuck you – game over. Cunts.

Score: 2550

I blink a few times in disbelief, what sort of behaviour is that for goodness sakes? Feverishly I try and work out a way of negating this issue yet nothing comes. As result I whip into my third go in a bit of a daze, literally petrified of letting one of the baddies get to bottom of the screen and running out of fuel as a result. Because of this one of the first wave manages to creep by and again they all appear again at the top. Ruined on the first bloody screen! F3, 5, 1 go the keys as I reset the twat and start again, that was a practice I say out loud for no particular reason. To no avail – again a ship gets past me, this time on the third wave again as a green ship literally screams diagonally from the top half of the screen all the way past me and off the screen. There are still three or four fucking ships flying about, yet I *know* whatever I do I’ll face the buggers again. DAMN THEIR EYES!

And then an idea hits me. Seeing as lives aren’t really a problem, what if I purposely kill myself when the fuel gets low? New ship, new fuel – job done. How stupid of me. Of course the particular space station that the player’s ships come from are run by a bunch of wankers as your nice new ship arrives with exactly the same amount of fuel as the one that just blew up. Now, I’m by no means a mechanic but this can only mean that the engineers purposely drain the fuel from the fresh new ships before giving them to you, why would they do that for fucks sake, that’s just unnecessary! That’s ballsed that one up then, but hang on it does sort of help. What if I were to use kamikaze tactics to stop ships getting past me? Worth a bash and immediately it pays dividends. Again one of the green slags makes a bid for it and I’m still shooting with the accuracy of Ray Charles so I whip over and smash straight into him, boom! Not only does that halt their advances, but when my fresh new ship arrives (sans extra fuel the gits) the enemy are all sat at the top of the screen again and they haven’t regrouped. Wahoo!

That proves to be the key as you really can’t afford to let one of the waves repeat as you simply don’t have enough fuel to get through to the end. Finally though, after about half a dozen attempts I do get to the guardian and while I was expecting the worst he turns out to be a complete poof, ha! Once he’s dead, you finally get fully refuelled (curiously by a white line that extends down from where the boss used to be) and it’s time for a second loop worth or enemies, just this time ever so slightly faster and more shooty. I manage to get a good way through before a green bastard manages to squeeze past me, probably knowing that I only have the single life left and thus rendering my collision tactic worthless. That’s enough to make sure I don’t get far enough to see that weedy guardian again.

Score: 6760

Still, that’s more like it! It’s not a massive score but it’s good enough for 8th place which isn’t bad at all. In truth the second loop wasn’t that much harder than the first so with a bit of concentration I reckon the bigger scores are within reach for sure.

A funny one this game, I mean it looks awful and there are some *really* harsh gameplay mechanics that render progress almost impossible from just a single mistake. Yet, it’s somehow endearing. While in the arcades the short gameplay time would have meant that the money kept flowing, now in it’s emulated state it makes for quite a decent challenge without requiring a massive time investment and somehow I want to keep playing. Maybe it’s just the masochist in me speaking but I think that’s just what I’ll do and will stick this on the list of games to have a decent stab at come funspot this year. It really isn’t for everyone though so I would suggest you steer clear unless you really fancy being kicked in the balls repeatedly and are happy to run the risk of having nightmares about that accursed fuel gauge. One thing is for sure though, in the battle of the astros this game comes in at second place behind the pseudo sequel a year later – although to be fair it wasn’t anywhere near as clearcut as I expected.

Playing rules:

Difficulty: Factory Default. Start: 3 lives. Bonus: 1 life at 10,000 points.
Dip-switch Bank A (Upright cabinet): 1-5=Doesn't matter; 6=Open; 7=Closed; 8=Open; Dip-switch bank A (Cocktail cabinet): 1-5=Doesn't matter; 6-7=Closed; 8=Open.

Current Record holders

1st: 299,100 - Gus Pappas - 1982
...
8th: 64,610 - Phil Lati - 1982


Long before the days of Alex Kidd and Sonic, SEGA were pumping out all kinds of crazy games, most notable being the absolutely mad “005″ that you may remember from way back at the beginning of this quest – well, Astro Blaster may just have been the game to offset such madness. Released in the same year as 005, Astro Blaster is a much more traditional fare – the much loved top down shooter and although I have never seen it before the screenshot certainly suggests that it’s pretty conventional. I’m not convinced that I’m a fan of that to be honest. As you may well have gathered some of my favourite discoveries on this quest have been the batshit insane games, the ones that have you controlling a watermelon fighting against the evil purple banjos (ok, we haven’t seen that yet but it’s only a matter of time I’m sure). 

Even the poxy name is boring; I wonder what this game could be about? oh, an astro spaceship blasting things. Is that it? I mean where’s my motivation? “Space Invaders” – shit! Things are actually invading us from space? QUICK lets get at them! “10 yard fight” – we have a fight on our hands in some sort of territorial conflict? I’m up for the fight, lemmie at ‘em! “Astro Blaster” – who cares? There is some sort of blasting going on in an astro fashion – why the hell do they need me? I’m off down the pub instead. I mean the game is off to a loser from the word go surely?

 That is unless the fucker actually talks to you.

Which of course it does (otherwise it would have been pointless me mentioning it silly). Now, by no means is this the first game to feature such genius, that accolade goes to the seminal “Berzerk” with it’s highly entertaining robot chatter or even “Gorf”, which used to scare the living shit out of me from the other side of the arcade. That being so, it was still a rather new technique back in the day and one that really made the machine stand out at the time, bravo SEGA you truly are the masters of marketing!

Before we get the game on, let’s take a quick look at the records. As is usually the way with the more obscure games the records all seem to be from the early 80s and none of them seem ridiculously high so we may be on for a winner. Saying that it could be another of those games that gives a third of a point per 100 ships killed or something so let’s not get carried away just yet eh? Enough of that, I guess we better go Astro Blasting, if I have to like – not as if it sounds very interesting.

“FIGHTER PILOTS NEEDED IN SECTOR WARS – PLAY ASTRO BLASTER!!!!!!”

Fuck my old boots! The second you turn the machine on it starts shouting at you. FIGHTER PILOTS NEEDED! Hang on, I could be one of them, where? SECTOR WARS! “Count me in!” I shout as I metaphorically pull on my fighter pilots uniform and run towards my ship. PLAY ASTRO BLASTER! Ok, you’re getting desperate now, you may as well have followed that with “OH PLEASE. PLEASE? look I didn’t choose the bloody name did I, please play me or I won’t be able to afford to buy my kids the new shoes they desperately need, I mean the ones they have worn out to almost their bare skin…please?” Despite that though, stroke of genius that was – talk about get a player interested. I can’t help feel something niggling away however, something that perhaps makes the whole thing all a bit of a waste of time. No time for that though, fighter pilots are needed – not wanted, NEEDED!

As soon as the game starts it becomes clear that the part of SEGA that chose the name have really let everyone down, the game is as frantic as it comes! Immediately you’re hit with half a dozen aliens whizzing about at the top of the screen, throwing bullets down at you as they go - they weren’t kidding when they said that they needed fighter pilots, the buggers are already here on our doorstep. “ALERT ALERT”, screams the announcer, “INVADERS IN SECTOR ONE, PLAYER ONE TO BATTLE STATIONS!” Fuck me, I’m here, I’m here – better get stuck in! So off you go, shooting away weaving in and out of the bullets in a panic. Hang on, what’s this? “LASER TEMPERATURE CRITICAL!” What does that mean? “Shit off” you scream as you notice the bar at the bottom of the screen, every time you fire the bar increases a little to reflect the heat of your laser until before you know it “LASER OVERHEATED” and you’re a sitting duck, unable to fire for what feels like minutes. Not only that but you also see an ever decreasing fuel gauge to make things even worse, bugger me, the pressure! Finally to top all of this off you have the music. Well I say “music”, it actually sounds like a cross between an engine revving and a drill and to make it even worse the speed and tone increases for every ship to destroy. Before you know it you have a fuel gauge running out, a burning hot laser that you’re afraid to fire too much and a couple of rabid aliens flitting about at great speed firing away whilst slowly advancing towards you. ARGHHH! I can’t take the pressure.

……And relax.

Soon after the shock has gone I was able to actually look at the game and I have to say I was rather pleasantly surprised. True, on the surface it is just another top down shooter in the Galaxian vein, but it has masses of variety and a couple of really smart touches to keep it interesting. The laser overheating and the fuel gauge turn out to be a decent pace setter, encouraging you to be conservative with your firing but also urging you to get on with it. Also, the waves of enemies are nice and varied with a mix of sizes and speeds each with unexpectedly erratic movement patterns. If that wasn’t enough, every couple of levels you get an asteroid shower followed by a small docking sequence where you fuel is replenished, giving you a well deserved breather. Some of the waves are quite tricky though, and a few in particular prove a little too frantic for my liking and I’m spent.

Score: 7,640

Not the best score that but a lively opener I suppose. Still keen I jump straight into the next game, but before I do I confirm what was bothering me before. The opening speech, willing you to play the game, getting you all riled up and ready, the very speech that made me eat my words about the naff title doesn’t play again when I start a new game. What that means is that it ONLY plays when the machine is first switched on. Now, you don’t need to be a veteran of the old arcade halls of the 80s to know that arcade machines are only ever turned on at the very most once a day, in the morning when the guy that works there goes round switching them all on ready for the day’s mauling. So after all of that effort to get people to play the bugger, the only person that will ever hear it is the arcade attendant. Now this is no reflection on arcade staff as a whole here, but I would imagine pretty much all of them have the willpower to resist the call to arms at 8am of a morning when they have hundreds of machines to switch on and a multitude of sins to clean off the floors and walls. Even if they did happen to be recruited, chances are they would be either sacked within hours or just use free credits anyway. Complete failure SEGA you tarts.

Anyway, I have the unusual benefit of still being riled up from the first episode so that doesn’t matter a jot to me and I’m back in – and then it happens, as it so often does on this voyage of discovery. At the beginning of my second go I start getting adventurous and press a few of the other buttons and blow me if I don’t find a slow motion button. That’s right, fuck you in the ear Max Payne and your ilk with your bullet time, this is 1981 and we have a slow motion button! On pressing the aforementioned button, “warp” is activated and everything bar your ship slows down to a complete crawl making shooting the enemies and avoiding the bullets a breeze. Of course it doesn’t last forever and it’s not long before the announcer chap is counting you down from 10 and you’re back in the room as it were, full speed restored. Also it soon becomes apparent that you can only use it once per life/round when like a spoilt kid I tap the button straight afterwards screaming “again, again, again!” and nowt happens. Fair enough I suppose, but wow what a subtle addition that is. Actually it makes the title “Astro Blaster” all the more stupid, this game should be called “Bullet time blaster motherfucker” or at least something that screams innovation from the hilltops. (Actually on reflection that may be a tad unfair as this *was* the early 1980s and pretty much every arcade game was an innovation in itself I suppose. Still, seems a shame it didn’t raise itself above the Galaxian clones of this world a little more.)

With this new found power I strive on, using the slow motion warp to navigate the trickier waves to grand effect and before I know it I’m a good half dozen waves in. Fuel begins to be more and more of a problem as you go through the game however, with some of the waves taking a little longer than you’d like to clear and the announcer wastes no time in telling you so – “FUEL LEVELS MARGINAL” it screams. In true crazy videogame logic I find that there is a way to replenish the fuel besides docking, and that is by shooting the flaming asteroids as they come hurtling towards you, because of course doing that would obviously refuel a spaceship, stupid.

Score: 14,720

At least we are in the realms now, and while the enemies are getting a little trickier it certainly feels more like the occasional rock hard wave than a difficulty progression as such that cause the most trouble. With clever use of the slow motion warp button I reckon you could get on top of this game. 

Third and final play and subtle bonuses still continue to show themselves, sometimes literally. Several times the message “secret bonus, 900 points” flashed up on the screen, and aside from an occasion where I docked without touching the controls (it really is quite a generous area to dock into) I have no idea what I did to deserve such an accolade. Don’t look a gifthorse in the mouth and all that and besides I’m sure with a little effort it wouldn’t be too hard to spot what’s going on. Just as intriguingly you are told just before the fuels runs out that all scores are doubled – suggesting that there is cause to fly close to the wind fuel wise to increase your scoring potential, all interesting stuff and in attempting to do just that I lose the game completely even though I had a life left. Running out of fuel causes an immediate game over! HARSH stuff there SEGA harsh indeed, you really can be a cruel mistress sometimes especially as I was on a semi decent score at the time.

Score: 16060 (with a life in hand you cheeky slag of a game!)

All in all that’s a bloody good game. Looking at the scores the record would take quite a marathon, but it doesn’t strike me as impossible like some of the other records out there. I reckon with a little practice I could get on the board as 60k isn’t that far away. Definitely one to play again, if not to just see how many varieties of enemy there are, there are at least a dozen that I have seen with no repeating, which is unheard of for a game released so early on in the 80s.

Interestingly (or not) apparently on further reading there were THREE separate revisions of this game. The original version was allegedly almost impossible to play so they tweaked it a little and made it easier. Still, the second version was too hard so they tweaked it again. I was playing the resulting third version yet the records don’t appear to make a distinction between them. I would imagine that it would also be the 3rd revision mind as by the looks of it the changes were made proper early doors after the release. Told you it was interesting stuff. Hey! wake up! ah, forget it……

Playing rules:

Difficulty: Tournament (Hard). Start: 3 lives. Bonus: 1 life every 10,000 points.
Dip-switch:(R5) 1-2=ON; 3=OFF; 4-5=ON; 6=OFF; 7-8=ON. Dip-switch:(L8) 1=ON; 2=OFF; 3-8=ON. Dip-switch:(M12) 1-2=ON; 3-4=OFF/Unused

Current Record holders

1st: 167,790 - Donavan Stepp - 2004
...
33rd: 5,520 - Ron Corcoran - 1981


Nice – It’s bloody Arkanoid all over again, no sooner am I rid of Asteroids, here comes a “remix” version from a year later. Now I know I actually ended up quite enjoying Asteroids after all those years of playing it like a mong, but lets not bloody push it eh Atari? Nevertheless I am but a pawn in all of this so I need to move on with the job, head held up high (Also, I’ve taken a peek and this is the last Asteroid game on the list for now, so it’s not so bad).

But what’s this? Surely some kind of tomfoolery is afoot – in fact I’m sure of it. Now, I know that it hasn’t been that long since I watched Back to the future but if I were a betting man I would stick a quid on time travel being a reality. Why? Well, before you get the science museum on the phone, it’s not through any fancy formulas or any such gubbins – the proof is right here in front of us: this game. How can that possibly be? It’s as if some of the Atari devs had read my last entry and aimed to address each and every issue I had – in some sort of future past land.

Before we go into that, let’s look at what we have here. You don’t hear the term “Deluxe” much these days and when you do it tends to indicate a wanky marketing attempt at classing up something above it’s true worth. Deluxe chicken burger at McDonalds is just a normal chicken burger filled with a few unused sauces from the back room and a slightly herbier bread. Deluxe DVD editions tend to just be the same as the normal one, just with a snazzy shiny cardboard sleeve. Case and point: Ferrero Rocher are considered the deluxe chocolate when really they are about as classy as a box full of donkeyballs dipped in sawdusty chocolate. What I’m trying to say via the wonderful world of simile is that Deluxe very rarely is a good thing. Also, take a look at the year, 1980 – only one year after the original, another bad sign – especially considering how popular the original was at the time. Oh dear, what have Atari done?

I’ll tell you what they’ve done – improved the original in pretty much EVERY way.

First thing they noticed was that the original was just too damn easy. Arcades in those days were all about getting people onto the machines, getting their quarter, making them their bitch and sending them home to mumma. The trick was all about doing it in such a way that made it a challenge rather than a chore – meaning the players would flock back for another go. What they *didn’t* want was a game that people could sit at for hours on the same measly quarter – bad news bears. With Asteroids they had just that, and to make it worse it was a massively popular machine by all accounts so queues and pissed off people were common. Can you just imagine; the brand new game of the hour is right there in front of you, but before you can get a go you have to watch some fuck sit there not even shooting the last few rocks but just picking off the flying saucer every now and then - FOR HOURS. No no no, that’s no way for a “deluxe” machine to behave, so straight away the difficulty is ramped up something rotten.

How do you make a game as simple as Asteroids that much more difficult? Good question. They did this in several ways – first off the default DIP SWITCH settings are “tournament (hard)” – no mucking about with this baby, you come anywhere near it and whether you like it or not you’re in a tournament buster, and a hard one at that. As a result the whole game seems a little faster and a lot more frantic – the smaller chunks of asteroid especially whip about like, well whippets and can be a right bugger to avoid if you have a couple on the go at once.

Secondly we have a new enemy in our midst! It starts of innocuously enough – floating around like a big gay gangbang hexagon, but as soon as you shoot it, it splits up firstly into 3 paired up “friends” and then into 6 individual ships of undetermined sexuality. Probably enraged by this turn of events they then make it their life’s aim to go and duff you up – which considering that they are lovers and not fighters and don’t actually have any guns, consists of them basically trying to bum you. Hold on captain, what’s with all of this gay stuff I hear you cry? Well, calm down Graham Norton – just *look* at the formation these six brave ships choose to fly in. Before that though, imagine six youngsters, just graduated from evil flying academy - 5 long years of combat and aerobatics training, these six lads are the creme de la creme, the top one percent, THE elite. Today they finally get to go out on active duty; apparently some crazy man is out there shooting all of the rocks! Jesus, the humanity of it – he MUST be stopped at all costs. It gets better for our young evil heroes however, lest not to dilute the talent they have all been chosen to fly out in the same formation – oh, how perfect! As they walk to their fighter craft, they can barely hold back the tears of joy – in the distance you see their parents, proud as can be, saluting their pride and joy as they all go out to battle.

They then fly out looking like this:

Now – I may or may not be correct here, and I am by no means an expert on such matters, but that right there is NOT a military formation. That right there is a homosexual “conga line” in full flow. Also, as one would expect when all of the ships in question have their thrusters faced *inwards* they just aimlessly float about, clearly too engrossed in their deviancy.

No matter, once they are shot apart they can be a right bugger to avoid and combined with a screen full of rocks and the occasional flying saucer it can all get a bit too much.

Ah yes – the flying saucers. Clearly the victim of the exploit in the first game, what has become of them? Well, you like to shoot the flying saucers over and over again for the easy biggie points eh? Well this time round they really like shooting you as well, in fact they love a bit of it. Where before the large flying saucer was clearly piloted by Ray Charles and would barely even get near you with any of its shots, this time round after a few warning shots it flings one right at you. I don’t know the exact science (I know, shocking) but it feels like pretty much every 3rd or 4th shot is aimed right at your chops without fail. As for the smaller flying saucer, this time around they may as well have bloody homing shots as they get you shot almost before you can see the wee little buggers – small angry man syndrome at its finest. Something else I noticed, and thought was quite minor at the time, was the fact that the flying saucer’s shots now wrap across the screen as well. I was pretty sure that they didn’t used to , so I looked it up – and by jove it was good that I did. Well, not good in a save the world sort of way, but good in the context of this thing. You see, the “shooting nowt but flying saucers all day” exploit of the first game was made all the easier by the fact that their shots stopped at the edge of the screen while yours wrapped. Apparently the pro’s at this particular tactic used to hide right up there in the extreme corner of the screen and then regardless off which side the flying saucer would enter, they could simply spin and shoot it without much risk of being hit themselves – the crafty beggars! Therefore, with this version the fact that the flying saucer shots also wrap, twinned with their new found accuracy is a direct blow to this tactic and hoorah to that I say – in fact, it addresses pretty much everything I moaned about with the first game. How convenient. Hmmmmmm.

Which brings us to the records – immediately it’s clear that this bump in difficulty plus the measures to stop the exploit have had significant effect. While the top score on the original Asteroids was in the tens of millions, the high score here is a mere 167 thousand. Of course I say mere, I can’t score anywhere near that – but considering the scoring system is near identical that’s a pretty major difference it has to be said. Good signs indeed, as it saves me from another long winded rant, which was nice. Also however, there has clearly been a competition involving this game at FUNSPOT – the “FUNSPOT classic 2006″ as a matter of fact. How do I know this? Well, there are literally dozens of records on the list that are attributed to various people at that event, that’s how. What this means in real money is that there was a mini tournament at the event and basically anyone with a score in that tournament entered the record books. The effect of this is twofold: Firstly it’s a good thing as it means more achievable scores for guys like us but with that it also means that the records are slightly less impressive due to the fact that anyone that turned up and played are on there. Of course, that being said, the last score on the list (33rd) was from 1984 so there were obviously no mugs playing that day as they had all beaten that. Would I be within that group or would I be one of the mugs? Well, before the last entry I would have been already looking for the handle on my head, but now I have a new found confidence in such things – I actually felt comfortable with my performance and improvement on the original, bring it on!

Booting this bugger up, I again leave the artwork enabled as I seem to remember there being some sort of backdrop when I saw the actual machine at FUNSPOT – a backdrop that complimented the striking glow of the vectors pretty well if my memory serves me correctly. Again however, it just doesn’t have the same look in MAME, in fact with the duller graphics it actually ends up being pretty distracting which is a shame. It doesn’t really get in the way though, so I leave it on for the authentic experience – and authentic experience I get. Buoyed by my apparent new found skill I flounder in perhaps a little too confidentially and make the first mistake straight away by aiming at the large rocks first. Soon the screen is full of speedy small shards of asteroid and it makes even my “wave” technique proper hard to carry off. It’s here that I discover a life saver – the hyperspace button is gone (wahey!) and in it’s place we now have a “shield” button (double wahey!). The shield button proves to be an inspired addition and it single-handedly prevents my first score being absolutely woeful. Small rock flying your way? Tap the shield button and *boing* - the dirt is gone! Ahem, I mean the rock is gone - like a crazy interspace game of bumper cars, just with erm, spaceships and asteroids.

As is always the way with life, with this new found super power I suddenly feel like I can take on the very best, only to taste disappointment in the shape of a rock when the shield runs out and stops working. That’s right, the shield turned from being a world beater to a wet squib in a matter of seconds. I’m being harsh of course, it’s still a great addition, certainly better than that poxy hyperspace killer of yesteryear – just it all seemed so easy for a minute there – what was I thinking?

Score: 14,680

Still, not a bad score that for such a poor go – good enough for 23rd place no less (told you some of the scores were a bit pish).

I still find it hard to believe just how much better this version is, everywhere you look there are considered improvements. The ship you control has doubled in complexity, it is now twice as detailled with TWO whole polygons, giving it a decidedly attractive facelift. The controls too feel improved and I am really beginning to enjoy playing, especially in the more frantic moments.

Deep into my second go, and I’m sensibly keeping the amount of whizzy rocks to a minimum and it’s all going rather well. That is until the 15,000 mark. Partly because the screen is temptingly telling me that the next bonus life is but 5,000 points away, but mostly it’s due to being double teamed by the flying saucers and the big gay formation ships. The tactic for the formation is thus: Shoot to seperate them and then run away like a little girl. Once you are about half a screen away, turn round and shoot at them as they stream towards you. They’re quite slow and it would appear that they don’t arrive until the rocks are somewhat scarce. I would like to think that it is another genius design decision, but it’s most probably due to the fact that the poor 1981 hardware can’t handle that many things on the screen at once, bless it. Whatever the reason, they’re slow and they get all they deserve. However, in another cunning move, nicely avoiding another of the original’s problems that I pointed out, these babies are one of the main ways that the game gets you thrown out on your ear. You see, they may start off slow, but they get progressively faster each and every time they are vanquished and appear again. This may not seem much, but just you wait until you are faced with six speedy ships chasing you about like a benny hill sketch (although without any old bald man head slapping unfortunately, or the music….awwww). In fact they get really rather fast by the time you get anywhere near 20,000 and I soon began to dread them arriving at all. They did, they chased, I died.

Score: 22,740

Better this time, although my bonus life at 20k didn’t last long. Good enough for 21st place now, so we’re on the up!

Really really enjoying this game though, and I feel somehow like a traitor to my former self and my old established hate for the game nags at me each time I play – but I can’t really fault it, I just can’t! The collision detection is absolutely spot on, the graphics smooth and bold, the challenge in this deluxe version is really well pitched – it’s just a bloody ace game. My third and final go goes pretty much the same way as the second, but this time for some reason the small angry flying saucers appear a little earlier in the game and that proves much too much, especially when combined with the faster formation ships. Absolute carnage.

Score: 23,680

No improvement in the rankings there, but the top 10 score is only a whisker away at less than double (ok, it’s quite a whisker I admit) and I fully reckon with practice I could get well up there. Stick this fecker on the list of gooduns, in the place of Asteroids itself of course – this is one I really quite fancy getting good at. Interestingly I read that the deluxe version, despite being an improvement in every way (those time travelling idea stealing gits – I didn’t even get a credit!) didn’t do that well at all money and popularity wise, especially compared to the original. That really is a shame as it is so much better whilst being very very similar. For me this is the definitive Asteroids game and without the exploit it is the one that everyone should be playing that’s for sure.

(On an interesting note, as I write this, Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe has been released on the Xbox 360 Live arcade and although I haven’t tried them myself I would recommend you all give it a bash. I can’t see how the controls would map to a joypad but if you have a 360 it can’t hurt to try can it?)