Asteroids 64

Asteroids 64 is a Nintendo 64 homebrew game by Game Master Plc and released on 08 December 2021. It is a remake of the classic arcade game Asteroids, where you play as a space ship clearing the screen of asteroids. This game was made for the 64brew game jam 2021.

You can download the ROM and source code from the download page for Asteroids 64 by using the password gamemasterplc or see the source code on Github and download from Drive.

Asteroids 64 style and gameplay

Style

This game has a fairly simple and straightforward style. The space ship and asteroids are made of simple vertices; the ship being a symmetrical concave quadrilateral, and the asteroids being bumpy round-ish rock-shaped objects.

Being space, the background is all black. The only thing on it being the dotted bullets that shoot out of the space ship.

This is a silent game, with no sound effects or music.

Gameplay

Asteroids 64 follows the original’s gameplay to a T. You play as a spaceship that starts in the middle of the screen and have to dodge asteroids that move around. Every time you shoot an asteroid, it splits into two smaller ones until you get to the smallest size, which is when shooting them makes them disappear completely. Destroying all the asteroids on the screen resets the level with two large asteroids.

Every object loops around one side of the screen to the other, even the bullets. The bullets loop around the screen about three times before expiring. Colliding with an asteroid takes away one of your five lives and resets you to the middle of the screen.

Unlike the original, Asteroids 64 doesn’t have the occasional UFO flying around for bonus points, or an increasing amount of asteroids per level.

‘Control’ theme

This game is a bit of an anomaly. I don’t think there is anything particularly ‘controlley’ about Asteroids 64. Yes, you do control the ship, but that could be said of pretty much every game out there. There hasn’t been an interview with the creator, so the relation to the theme is unknown.

If anyone has any ideas, do let me know in the comments below.

Credits

Asteroids 64 was made by Game Master Plc. Also known for making 64noid last year.

Review and Conclusion

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Asteroids. It wasn’t really one of the first games I’ve played, but it was instrumental in starting my programming career. When making games in Flash, I wanted to make a clone of Escape Velocity (Macintosh) and used an asteroids programming guide to help with the momentum calculations. It also showed how to make the game in Flash without drawing any graphics but instead just use vectors, which I had no idea could be done back then. Asteroids is also my 3rd favourite game on the Atari 7800, after Galaga and Ninja Golf.

That said, let’s get back to Asteroids 64. This version is a faithful recreation of the arcade classic with three differences: There’s no UFO, there’s no sound and there’s no increase in difficulty, every stage starts with only two large asteroids.

I don’t mind the difficulty staying the same because the game objects are so large, it already feels quite cramped. Compare it to the original, adding more would make it a bit too awkward to navigate in:

That said, this game isn’t very difficult to play through either, the bullets wrap around the screen a few times so it’s possible to do pretty well just by shooting around randomly. The hit detection is also very generous, so you’ll scrape by any close calls. After a few levels, I just try accelerating randomly just to add a bit more challenge.

Overall, Asteroids 64 accomplishes what it sets out to do. It’s a homebrewn version of Asteroids that is simple to pick up and play. Nothing more, nothing less.