Asteroids is one of the few gaming franchises that’s older than I am, with the first one coming out in 1979. Whilst not an official Asteroids game, Asteroid 69 wears its influences loud and proud. This is a 1-4 player co-operative Asteroids clone, which brings some neat additions to the gameplay, alongside some rough edges. If those rough parts can be smoothed out, there’s a great retro game here to be had for old gamers and fans of retro video games like me.
Asteroid 69 is level/wave-based. Each level drops you into the centre of the screen to shoot all the asteroids and alien ships that will appear. There are a variety of ships to choose from, each with its own stats and unique secondary weapon. You’ll need to clear the level of everything before the next one begins. As levels are a single screen that wraps around, you can use shooting off-screen to blow up asteroids on the other side, but be warned, enemies can do the same. Every 10 levels, a boss battle will occur, and these bring variety that’s much needed, as a lot of the enemies are recoloured versions of previous enemies with a new trait added.
Visually, Asteroid 69 wears the early 80’s look well. It isn’t flashy, but it feels like a lost arcade cabinet or an early home port of a title from that era. The ships themselves all fly differently, but most of them are in the overly sensitive category. Yes, space is low gravity, but the thrusters on these ships are almighty and trying to course correct them often results in death if you panic or overcorrect a turn. It also makes your incredibly thin bullets feel feeble when you are trying to turn and shoot simultaneously. In a weird coincidence, whilst the ship controls are a design choice that I can appreciate, whilst not personally gelling with, the procedural generation of each level is very inconsistent. Levels are too often generated in a way that means you can sit in the centre of the screen and just spin the ship without moving to take out almost all of the enemies and asteroids. I could do this for 15 to 20 levels at a time, excluding some movement for boss battles, and it doesn’t feel right. It’s odd to have one issue solve a different one, but I’d rather have smoother difficulty curves with increased challenge that force me to get to grips with the stylised controls. As it is, you’ll run into 15-minute stretches of very dull design.
When a level includes fast-moving asteroids, alien craft shooting at you, and its awesome black hole system, Asteroid 69 perks up. After a short period of time, an enemy enters each level that you can kill, and upon death, it generates a black hole. This sucks both you and all the enemies towards it, so you’ll want to be as far away as possible when triggering the attack. This clumps together enemies and causes them damage, but also gives you a nice way to pick them all off together. Combine it with your special second ability, such as laser swords, mines, or missiles, and you’ll clean up a level with ease.
The main game unlocks new ships with new secondary weapons the further you play. You can then mix and match them in the 1-4 player co-op mode. Co-op is a great addition, but it comes with infinite continues, so there’s not a huge challenge. It’ll entertain us elder gamers for a while, though. There is also a retro mode that turns all the graphics into vector art, removes all weapon upgrades, and takes you back to the 1979 classic. Each one has its own local leaderboard.
With a few tweaks to the procedural generation, Asteroid 69 has the potential to be a stronger recommendation. For now, this is for fans of the Atari original series only. Even then, you’ll need to ride its inconsistent approach to level generation to get to the good bits.
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