Asteroids Walkthrough

Asteroids is a classic arcade game released in 1979 by Atari. It was developed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg (although Logg did all of the actual programming). Asteroids became a smash hit in the United States, and spawned numerous clones and ports that can be found on home consoles, cellular phones, and all across the Web. Some of these clones add new features, while others remain true to the original arcade game. This Flash version of Asteroids does an excellent job mimicking the original arcade game.

The objective of Asteroids is to destroy all of the asteroids on the stage. Shooting asteroids causes them to break apart into smaller, faster-moving asteroids until they are at the smallest size, where shooting them will cause them to disintegrate completely. When all asteroids have been destroyed, you will advance to the next level where the process will be repeated. Just like in the original version of this classic game, UFOs will occasionally appear on screen and shoot at you. These UFOs can be destroyed by your weapons, but they can also crash into asteroids. If your ship is hit by a UFO's gunfire or if you collide with a UFO or asteroid, you will lose one life. When all lives are lost, the game is over.

Controlling your ship is simple. The left and right arrow keys rotate your ship. The up arrow key activates your thruster. Unlike the original version of this arcade game, your ship will eventually slow down after releasing the thruster, so you do not need to worry about inertia as much. Passing the edge of the screen will cause your ship to appear on the other side of the screen. If you need to quickly evade collision, press the shift key to enter hyperspace and reappear in a random position on the screen. Be careful when entering hyperspace, because you may end up getting out of the pan only to jump into the fire!

This Flash version of Asteroids is a respectable clone of the classic game. I wasn't able to make it to 99,990 points, but if anyone does, please let us know if the score reverts back to zero like it did in the arcade game!