About Asteroids, Atari's biggest arcade hit

After the breakout success of Space Invaders in 1978, Atari was no longer the hot game maker. Sure, their games were popular, but they needed something that that could be the next “big thing”. Space Invaders in 1978 and Star Wars in 1977 demonstrated that a sci-fi theme was probably the way to go. In April 1979, Asteroids was conceived and co-designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg. The premise of the game was supposedly suggested by Lyle Rains in a conversation with Ed Logg while working on another game: "Well, why don’t we have a game where you shoot the rocks and blow them up?" The simplicity of that statement is pure genius! However, the Asteroids gameplay was not all that simple. Unlike Space Invaders, where you just had to move left and right and shoot upwards while dodging missiles from the aliens, Asteroids was much more complex. Your spaceship could move around the entire screen by applying thrust and had a little bit of inertia after the thrust stopped. The ship could also spi ... Read full article.