Asteroids (video game)

Asteroids is a 1979 multidirectional shooter video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades; in Japan, it was distributed by Taito and Sega. The player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers while avoiding colliding with either or being hit by the saucers' counterfire. The game becomes more difficult as the number of asteroids increases.

Asteroids was conceived and designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg, who decided to use hardware developed by Wendi Allen (then known as Howard Delman) that was previously used for Lunar Lander. Asteroids was based on an unfinished game titled Cosmos; its physics model, control scheme, and gameplay elements were derived from Spacewar!, Computer Space, and Space Invaders and refined through trial and error. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around both screen axes.

Asteroids was one of the first major hits of the golden age of arcade games; the game sold 47,840 upright cabinets and 8,725 cocktail cabinets, and proved both popular with players and influential with developers. In the 1980s, it was ported to Atari's home systems, with the Atari 2600 version selling over three million copies. The game was widely imitated, and directly influenced Defender, Gravitar, and many other video games.