THE MAKING OF…

sp on d ed
rs , A tari re Asteroids’
ce In v ade To m ark ard
s Sp a b a t. H o w
m Taito’ ella r com E d L o gg,
ack fro n te rst ok e to e ation
a tt n i s p c r
Under ts own take o , Paul Drury t the game’s
with i nniversary Rains abou
30th a an and Lyle
IN THE KNOW
» PUBLISHER: ATARI
Delm
» DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE
» PLATFORM: COIN-OP
» RELEASED: 1979
» GENRE: SHOOT-’EM-UP
» EXPECT TO PAY: £500+ FOR AN
ORIGINAL CABINET

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 THE MAKING OF: ASTEROIDS

I I suggested the Asteroids

t’s late-summer 1979 and engineer Sacramento actually began almost
Ed Logg is preparing for a trip to Old a decade before, thanks to a little

idea more as a creative exercise

Sacramento, California. He packs inspiration from the daddy of all space
the retrofit kit for Atari Football, shooters. “I’d played four-player Space

than a full-blown project

designed to upgrade the plays and War back in the early-Seventies on a
prolong the game’s arcade life. Joining PDP machine in the Stanford Research
him on the journey is colleague Collette Lab,” recalls Ed. “Down on campus
Weil, but Ed decides to take another in the Stanford Forum, they had two LYLE RAINS ON WHY EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR YOU
companion along for the ride: the project machines linked up and you could play
he’s being working on since the spring. for a quarter. Was I any good? Oh no!
Once at the arcade, his baby is The other guys would cream my ass that pivotal first meeting. “It may have
carefully placed among the rows of over and over again.” been something I had seen in the labs
blinking cabs. There’s no fancy silk- Though no maestro on this makeshift and subconsciously picked up on the
screen and the cabinet art is incomplete multiplayer cab, Ed undoubtedly knew asteroid theme. I think of Computer
but the lighted panel clearly displays the what made a good game. His work on Space as being more of the inspiration
name of this newborn: Asteroids. The Super Breakout, released in 1978, proved for the two-dimensional approach. You
proud father stands back and waits. he knew how to revisit an idea and add see, the biggest hit videogame at that
“A guy walks over and puts in his his own unique signature without losing time, perhaps of all time, was Space
quarter,” smiles Ed, “and he died three the original appeal. But when his boss, Invaders, which was predominately
times in about 20 seconds. Then he Lyle Rains, called him into his office one-dimensional player control – left and
reached out and put another quarter the following April, it was to discuss a right – with all the threats approaching
in. I thought, okay, if he’s dying three game’s failure to launch. from above. It was basically Breakout
times and still putting in another quarter, “Lyle was talking about an older game with moving bricks and a gun, instead
he must think it’s his fault, not that the I remember seeing once and playing of a ball and paddle. I was seeking a
game has got it in for him. He died but it was just not fun,” recalls Ed. “You more satisfying two-dimensional game
again, almost instantly. He put in quarter were trying to shoot the other player with a similar addictive gameplay theme
after quarter after quarter…” but this asteroid was in the way. Players of ‘completion’: eliminate all threats.
He was to be the first of many. tried to shoot it – I know I did – even I believe I described the
Asteroids epitomised the ‘easy to learn, though it couldn’t be destroyed. concept to Ed in a few
difficult to master’ philosophy of game He said everyone just sentences: little
design and Atari shifted a staggering seems to shoot the flying ship as
75,000 units, making it its biggest selling rock, so let’s create in Computer
coin-op. “I heard people saying we only a game that lets you Space; big rocks
made about half of the machines out blow it up” becoming little
there,” adds Ed. “I’ve certainly seen “I don’t really rocks; fly and shoot
counterfeit boards…” remember what till they all go away.
Success breeds imitation, though that old game was,” There was no » Ed poses with a special version of
the journey to that first field test in explains Lyle of great detail.” his famous creation.

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 THE MAKING OF…
ASTEROIDS
Rock On Though both men quickly agreed on
the basics of the gameplay and indeed
more you scored, and you could steal
planets from your opponent, too. As the
and we wanted it. They left it with us but
it wasn’t done, nor was it a platform to
– Asteroids the name Asteroids, which emerged game was being tweaked and people do games on. It was the basic hardware
sequels at this concept stage, they initially
disagreed on the format of the project.
were trying to make it fun – because
it really wasn’t fun – someone made it
concept and I was given task of turning
that into something we could use to ship
“Lyle wanted to do it on raster and I said so you could blow up the other guy’s a game. It was like I took this rough bit of
no, no, let’s do it on vector,” says Ed. ‘I’d planets. And suddenly it was fun. Forget clay and made it into something real.”
had some experience of working with trying to steal his planets, just blow Howard was tasked with not only
vector technology. The higher resolution them up. You can see where this was shaping this fascinating technology
meant you had more control of where heading… When they saw the vector into something useable, he also had to
you were aiming, not just this blob.” hardware we were working on, they said decide on a game idea to showcase this
Lyle chuckles: “Ed wanted to fool ‘Oh my God, that would be great for great leap forward. He settled on Lunar
around with the new vector, or XY Asteroids’. Ed must have been the third Lander, which became Atari’s first vector
hardware before starting his next programmer on that project. He came to game, released exactly a decade after the
ASTEROIDS DELUXE (1980)
Dave Shepherd took Ed’s code and project. I suggested the game idea me, I hooked him up with a board and he historic moon landings. He was joined on
added a shield and new enemies. more as a creative exercise than a full- got to work.” the project by Rich Moore and also one
Ed: “I was busy being a supervisor blown project. Obviously it took on a And Howard still has that very board Ed Logg, who worked on the distinctive
and had no involvement. I find it a life of its own.” in his workshop, a mass of chips and alpha-numeric character set used for the
little too hard.” We agree. The killer And the giver of life was hardware wires and hand-scrawled notes. He’s on-screen text and scoring. Thus when
satellite is just vicious. engineer Howard Delman. Howard had clearly proud recalling the story of how Ed received his customised Lunar Lander
worked on many of Atari’s post-Pong he came to be in charge of handling board, bolstered with extra RAM and
successes, including Super Bug and the Atari’s first steps into the shining light of some bespoke ‘jumps and cuts’ from
first simultaneous co-operative arcade vector game development. Howard, he had some knowledge of the
game, Fire Truck. Game development “In early-1978, vector games started to new hardware.
in those pioneering days of the mid- emerge, but not from Atari,” he begins. “Man, that thing was tiny,” chuckles
Seventies was not clearly divided into “Atari had a research-and-development Ed. “This little four-by-four inch board
software and hardware roles, meaning group in Grass Valley. They came up with five buttons and wires coming off it,
that Howard had a handle on both of with an XY display system, or at least linked up to a screen. I started by getting
these emerging fields. Having joined laid the groundwork for one, and came the ship on screen. I wanted to see it
SPACE DUEL (1982) Atari in 1976, he also remembers a down to show it to us. It was really cool flying around…”
A colourful reworking by Owen project that had been floating around for
Rubin, with inventive co-op play quite a while…
and wonderful spinning shapes. Ed: “There was this old game that had
“My initial reaction was that it was been worked on for a long time because
very abstract, perhaps too abstract no one could quite make it fun,” he
for the casual player.”
laughs. “It was originally called Cosmos
and then became known as Planet Grab,
a two-player game where you were
trying to claim planets in space.
The more you claimed, the

BLASTEROIDS (1987)
Ed Rotberg added power-ups, ship
morphing, branching levels, bosses
and the ability to dock your ships » [XXXXXX] Swooping and diving, gliding through » [XXXXXXXXXXXX] XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
in multiplayer for added firepower. Starblade
superstructures floating in space: the simple joys of Starblade. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Best played on an original cab with
spinner controllers. » A Retro Gamer exclusive, the
modified Lunar Lander board
created by Howard, which Ed
used to develop Asteroids. The
smaller board at the bottom
contains those 13 sounds.

» [Arcade] Asterock, one of the many

bootleg versions of Asteroids. » [Arcade] Mr Bill makes a kill.

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 THE MAKING OF: ASTEROIDS

Send in the clones ASTE ROIDS (ATARI 5200) TREX)

MINESTORM ing it here as this doesn’t
The VCS version (VEC
was passable giv
en the push
limited hardware
, but this upped the Okay, we’re ting, but it’s
ante ure any rock blas ul
with a smoother,
more authentic exp even feat
As tero id s, has beautif
erience. d by
clearly inspire ut te rly ace.
cs and is
vector graphi

IC 20 ) METEORS (BBC MICRO)

JUPITER (V
MOONS OF ef fort for the expanded Vic Acornsoft had a knack of producing superior
ve ry ’s
An impressi mon Munne arcade clones and this had schoolboys
tter than Si scribed as
and much be fa mou sl y de praying for wet lunch breaks so they could
Bug Byte,
version for ff Minter. play it on the school’s computers.
pile of wank” by Je
“a

And what a thing of beauty it was, that Players developed a love-hate

graceful inertia as your tiny triangular relationship with that little blighter.
ship thrusts through the blackness of They loved the 1,000-point reward
space. Yet it wasn’t always so. Ed had for shooting it, but cursed its deadly
toyed with having no friction to decrease accuracy and increasing speed. Ed
the forward movement of your ship also employed a timer that steadily
(which meant you spent most of your decreased, meaning respite between
time desperately trying to stop yourself), saucer attacks became ever shorter.
and with no inertia at all (which made “I wanted to discourage you from not
the game too easy) before arriving at shooting stuff. Get rid of those small
his happy medium. It was typical of Ed’s rocks so I can send a new lot of bigger
approach to the game’s development: rocks out there, because more stuff
experimenting with different settings, on screen means more chance of an
many inspired by those early battles on unfortunate collision.”
Space War, to see which delivered the Of course, if you were really in a tight
best experience and always on the look spot, you could hit hyperspace and
out for fortuitous side effects. take your chances. On re-entering the
“It was all ad hoc at this point,” playfield, there was a random chance of
explains Ed. “There was no design your ship exploding, its three constituent » Designing the large saucer wasn’t
document. How did I get those cool parts torn asunder and gently fading in proving straightforward…
vapour trails? That was just a property one of gaming’s most lonesome deaths.
of those old monitors. They have “You know, I should have put some
phosphor and phosphor glows. You put algorithm in so that if there were lots of
that much electrical excitement into the rocks on screen you didn’t have much
phosphor, it takes a while for it to cool chance of blowing up, but with only
down and not glow, so it seems to leave a few it was a much higher chance,”
this trace behind it.” concedes Ed. “And I still have regrets
With your ship in motion, Ed sketched about the placement of the hyperspace
out different asteroid shapes and had button. It should have been nearer my
them drift across the screen in increasing right thumb, so I didn’t have to take my
numbers. As you blasted them into hand off thrust to hit it. You know, with
smaller pieces, strategies began to hindsight I should have put a shield in
emerge. Should you concentrate on the instead. If you got hit it was decreased so
smaller rocks or take out the largest first? you had a few chances. That would have
Should you stay put in the centre of the given you some more strategy…”
field or weave through the debris? The It’s the only time Ed questions his
former felt like the safest option, so Ed design choices, but then he was getting
decided the player was going to need an positive daily feedback from his peers.
incentive to get them moving. The Atari labs were open-plan affairs,
“I always wanted two saucers,” he long halls with room for two or three
recalls. “A big one that fired randomly games in development at any one time.
like cannon fodder to get you used to Half a dozen staff would be based in
the concept that when you got down to each room, and engineers would wander
fewer rocks, a ship was going to come between labs, passing comment and
out. The little saucer was about making stopping to play as they went.
you move. Run away, you’re going to die “Some engineers walking by would
if you stick around!” see a couple of asteroids floating across

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 THE MAKING OF…
ASTEROIDS
my screen and start humming the Such was the intimate nature of
tune to Lawrence Welk’s Tiny Bubbles creating videogames in those frontier
just to tease me,” chuckles Ed. “A lot days, and Asteroids stands as one of
of colleagues would come by and ask the period’s crowning achievements.

Turtleht ofP ower ‘when are you leaving?’ ‘When can I

play this game?’ And you realise, okay,
Released in November 1979, it went
on selling for years, earning Atari an
s, it seems
its huge succes
In lig d that’s a good sign… Management would estimated $150 million in sales and a
Ed never revisite
surprising that pr od uce come in and check on progress. Lyle was further $500 million in revenue from
no r did he
Asteroids certainly interested. He was, like, let’s do countless enthralled gamers.
game. He cites
another vector a focus group, let’s do a field test.” While nothing can truly detract from
of the colour
the unreliability Yes, feedback from outside the the game’s enormous success, issues
cto r tec hn olo gy and his
ve
e to wo rk on something company was overwhelmingly positive, did arise post-release. Some were clearly
desir
h he do es reveal the too. Atari organised two focus groups technical: accumulate too many extra
new, thoug .
e Turtleroids
of in June 1979. On the 14th, they gathered ships and the game slows to a crawl, and
little-known tal
ry ye ar, At ar i Coin-op had together seven older players, veterans on some machines, if you got down to
“Eve
storming session of Space War, and then on the 20th they just your ship and a single asteroid, the
an of f-site brain
ss ed new game tested Asteroids on nine children aged display would fade out. “That’s the spot
where we discu
ny ye ar s the idea of Turtle between 15 and 17, all Space Invaders killer,” declares Ed.
ideas. For ma
is wa s a ga me where fans. Ed and his fellow engineers “If the game dies, the vector beam
osed. Th
Races was prop sin g yo ur voice to get
co ntinuously increa go observed proceedings through one-way would just point at wherever you last
you raced yo ur tur tle by ed the tur tle to
too quickly caus glass and player comments were noted pointed it and burn a hole in the screen,”
ur tur tle to mo ve. Increasing ay s sh ot do wn. I’m not
yo a was alw down meticulously. Ever the archivist, he continues. “We had a piece of
a while. The ide tle this or tur tle
that,
into its shell for me idea into tur Ed has held on to these four pages of circuitry so that if you don’t move the
ne d ev er y ga ne an d said
sure if we tur up in front of ev
er yo
detailed feedback and it’s fascinating to vector enough it shuts it down. I wasn’t
nk Ballouz got . We had
but one year Fra took it as a ch all en ge
s! ’ Of course, we s in and did ever
ything read how players first struggled to get to given any technical numbers, so I put the
‘no more tur tle
ing dr ink s wi th wind-up tur tle e suggested we
grips with the thrust button, requesting score at the top and the Atari copyright
waiters br tur tle s. So me on
of in the way of gineering in a joystick instead, and how the younger at the bottom and thought that, along
we could think by of Coin-op En
the Go ld As teroids in the lob er, so I ch anged the group, accustomed to taking shelter with the ship and at least one asteroid,
chan ge sa uc
to ha ve a tur tle instead of a s. behind a base in Space Invaders, noted that would be enough to disable the spot
Sunnyvale program to do
thi
rned a special that you don’t get a break in this game. killer and the video display wouldn’t be
graphics and bu
s .”
Hence, Turtleroid Ed is more circumspect when it comes turned off… turns out it wasn’t. As for the
» Ed’s original sketches for the
to the value of these written responses. slowdown, if you have hundreds of ships,
different rock shapes. “I just look at their play and see what’s the game can’t draw everything at 60Hz
going on. I always believe that if they per frame. I wasn’t clever enough to limit
don’t get wowed immediately, you have it to ten ships or something. Anyway,
a problem.” I thought Mr Bill would come out and
Players also commented on the way blow you away…”
the sound effects built the tension, For our non-American readers, Mr
something Howard is especially proud Bill and Sluggo are characters from
of contributing. “That thump, thump, US variety show Saturday Night Live
thump… I was really trying to do a and became the unofficial names for
heartbeat,” he explains. “I sensed as the the two saucers. The fact that Ed Logg
game sped up and you became more received a cease and desist letter from
tense, your own heartbeat would speed their copyright holders, despite there
up and I really wanted to keep them in being no reference to the Play-doh pair
sync. We didn’t have sound chips back in the game itself, is an indication of how
then so I created a hardware circuit for Asteroids had entered popular culture.
each of the 13 sounds by hand and wired And that was partly due to Mr Bill not
them onto Ed’s board myself.” doing his job…

» Ed in 1983, after Asteroids and Centipede but before Gauntlet… » The devilishly difficult Asteroids Deluxe. » Scott Safran, whose Asteroids record still stands after 27 years.

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 THE MAKING OF: ASTEROIDS

Asteroids memor
ies
Owen Rubin
(CREATOR OF SPACE DUE
L AND MA JOR HAVOC)
“Asteroids was being dev
eloped in a lab near mine.
to go in and play late at nigh I used
t, sometimes until I filled
high score table with my up the
initials. Ed Logg would com
» [Arcade] Ed took the idea for a high-score table from Exidy’s Star Fire. morning, reset it, work on e in nex t
the game and come in the
to find ‘ORR’ was in every nex t day
spot on the table again. So
in a check for ‘ORR’ and he put
all other combinations of
so they ’d be replaced with my initials
his. I sent a note telling him
was a bug till he told me there
what he’d done…”

Irene
(WIFE OF ED LOGG)
videogames. I did
“Asteroids was my first experience of
friend s and they happened to have
house sitting for some
and thought it was
a machine. I’d play it when I was there
gave it to me as a gift.
kinda fun and when they moved they
uced to Ed at a party by Ed Rotberg
Years later, I was introd
the best. No, I was not a
who said he’d like to introduce me to
ie! I think Ed was suppo sed to sign my control panel. He
group
still hasn’t got round to it.”

Tim Skelly
(VECTOR GAME PIONEER AT CINEM
ATRONICS)
“When I saw Asteroids at an AMOA show
in Chicago, I thought,
‘why didn’t I think of that? ’ Its strength
was that it allowed you to
work out your own ways to win the game
. Every player was free
to break rocks and shoot saucers any
way they pleased. It was
an inspiration to me and to decades of
game designers. When
I was briefly working for Gremlin/Sega,
the team there created
a variation on it called Space Meatball
or F*** Your Buddy,
depending on the prototype. My point
» An arcade flyer for the fancy cocktail cabinet. is, flexibility is fun, and
Asteroids introduced wonderfully flexible
gameplay.”

Asteroids is a man-against- “Sure, there were those who could

play forever, but the average player
DEVELOPER
HIGHLIGHTS
machine game. However good you
always felt that his failures were his own,
that the game was fair, and he could BREAKOUT

got, it was always one step ahead

do better next time,” adds Lyle. “I think SYSTEM: ARCADE
the ‘secret’ of Asteroids’ phenomenal YEAR: 1978
success was Ed’s near-perfect tuning of LUNAR LANDER
SYSTEM: ARCADE
HOWARD DELMAN RAGES AGAINST THE MACHINE the difficulty.”
YEAR: 1979
“It came out at a great time, too,” says
CENTIPEDE (PICTURED)
Howard. “Arcades were springing up SYSTEM: ARCADE
“Originally, the small saucer used to full story) and the widespread use of the everywhere. Offices were getting games, YEAR: 1980
come out and shoot instantly,” explains technique led many arcade owners to doctor’s surgeries were getting them…
Ed. “If you were right next to him he’d complain about these marathon games. there was an unprecedented demand
nail you. People said it wasn’t fair, so I “What they didn’t see was that some and everyone in the business sold
said okay, I’ll give you a second before he could play that long but a lot of other everything they had. The industry was
takes his shot so you can see where he’s people would try,” notes Ed. “So Joe hot back then. And Asteroids is a classic
at. Unfortunately that opened the big fat might play for six hours on one quarter, man-against-machine game. It was
window to lurking.” but then all Joe’s friends come in and simple to learn, obvious what you had to
Ah, the ancient art of lurking, where try and be as good as Joe and put in do and you could improve quickly, but
the proficient player leaves a solitary a lot of money. That really contributed however good you got, the game was
asteroid on screen and then hunts to both the game’s popularity and its always one step ahead. I used to get into
saucers for hours, sometimes days, longevity. We actually made a new chip fights with marketing guys who wanted
accumulating mammoth scores. It to prevent lurking, but a lot of operators games with more colour, more things
reached its zenith in November 1982 found that with it their earnings went on screen, things to be more lifelike. I’d
when 15-year-old Scott Safran played down and wanted it put back to the say it was all about gameplay, how fun
a single game for an entire weekend old way. Asteroids would have been something is.”
setting the current world record of over successful anyway, but lurking became Ladies and gentlemen, after 30 years
41 million (see Retro Gamer 28 for the part of its lore…” we are still floating in space…

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