Asteroids Deluxe

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Jizaboz
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Your prize is a McDonald's Arch Deluxe. Participation may vary.
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Tdarcos
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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pinback wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:37 am Oh, so I'm the bad guy now.
What do you mean, "now"? Like the guy at the party who doesn't drink gets to be designated driver, I thought you were the designated villain. Or at least since Finn got excommunicated.
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Asteroids is better than Asteroids Deluxe, but only because of one thing.

Let's first take a look at the ways Asteroids Deluxe is better than Asteroids. The first two are purely aesthetic, but give the game a huge leap in terms of coolness:

- The rocks spin. When implementing Pinneroids, there was no question I was gonna make the rocks spin. Absolutely essential.
- Though the original's "triangle ship" was iconic, the Deluxe ship is still one of the sleekest, coolest looking spaceships in videogames.

The main improvement, though, has to do with the "special ability". Asteroids Deluxe replaces the original's "hyperspace" -- a lame, unpredictable last resort -- with the shield, which is so spectacularly superior that it's hard to describe just how much better it is. It replaces hyperspace's guesswork with strategy, and adds a wonderful new dimension to the game.

Past all this, Deluxe just feels faster. It's more exciting. It's an adrenaline rush from board 1, and if I only had five minutes to play arcade games, I might tend to choose Deluxe over the original because of this.

But the original is still better, and the reason is: The Hex. Referred to officially as the "Killer Satellite", the Hex itself is not a bad idea -- it's an asteroid with brains. It still breaks up into pieces like a rock, but has the sentience to head straight at you once you start shooting at it. By itself, it's not bad, but it is used quite obviously as a way to shorten playtime. It adds an element of insurmountable, extreme difficulty to the game, which I wish there was some standard term from videogame history that describes such a level of difficulty, but unfortunately nobody has ever coined such a term.

Where Asteroids ramps up the difficulty by continually adding rocks -- to me, the most fun and interesting part of the game -- Deluxe maxes out the rock count relatively quickly, and just starts ramping up the Hex difficulty to kill you off so you have to keep feeding it quarters.

It's arbitrary, it's manipulative, and after the third or fourth board, it sucks the fun out of the game, which then just becomes completely about dealing with the Hex and its ever increasing speed and relentlessness.

Ultimately, Deluxe beats the original in virtually every way, but destroys it all with this one greedy design decision.

Still great, but the purity of the original will reign supreme in perpetuity.
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Tdarcos
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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pinback wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:12 am
But the original is still better, and the reason is: The Hex. It adds an element of insurmountable, extreme difficulty to the game, which I wish there was some standard term from videogame history that describes such a level of difficulty, but unfortunately nobody has ever coined such a term.
I used to refer to this as "stone hard" for video games that became either unbeatable or so close to it that it would take either dumb luck or extreme preparation. Then I found TVTropes has a term for it: Nintendo Hard.
pinback wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:12 am Ultimately, Deluxe beats the original in virtually every way, but destroys it all with this one greedy design decision.
Yep. it sounds like the gameplay fits the "Nintendo Hard" designation.
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Aaaaand scene!
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Just hit 9,600. :/
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:57 am Just hit 9,600. :/
Baud? Nice!

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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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Here is a post about Asteroids math that I am posting for Ben to see.

http://www.retrogamedeconstructionzone. ... s.html?m=1
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Re: Asteroids Deluxe

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I enjoyed that immensely, and it confirms what I always believed: Pinneroids, in which rocks will occasionally break up into THREE of the smaller size rather than two, is a significantly more realistic portrayal of the presented scenario. Does that make it a "better" game?

Yes it does.
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