home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
PC Answers 1995 September
/
DISK19.iso
/
games
/
csheet
/
a
/
astrofir.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1995-04-30
|
2KB
|
46 lines
~Astro Fire
~By Shareware Company (Shareware) registration fee:
~Reviewed by Alistair Baxter.
~One for nostalgia fans.
Who remembers the arcade game "Asteroids?" I don't, it was far
before my time. I have, however, played "Meteoroids", a BBC
conversion which is part of the pitiful handful of archaic games
in the "arcade" in computer studies at school. Even if neither of
these are familiar, you're bound to have played some form of it
somewhere as it has been converted, or more often copied, to
almost every home computer system from the Vectrex via the C64 -
in cartridge form, no less - to a Windows version (It's part of
Microsoft Arcade).
If you need to be told, in Asteroids you are a small spaceship
which spins around and which only travels in a forward direction
and you have to shoot big chunks of rock. When you shoot a rock
it splits up into two smaller rocks whick shoot off into opposite
directions. When you shoot these, they split up and when you
shoot the third rocks they disappear. You are on a single screen
and if you travel out of the bottom, top or either side you will
come out of the opposite side of the screen, as will the rocks.
Occasionally a flying saucer would fly across the screen,
shooting around it. The graphics were all, quite literally,
polygons. Not 3D polygons like we know today, but your ship was a
hollow white triangle and the enemies were all also white
outlines. I can't remember if there was any background, but if
there was, it was just a few single pixels made to look like a
starscape.
~Astro Fire is a Shareware version of Asteroids for the PC, then?
Yes, but that's not all. White outlines and single-screen play
with no variety just aren't acceptable nowadays, shareware or
otherwise. Astro Fire makes a number of improvements over
asteroids, most noticeably in the graphics department. Now, this
is fairly natural and most of the copies of Asteroids have had
updated graphics - but not to this extent.
~--- SEE IT FOR YOURSELF WITH THE SHAREWARE VERSION ON THIS CD !! ---