Arcade · Cabinet 001
Asteroids
The 1979 vector classic, rebuilt from a blank file. One canvas, a hand-drawn stroke font, sound synthesized live. Click the screen, press Enter.
What this is
Asteroids as Atari shipped it in 1979, remade the way the original hardware worked: everything on screen is a stroked line. The score, the title, the menus use no font files. Each character is drawn segment by segment from a small vector alphabet, the same trick the cabinet's vector monitor pulled. The sound has no samples either. The heartbeat that speeds up as the field empties, the thrust rumble and the two UFO sirens are all generated by the browser's audio hardware while you play.
The rules you may have forgotten
Rocks split twice before they die, and the small ones are worth the most. The big saucer shoots at random; the small one aims at you, and it aims better the higher your score gets. Shift throws you into hyperspace, which saves you most of the time. Extra ship every 10,000. Your best score stays in this browser.
