|
|
Astro Blaster |
Click a category to get help from our sponsors! |
|
Manufacturer:
Sega/Gremlin Year: 1981 Class: Wide Release Genre: Shooter Type: Videogame Monitor:
Number of Simultaneous Players: 1 Maximum number of Players: 2 Gameplay: Alternating Control Panel Layout: Single Player Controls:
Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel) |
|
DescriptionA multi-wave colour raster shoot-em-up. Features include speech, a warp button that slows enemies, docking (to refuel) and secret bonuses. Two items must be monitored throughout the game; the laser temperature since overheating renders ship unable to fire and a fuel gauge that, when depleted, ends the entire game (even if you have ships remaining).Know anything more about this game? Cabinet InformationThe game has light blue artwork depicting a space ship. There is a clear perspex screen in front of the actual monitor.The second cabinet photo is of the (seemingly) rare teal/aqua color scheme in a white cabinet. Cheats, Tricks and BugsThere are 25 secret bonuses. Some are: destroying entire alien wave before it cycles, having all of your shots hit aliens in a wave (no misses) and docking with mother ship without moving your ship (dead center is 1000 bonus, on the edge *paint-scraper* is 1500 bonus).ConversionThis game was based upon Sega's "G-80 Card Cage" system. The majority of G-80 games were vector, but the handful of raster G-80 games can be changed with a simple card swap inside the G-80 cage and some minor control panel re-wiring.Game IntroductionThe game harbours many secret bonuses, some of which were mentioned in Tom Hershfield's book Mastering the VideoGames (Bantam circa 1983), but others appear to be more elusive. The speech adds a great deal to the gameplay as it acts as your on-board computer.The two-player mode is slightly unusual in that the players alternate between rounds rather than between ships (a round is four or more waves plus a meteor/fireball wave plus a docking sequence). Hence, if player one does not survive round one then player two ends up playing alone! Game PlayYou control a ship at bottom of screen that shoots through waves of aliens, maneuvers through an asteroid belt and then docks with mother ship. Firing shots too fast causes the laser to overheat and become unoperational until it cools down. The warp button causes aliens and alien fire to slow down for timed duration. Fuel counts down while playing and if it runs out the game is over.MiscellaneousThere are a couple of versions of this game in existence. The original ROM version had a different attract screen that did not contain any instructions. The waves were longer and the player was given the option of "buying-in" an extra number of ships, although the player was not allowed to buy extra fuel -- the main difficulty of the game.This early release of Astro Blaster was practically imposisble to play because it was so difficult. The game was later modified to include instructions in the attract mode and the waves were shortened to reduce the overall difficulty. Even this later version is very challenging to the casual player and many seasoned players cannot even clear four out of the eight levels. To help players progress further, there exists a ROM hack that slows down fuel consumption and laser overheating. Scarcity in collections (VAPS.org)Uncommon - There are 17 known instances of this game owned by one of our 900 members. Of these, 15 of them are original dedicated machines, 1 of them are conversions in which game circuit boards have been placed in another game cabinet, and 1 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.Of the 42,694 video games (3,154 unique) tracked by the Video Game Preservation Society, this game ranks a 10 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most commonly seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on ownership records. Wanted - There are 2 VAPS members currently looking for this game. Rarity is NOT necessarily an indication of value. Some common games show up as very rare here because collectors don't want them (they are common because arcade operatos might be sitting on tons of them in warehouses), while some fairly scarce games are grabbed by collectors every time they show up. Additionally, some games made in the last 5 years are still making money for operators and are thus not yet affordable to the typical collector. For a clue to value, compare how many people have this game vs. how many people want this game and then click on the eBay links to help determine an accurate price range. TechnicalThere are no DIP switches to set difficulty. The game uses Gremlin's G-80 System that was based upon the Z80A CPU. The video board implements the VIC IC that can display eight shades of red, eight shades of green and four of blue. The game's extensive speech is powered by a 8035 CPU.eBay ListingsClick here to automatically search eBay's Arcade, Jukebox, and Pinball categories for the Astro Blaster Videogame machine and items related to it.Click here to automatically search eBay's Arcade, Jukebox, and Pinball categories for machines and parts made by Sega/Gremlin. Alternatively, check out the IAM/KLOV custom report of the hottest coin-op machines on eBay, powered by Ace.com (updated throughoutthe day).
Manuals
Foto-Finder™
| 
    Click here to contribute another image. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 1995-2008 by The International Arcade Museum®. All rights reserved.
If you wish to use material from our web sites, please take a look at our Acceptable Use, Copyright, and Trademark Page.
Except as described on that page, any use of the information found here may not be copied or reprinted on any medium, either physical or electronic, without the express written
permission of The International Arcade Museum.
