Blasteroids

Blasteroids Description

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Game Introduction

Game Play

The game allows you to transform your ship. Three ship configurations are available: The Speeder (small), The Fighter (medium) and The Warrior (large). The Speeder is very fast, with poor damage-absorbing armor and short range guns. The Fighter has medium level armor, medium range guns and a slower but decent speed. The Warrior has excellent armor and close range guns but is ponderously slow.

Floating amongst the asteroids are objects which help you: additional guns for your ship, larger fuel tanks, crystal magnets and impervious shields. Some of these add-ons are time-limited while others last until your current ship is destroyed. In the asteroid field, there are also "popcorn" asteroids, small blue rock formations that grow larger and travel faster with each hit they take until they become large, non-moving objects on the screen. These obstacles must be avoided since hitting them will drain all your fuel, costing you a ship. A popcorn asteroid can not be destroyed. Hitting anything other than bonus power-ups and energy crystals costs precious fuel. Clearing a sector of all its asteroids takes you back to a screen showing you a preview of all the cleared and uncleared sectors in this star system. Some sectors are unknown and you do not get a preview. You must select the next sector to clear. Clearing all sectors in the vortex takes you to the "boss."

The "boss" asteroid, Mukor, is a large animated rock with a face and multiple volcano-like projections placed around his body. He moves around the screen making murmuring noises while his "volcanoes" spew forth a continuous stream of small alien ships and asteroids which you must avoid or destroy. To kill Mukor, you must eliminate each of the volcanoes with multiple blaster hits. Destroying a volcano causes Mukor to release bonus power-up items and destroying all the volcanoes causes Mukor to flee, returning you to the selection vortices.

Later, after you have cleared all other sectors, you will eventually have to face Mukor again and that time, he will have to be destroyed. After Mukor has been destroyed, the game ends.

Simultaneous two-player game play can be competitive or cooperative. The first person to fly their ship into a vortex chooses the star system to which the players go. A unique feature of two-person play is the docking of ships. To dock, one player must transform their ship to the largest size while the other transforms to the smallest. By touching the two ships together, they dock and form one large ship. The player originally with the larger ship now controls the speed and direction of the docked ship and can fire straight forward. The player with the smaller ship controls a turret that can rotate and fire independently of the main ship. The dock is broken when the player with the small ship hits his/her thrust button.

VAPS Arcade Census

Common - There are 37 known instances of Blasteroids owned by one of our 900 members. Of these, 26 of them are original dedicated machines, and 11 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

Of the 57,098 video games (3,420 unique) tracked by the Video Game Preservation Society, this game ranks a 17 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most commonly seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on ownership records.

Wanted - There are 3 VAPS members currently looking for Blasteroids.

For Sale - There are 2 VAPS members with Blasteroids machines for sale. There are 2 VAPS members with extra Blasteroids circuit boards for sale. VAPS members are totally independent of VAPS and the International Arcade Museum, and we are unable to recommend, endorce, or guarantee any person or company selling games or game parts.

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 operators 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.

eBay Listings

Alternatively, check out the IAM/KLOV custom report of the hottest coin-op machines on eBay, powered by Ace.com (updated throughoutthe day).

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Legacy

1. Asteroids
2. Asteroids Deluxe
3. Space Duel
4. Blasteroids

Manuals

1. Schematic Package  27 Pages, 2744 KB File.