Astrosmash is what would happen if Space Invaders had sex with Asteroids. It’s fast-paced, frantic, and well made.

The game’s premise has you guiding a cannon left and right along the bottom of the screen as asteroids fall down at you. When you shoot one, it splinters into smaller ones which you also have to shoot. The game starts out pretty slow, but within a few rounds you’ll have more asteroids than you know what to do with. And they don’t just come straight down, but at all angles. You have your fire buttons on the side of the controller and you move with the directional disc. On the keypad, you have the use of four buttons. One is an auto-fire, which is useful because the Intellivision controller doesn’t lend itself well to rapid fire situations. Another button cancels the auto-fire and sets you back to using the side buttons. You’ve also got hyper space, which will warp you to another part of the screen to get you out of immediate danger. The last button is a pause button. Overall, the game plays very well. You earn extra lives as you go along, and if you’re good you can play for quite some time. The controls are responsive and everything works great.

Astrosmash on the Intellivision looks better than pretty much anything the 2600 churned out. Everything is pretty clear and colorful. The sound effects are also pretty good. The game is set against a starry backdrop, which changes color every so often (this is because older TV were susceptible to burn-in).

Overall, Astrosmash is an outstanding game. I am of the opinion that if it had come out in the arcades first, it would be remembered as a classic on the level of a Galaga or Asteroids. Astrosmash was ported to Atari 2600 under a different name, but it was unremarkable and since it didn’t have the name recognition it went largely unnoticed.

Bottom line: is it worth it to track down an Intellivision just to play Astrosmash? Probably not. But if you own an Intellivision or come across one for a good price, there’s no reason at all not to pick up Astrosmash.

Final score: 9.5/10

1 Comment »

1. sounds pretty cool. Is Astrosmash exclusive to the Intellivision?

   Comment by whoozwah — January 29, 2009 @ 1:58 am

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