No UFO On Asteroids

[Math You]

Whenever I play Asteroids on a real 2600 the UFO appears regularly, but when I play it using the Stella emulator it never appears. Are there different versions of Asteroids?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Set difficulty switches to A!

 

http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.h...areLabelID=1007

[Vic George 2K3]

Rather interesting that Atari would have the difficulty switches select whether you want to deal with the rocks alone or both rocks and UFOs.

[supercat]

Set difficulty switches to A!

 

Also, be sure to select an even-numbered game when playing one-player, or an odd-numbered game when playing two-player.

[Nukey Shay]

Rather interesting that Atari would have the difficulty switches select whether you want to deal with the rocks alone or both rocks and UFOs.

 

Not really. For early games, it was common to have a list of options to pick from (so that they could advertise the number of game variations on the box). Because the omission of UFO's causes the game to be MUCH easier, it was probably reassigned to the game difficulties instead after already in place as a game variation (only a single instruction to handle their appearance, so it would be simple enough to throw into the console switch routine). Makes much more sense as an "easy"/"difficult" selection.

[Vic George 2K3]

Back in the day, before I even read How To Master Home Video Games, which was how I knew that the difficulty switches controlled whether the UFOs would appear or not, I would have assumed that they would just simply appear as being part of the main game.

[Starhopper]

Rather interesting that Atari would have the difficulty switches select whether you want to deal with the rocks alone or both rocks and UFOs.

 

Not really. For early games, it was common to have a list of options to pick from (so that they could advertise the number of game variations on the box). Because the omission of UFO's causes the game to be MUCH easier, it was probably reassigned to the game difficulties instead after already in place as a game variation (only a single instruction to handle their appearance, so it would be simple enough to throw into the console switch routine). Makes much more sense as an "easy"/"difficult" selection.

Lord knows, the 'Game Select Matrix' at the end of each game manual didn't need any more complications.

[supercat]

Not really. For early games, it was common to have a list of options to pick from (so that they could advertise the number of game variations on the box). Because the omission of UFO's causes the game to be MUCH easier, it was probably reassigned to the game difficulties instead after already in place as a game variation (only a single instruction to handle their appearance, so it would be simple enough to throw into the console switch routine). Makes much more sense as an "easy"/"difficult" selection.

 

I disagree with Atari's decision here. Having the difficulty switches control the style of asteroids would have made more sense and having game numbers select UFOs would have made more sense than vice versa. It would make more sense for two people of different skill levels to play with different asteroid settings than for one to play UFOs on and the other UFOs off.

 

In considering the issue, though, it's worth noting that when Asteroids came out, the 2600 featured difficulty switches on the front panel. I think the four-switch designs are icky.

[Math You]

Set difficulty switches to A!

 

Ahem That's a good idea! Thanks.

[deadmeow]

The game difficulty switches seem to have been phased out eventually in later games. I believe they are a carry over from the difficulty switches on the Pong games, which had difficulty switches which made your paddle smaller.

[Urchlay]

The game difficulty switches seem to have been phased out eventually in later games. I believe they are a carry over from the difficulty switches on the Pong games, which had difficulty switches which made your paddle smaller.

 

Probably so. Originally, the 2600 was designed to play 2K and 4K games, which doesn't give the programmer a lot of room to write a user interface to allow the player to choose difficulty options in software (e.g. a menu or menu tree you navigate with the joystick). Same reason that the "game select matrix" was in the manual instead of onscreen.