Game of the Week: Astrosmash for Intellivision

Astrosmash is one of those classic Intellivision games that fans will always remember. At first Astrosmash seems somewhat like Space Invaders; after all, you're controlling a cannon moving across the bottom of the screen while shooting at objects higher on the screen. But the resemblance ends there. In Astrosmash, the player's cannon not only shoots at alien spaceships, but also has to shoot at meteors falling from the sky, spinning objects in the sky and yes, the alien spaceships.

In a way, Astrosmash was sort of a mix of Space Invaders and Asteroids. Funny enough, Astrosmash started off as the Intellivision rip-off of Asteroids, but the creators of the game decided upon a game that was more different. Why did they do that? Well, potentially to avoid any legal hassles with Atari, the owners of Asteroids. But also because they found Astrosmash to be more fun than the original Asteroids clone they'd made.

And boy am I glad they went with Astrosmash as it is, because it's a fantastic game. Besides, for the Intellivision there was eventually the Space Hawk game, and it was quite a bit like Asteroids in many respects.

Despite looking to be a relatively simple game, Asteroids had some unique properties. For one, as the player progressed in the game, it got harder. Okay, that's not so special. Lots of games do that. But few games allow for the game itself to actually get easier if the player isn't doing so well. Guess what? Astrosmash does that. Cool!

Also, there's a hidden game within the Astrosmash cartridge. What is it? It's the original Asteroids clone game that Intellivision never used. How do you get it? Well, it's quite difficult and rarely can you get to it on purpose. Basically, sometimes when one hits the Reset button on an Intellivision, there is a bit of a blip or glitch. Sometimes, just every once in a while, when doing this for Astrosmash, that other game will appear. It's almost impossible to do this, however, so good luck trying to get to it.