Uploaded April 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
One of Atari's 1981 "Dear Atari Anonymous" series of commercials. This one features the Asteroids game. The Martian father is played by veteran TV character actor Steve Vinovich.
Port of Atari's most popular coin-op game (by Ed Logg). It was programmed by Brad Stewart and Bob Smith and added several new features, such as shields (which was first seen in the arcade's Asteroids Deluxe) and the ability to flip your ship 180 degrees. 2 versions exist - the original version doesn't have a copyright screen and a later release does, although it's not known if the game itself differs. Early magazine and catalog pictures showed reserve ships at the top of the screen (like the arcade) - the code to display them is in the program, but was made inactive. Brad Stewart feels it was disabled as a result of him and Bob Smith trying to squeeze the cart down to 4K, and he forgot to enable it when he was given 8K. Both Brad and Bob felt getting the game down to 4K would have been possible, had Atari given them enough time. From Brad, "My recollection is that the code was still about 300 or so bytes over the 4K limit. That was a lot. Atari wanted the cartridge finished as soon as possible, and we had already spent a couple of weeks trying to squeeze it down. It would have taken a lot of time to shrink the code by that many bytes. There was no copyright screen in my version. I was never consulted about this, and I don't know who added the copyright." The colorful asteroids earned the game the nickname "Sherbet Shoot". An article in the 1st issue of Electronic Games (pg. 14) claims a 4K version was shown a year before to a select few, and it received such a "frosty reception" that Atari decided to start over, and noted the development of 8K bank-switching was the result (which is complete bunk. 8K bank-switching was developed 2 years prior, for Video Chess). The delay might explain why the manual had a 1979 copyright date.
See my interview with VCS Asteroids programmer Brad Stewart at:
ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/brad_stewart/interview_brad_stewart.html/interview_brad_stewart.html
One of Atari's 1981 "Dear Atari Anonymous" series of commercials. This one features the Asteroids game. The Martian father is played by veteran TV character actor Steve Vinovich.
Port of Atari's most popular coin-op game (by Ed Logg). It was programmed by Brad Stewart and Bob Smith and added several new features, such as shields (which was first seen in the arcade's Asteroids Deluxe) and the ability to flip your ship 180 degrees. 2 versions exist - the original version doesn't have a copyright screen and a later release does, although it's not known if the game itself differs. Early magazine and catalog pictures showed reserve ships at the top of the screen (like the arcade) - the code to display them is in the program, but was made inactive. Brad Stewart feels it was disabled as a result of him and Bob Smith trying to squeeze the cart down to 4K, and he forgot to enable it when he was given 8K. Both Brad and Bob felt getting the game down to 4K would have been possible, had Atari given them enough time. From Brad, "My recollection is that the code was still about 300 or so bytes over the 4K limit. That was a lot. Atari wanted the cartridge finished as soon as possible, and we had already spent a couple of weeks trying to squeeze it down. It would have taken a lot of time to shrink the code by that many bytes. There was no copyright screen in my version. I was never consulted about this, and I don't know who added the copyright." The colorful asteroids earned the game the nickname "Sherbet Shoot". An article in the 1st issue of Electronic Games (pg. 14) claims a 4K version was shown a year before to a select few, and it received such a "frosty reception" that Atari decided to start over, and noted the development of 8K bank-switching was the result (which is complete bunk. 8K bank-switching was developed 2 years prior, for Video Chess). The delay might explain why the manual had a 1979 copyright date.
See my interview with VCS Asteroids programmer Brad Stewart at:
ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/brad_stewart/interview_brad_stewart.html/interview_brad_stewart.html
