OVERVIEW
 
The 7800 version of Asteroids is what you say is an advanced version of the game for its time period as better enhanced versions eventually came out on next generation systems to follow. The object of the game is to shoot endless supplies of Asteroids with the occasional enemy flying saucers for extra bonus points until all your lives are lost.
 
GRAPHICS - A-
 
People who have played Asteroids in the arcade are familiar with the use of vector-based graphics but when the game got ported to various systems, the creators used raster graphics for the home console versions. The majority of the ports had the asteroids looking as they did in the arcade with jagged designs to look realistic. Some versions also had them colored hollow or filled in. Asteroids for the Atari 7800 takes things a step further by making it more colorful and the asteroids are shaped like spheres that spin around and even have a little 3D feel to them. In fact, this game was originally supposed to be called 3D Asteroids. Being spherical are the only drawbacks to the asteroids as they don't look jagged like real ones do except maybe Ceres which would have been a planet instead of an asteroid if had not been inside the Asteroid Belt. The enemy saucers are small blue ships that are hard to hit.
 
SOUND - C
 
There is no music in the game. The only sounds you will here are those of your shots, enemy saucers,  and asteroids that get hit by your shots. Other than that, there ain't much to more to say so let's move on to the next section.
 
GAMEPLAY - B+
 
Sure there are endless supplies of asteroids to shoot but do not worry. You will not be doing this all in one sitting.  You start off shooting off a small number of asteroids that split into 2 mediums sized asteroids when shot then the medium asteroids turn into two small asteroids when shot. One more shot and that piece is completely gone. While battling the asteroids, enemy saucers will appear on the screen and shoot at you on its way across the screen. Once all asteroids are cleared out, more asteroids will appear onto the screen and the process repeats again and again and gets tougher each go around. This is a major setback if you die later on in the game. If you happen to die and reappear on the screen where an asteroid is,  you will die again. This is what you might say is the precursor to spawn killing made famous by network multiplayer games except it happened during game play. When your ship or an asteroid goes off the screen, it will reappear on the other side of the screen. Ex: If you go off through the left, you come out through the right and if you go off through the top, you will reappear through the bottom.
 
CONTROLS - B-
 
The controls work fine but it's controlling your ship that can be the real problem. You can turn and shoot with your left and right movements and you can thrust your ship into the direction it is facing but alas there are no brakes. You really have to do a small burst in the opposite direction of where you are drifting to stop yourself from slamming into an asteroid and dying. There is also a hyperspace feature that will warp you into a random spot. I don't know why but for some reason you can sometimes die upon coming out of hyperspace and nothing even touched you at all.
 
REPLAYABILITY - B+
 
If you are looking to play this game to improve your score then go right on ahead. There is really not so much depth to this game than shooting asteroids and admiring the fancy colors of them.
 
OVERALL - B
 
Asteroids has always been fun no matter what platform it was played on. Things did get better from here on out but you can help but admire such a wonderful game this turned out to be and there are other games besides Asteroids that got done a lot of justice when ported to the Atari 7800 like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Joust to name a few. If you want a more arcade feel for the Atari 7800, try out Asteroids Deluxe which is a homebrew game for the system.

Interesting review. It's amazing that one can produce such a "long" review for what looks like a rather small game.

I might just try that game, providing that my keyboard can function properly. It looks interesting!

Azul Fria : This is a good review though I really thinkg that you could have done a bit better with the text/layout combo as it's a bit hard to read. Seeing the grades in letters are a bit hard for me to comprehend as well but it gives the review a unique feel and that's good. The format and length are also great as well so I really like what you did here overall. As for the game, I never played this game but in general I like the series.

janus : Definitely give it a go, man. It's a pretty good version of the classic arcade game.