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GAMES OF MY YEARS: ASTRO WARS by Mr Biffo

31/12/2015

21 Comments

 
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Have you been to Teddington?

As a youth, the words "We are going to Teddington" would instil in me the sort of enthusiastic response one typically reserves for a colonoscopy, or being locked in a room with four Ainsley Harriotts all competing for the same job.

When told that we were going to Teddington, I knew that what lay ahead would be a series of seemingly endless, tooth-grinding hours, spent at the house of my dad's cousin and her family, as I slowly suffocated in a sea of vapid adult conversation. 

Those evenings would feel like they stretched on for weeks. And those weeks would become months, and those months would become years, and yet - while my spirit perished beneath the weight of the blather - I would never die. I was cursed to experience every painful second as they continued their glacial crawl towards infinity, soundtracked by the idle drone about wallpaper, and petrol prices, and football.

​This being the years before smartphones, Kindles, or even Game Boys, I'd just sit there, an afterthought in the corner, praying for a plastic bag to thumb down my oesophagus.

​One time I was given a Matchbox roadroller to play with. I must've been ten or eleven years old; I defy any ten year-old to get four-to-six hours play out of a toy car without wanting to bludgeon themselves to death with it.

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PETER THE PUNK
My dad's cousin's youngest son, Peter, was a punk, albeit a mostly benign one.

He had the boiler suit, braces, hair and piercings - back in the day when dressing in such a way seemed genuinely counter-cultural - but he had little of the spirit.

I remember him once lolling around on the sofa complaining of a bad cold, while his mother nursed him like a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest (into a skip full of safety pins, presumably).


One time, however, going to Teddington wasn't the low point of my year. One time, Peter the Punk had a new toy: Astro Wars.


PLUG-IN BABIES
Grandstand was a UK and New Zealand-based importer of electronic games. It started out distributing a couple of plug-in TV consoles with built-in games, before graduating to some long-forgotten cartridge-based systems. 


In the early-80s, Grandstand carved out something of a niche for itself with electronic tabletop games, most of which did a semi-fair job of offering an arcade-like experience in miniature. 

Munch Man - a relabelled version of Tomy's Pac Man - took the familiar maze gameplay and squashed into a less-successful letterbox format. Likewise, its interpretation of the arcade hit Scramble was perhaps overreaching.


Astro Wars - originally sold in Japan by Epoch, under the name Super Galaxian - is where the company finally backed the right horse. Maybe because the format it was based on - the vertical shoot 'em up - was less ambitious, Astro Wars nailed it.

​Indeed, Astro Wars, to my ten year-old mind, was a proper arcade game; the screen, the tiny joypad, the fire button... the colours, the noises... I mean, as with most games of the day, it wasn't actually very good, but at least it was more playable than of its peers. And it felt like the real thing.

It became one of the few non-Star Wars things I ever coveted. I badgered my parents for one, and at Christmas 1981 - doubtless convinced by the fact I'd at last returned from Teddington in a less-than-suicidal mood - they caved.

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RETRO GAMER
And as with most games of my formative years, the reasons why I loved Astro Wars were about more than the game itself.

I mean, you can buy it now for iOS, and while it does a decent job of recreating the gameplay, the sounds, and the visuals - it's basically, a stuttering, epileptic version of Galaxians - it can't recreate the hardware.

I had a few handheld, pre-Game Boy games growing up, but Astro Wars is the only one I've ever bothered buying again; I picked up a pristine one on eBay a few years back, and that love is still there. In fact, tellingly, it's the only original retro gaming hardware I own. I've never sought out a Spectrum, or Atari ST, or SNES.


There's just something mysterious about its huge, circular lens, which magnified and subtly distorted its LED backdrop. It feels as much like apparatus in some Jack Kirby fantasy science experiment as it does a video game. My love of it was tactile; you can't replicate that with software, any more than you can expect a ten year old to entertain himself with a toy car for six hours.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
A ROUND TUIT by Mr Biffo
HAVE PITY FOR THE GAMES CRITICS by Mr Biffo
VIDEO GAMES: A PRIMAL INSTINCT by Mr Biffo

21 Comments
Hello
31/12/2015 02:10:11 pm

That's not a screenshot of Astro Wars, it's Galaxy Invader, the one with the huge red fire button.

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Mr Biffo
31/12/2015 02:34:59 pm

I have changed it now. Consequently... you are the only big red button around here.

(PS. Thanking).

Reply
Bernard Crivvens
31/12/2015 03:33:57 pm

Wow, I'd completely excised this from my memory somehow, but I used to have one of these too! I'm going to look for it RIGHT NOW. ISTR the fire button had gone wonky though :/

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Super Bad Advice
31/12/2015 05:29:33 pm

I had Munch Man - it was actually alright from what I remember, though went through batteries like a tramp through an accidentally unlocked branch of Oddbins. Batteries were to do for my one as well, as they leaked in it - leading me to mistakenly ask my mum why she had 'poured gravy in the bottom of my pac man game'.

Reply
DrDagless
31/12/2015 09:17:20 pm

I had one of these when I was a little 'un. I loved it, although I was pretty rubbish at it. It really looked and felt the part. I have no idea where it is now though. Sigh.

For some reason at that age I was much more interested in a silly Captain Scarlet handheld game I had. You know the type: tiny little monochrome LCD game with barely any graphics to speak of and the audio capabilities of a toaster.

Reply
Stay
1/1/2016 03:59:39 pm

I always wanted Astro Wars but Father Christmas delivered me Scramble. The next year was better when he delivered Donkey Kong Jnr Game and Watch.

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Kelvin Green link
1/1/2016 04:43:03 pm

I am sure I didn't own this, but I remember playing on it; a friend must have had one.

I did have the Mario's Bottle Factory Game and Watch. It smelled odd; if you could describe a smell as "yellow-brown", that's what it was.

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Hoboerotica
1/1/2016 06:05:08 pm

How can you say such a thing about the one man personality machine that is Ainsley?

Didn't you see him on Strictly????

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Mr Biffo
2/1/2016 12:57:54 pm

Of course I didn't.

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Hoboerotica
2/1/2016 05:05:26 pm

He was hilarious! He was so full of personality that he had to leave the show as he made all other contestants look like bray dullards.

Chris
1/1/2016 10:26:44 pm

Yes I have been to Teddington.

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Jordan
2/1/2016 02:01:03 pm

Me too!!!!!

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Mr Biffo
2/1/2016 05:27:00 pm

Sickos...

Penyrolewen
1/1/2016 11:10:20 pm

Word up.
Yeah, I'm with you Biffshanka (my guru), it's summat to do with the depth you feel when peering into (and that's the thing, it's 'into' not 'at') the screen. It nailed that early arcade machine vibe. Munch man had it, scramble had it but Astro wars worked best. I never had any of them (sob) but played them all on more affluent friends' hardware.

Respec', boooooooy!

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Frank Chickens
2/1/2016 12:53:47 pm

I had the handheld version of Scramble when I was growing up and loved it. Since the hardware couldn't do the asteroid level they replaced it with a maze section which I thought was clever and imaginative workaround.

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Jabberwoc link
2/1/2016 02:12:32 pm

The chromatic aberrations caused by the lens were very pleasing as you have pointed out here. Oh, Mr Biffo, you ARE great.

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Porridgepants
3/1/2016 05:09:35 pm

One of my favourite childhood memories was when I received Astro Wars on Christmas morning. Disappointment soon followed when the giant D size batteries ran out only two hours later. Where were the 24 hour convenience stores in the late 70's? Had to wait till 27th Dec (an eternity) before I could play again

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Dowser
7/1/2016 09:21:18 am

Had a go of one of these the other week when I took dowser Jr and his buddies to the national videogame museum in Nottingham. It was better than I remembered. It really belts out the noise which I'd forgotten and was actually surprisingly playable with plenty of different types of stages. They also had a Firefox handheld which I used to own but that wasn't as good as I remembered even though it did nick the star wars tunes.

It was ranning all day as well. Warez rule.

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Vincent link
13/9/2016 12:54:22 pm

I saw the picture of the game in question, and my brain immediately unlocked the 'start game' sound which had been long forgotten. Takes me back (in a good way) and I thank you for that Mr B.

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darbotron link
5/1/2017 11:36:49 pm

Astro Wars (or Galaxy II as mine was called cos we got it in the US of States on holiday) was the 2nd computer game my family had (the 1st being 'juggler' an american version of the nintendo and the 1st completed - I suspect only the psychological resilience of a 6 year old nerd in the 1980s gave me the power to do it. Amazing game - probably responsible for me working in the video game industry :)

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liana link
27/10/2022 03:44:19 am

thanks for info

Reply



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