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Back in the early 1980’s the Nintendo GameBoy was yet to be invented and so if you wanted a portable video game you had to go for one of those single game systems which used LCD or LED displays that had all the possible graphical combinations that the game required built into them.
Of course, portability was normally a bit of a stretch on some of these games, as they were certainly too big to fit in your pocket, and normally required four of those big chunky batteries to power them, which weighed the entire thing down somewhat.
Some of these games were pretty naff it has to be said, but some of the better ones were brought to the UK courtesy of electronics company Grandstand. Â Whilst most of their games were actually sold under license from other companies, they did at least pick the cream of the crop for their line up. Â I’ve written before about the excellent Munchman game that was in the Grandstand range, but the other top game from them was Astro Wars.
As it’s name probably suggests Astro Wars was a Galaxians clone and a very good one too, given the limitations of the technology available.  It used an LED display which displayed the different elements such as the player ship and the aliens in different colours, which was quite unusual at the time as most games were generally monochrome.
You controlled your ship with a little metal joystick that only went left and right, and hit a big black button to fire missiles at the aliens. Â The display was very tall and thin, meaning that there was only room for five aliens across the display, and therefore only five positions for your ship to occupy when dodging the enemy bullets. Â The aliens also dive bombed your ship so you had to avoid them as well.
Your score was displayed at the top of the display as a four digit number, meaning there was a top score of 9999, although the chances of you achieving this score were fairly minimal as the game got quite hard when it started to speed up.
Want to see the game in action? Â The clip below shows it running, although in trying to demonstrate everything about the game in only a minute there is rather a lot of unnecessary camera movement!
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The display used in Astro Wars units is not LED. It is fluorescent.
While LCD displays were quite common back then, LEDs were hardly ever used (except for power indicator lights and the odd 7-segment number display..).
I remember this was a must have Christmas present in 81 and 82. I asked my parents for one but they bought me a different table top machine. As it happens, the one they bought me was brilliant, but I can’t remember the name of it. It was better than the Astro Wars machine! The levels were more varied and kept your interest. I loved it. Don’t know whatever happened to it.
That was great – I am 42 now and remember playing this game back in about 1982, God knows what happened to it, would be worth a few bob now ?
I stupidly turned down Astro Wars for Christmas one year in favour of another electronic game. It was called Space Laser Fight (I think) and had two little space men zapping each other with lasers. Sounded good, but it was only really any good as a two player game.
Had one of these back in the early 80’s, but have no idea what happened to it … stumbled across on whilst poking around on eBay and parting with £15 didn’t come into question for a nostalgic reminder of my youth. Mint condition and boxed, they fetch more like £75.
Ahh now this was a great table top game!
After around ’83 they were on the wane as home computers like the ZX spectrum and Commodore 64 took over as gaming machines.
Astro Wars is a total classic though!
A friend of mine had this and when I saw it I also had to have it. Luckily, Christmas (or birthday) was just around the corner and my parents duly obliged.
This was a great game and I can proudly boast that I did complete all 4 levels, though the final level (2 aliens at double speed) took a long time to get through. The only minor thing was, like all games like this with limited processing power, there was a bit of predictability in the way the aliens came down, so with a bit of playing time, you could get used to this and rack up those high scores.
Sadly, at the time, I also had a thing about taking things apart. I did this one day to my Astro Wars and couldn’t quite get the joystick to work properly after that. A lesson to us all
Hi there, just found my Dad’s Astro Wars game and it’s so addictive(despite the annoying tune)! Shame there’s only one game but nonetheless i’m enjoying the challange Vs my 44yr old dad!
You and your Dad have good taste Elliott. Out of interest, who’s got the highest score at the moment? You or Dad?
hello people, i had astro wars as a kid, and to my suprise my parents have just dug it out of the loft, just an couple of hours ago, unfortunately it dose nt seem to work, i can hear something but no screen, can anyone help!
I treated myself to this off ebay last year. It came boxed with all intstructions – just like the one I had when I was eight!
I just found mine, it still works.
Firstly, I’ve just found this website and it looks great. I will continue to check it out once I’ve written this.
A couple of hours ago, I thought “has my dad still got his Astro Wars game?”. I used to play this when I was younger and absolutely loved it. We then got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum when I was 4 years old (still have that too), so the Astro Wars game went back in it’s box and sat in the cupboard untill today when I dug it out.
I plugged in a transformer and it burst into life. I’ve just spent the last half an hour glued to it lol. One thing I do remember is, when I was little, I used to put my face right up against the screen. Doing this made me think I was in space destroying aliens for real. Unfortunately it no longer feels like that as my face and head have got alot bigger since 1982… happy days lol
I shall now take it down to a mates house this evening as we are having a retro gaming night on his Commodore & Atari 2600 ‘Woody’ 😀
Bring back the 80’s!
Hi Jimbob, hope you enjoy browsing around the site.
I love your recollection of pushing your face right up against the screen. I guess you might be able to reproduce the effect now (and reliving another childhood memory at the same time) by hiding under the bed clothes and playing Astro Wars that way.
Have you tried booting up the old Speccy?
guess what! i’v just found my old astro wars game in the loft and it still works my 11 and 12 year old are having loads of fun. does any one know how much they are worth now i would’nt think there are many left working now[is there]
Sadly not as much as you might think sandie. A quick search on eBay reveals several of them going for around 5 to 25 pounds depending on condition and whether they are boxed or not.
Still, you don’t want to be selling it, do you? 😉
Had this one . Just had to mention wwhen you got past 9999, the game
stopped and the word ‘Good’ was spelt out instead.
The tunnel vision effect replicated the feel of the coin-ops that sprung
up in every chip shop and cafe at the time.
That’s a cool bit of info Steve. I didn’t know about the maximum score thing. Thanks!
fond memories of this
I remember once I must have pressed a certain combination and discovered a game within the game…maybe it was some kind of ‘bug’ but I remember it vividly…
George
After a huge clear out in my parents’ loft in London, I had the most devine exciting feeling when I came across this game that kept me entertained for hours when I was a child…It didn’t work at first, (my fault I kept the batteries in it over the years and it had leaked, rusting the springs) but after a clean up and use of aluminum foil inbetween the batteries it is as good as new…My favourite part is the docking – the ship divides and the top section shots up to the top of the screen, then it falls back down (with a countdown) and you have to judge and time it perfectly to dock safely on the bottom part of your ship…If successful you win those points from your countdown, if you lose, you get 0!…Superb game
Kaz
That was smart thinking using the tin foil to get around the rusted springs in the battery compartment. Glad you managed to get this classic old game going again.
I loved this game. When I had it for Christmas when I was about 8 years old, a while before I got a ZX Spectrum, it seemed so advanced compared to my Binatone machine.
I spent hours playing it and finished it eventually after working out the pattern of the aliens. Great times. Unfortunately, I had the same taking things apart fixation as Fletch above, and it didn’t survive me taking a screwdriver to it.
I did the same thing to my calculator watch too.
I think it said GooD when you landed the top part if your ship in the moving base, as the base scrolled across bottom of the screen on the in-between levels.
That sounds vaguely familiar. Oh the joys of 7 segment displays.
THE WORD “GOOD” DID USED TO COME UP AFTER CLOCKING THE TOP SCORE, HAD HOURS AND HOURS OF FUN BATTERING THIS GAME, ANOTHER ONE I REMEMBER VERY VIVIDLY WAS GRANDSTANDS BMX FLYER THIS HANDHELD LCD GAME CAME LITERALLY EVERYWHERE WITH ME AND WAS ONLY LEFT BEHIND WHEN I GOT THE ZX 81 …..GOOD TIMES, GOOD GAMES.
[…] hit a small white dot with a longer white line) then a few handhelds which reached their zenith in Astro Wars. The fact that I’ve bothered to find an image and that it fills me with a little nostalgia […]
I remember shouting out loud with a broken voice at receiving this on something like my 8th birthday (no doubt after lots of nagging!). No home computer then in 1982 for me, so this was the zenith. It was wrapped as a prezzie and left in my room, and I was SO HAPPY when I ripped it open to find I ACTUALLY had one for my birthday…
I’ve still got it (minus the box) and it still works- so glad my parents kept it in the loft, but looking back I wish it was complete with everything.
I used to use rechargeable batteries so never had the leak problems that others have had (Dad being price concious there!) as they needed charging every couple of hours (1.2 volts rather than 1.5), although I eventually had a mains charger so it wasn’t a problem (anyone remember the four-pronged outputs from those where you could select the voltage 3v – 12v?- very dangerours to a minor in terms of overloading your expensive toy!).
I managed to beat the 9999 and got the GooD message- it was literally thrilling to feel a master of it. I also used to play it muted by the duvet at night by pressing my head against it and playing in the dark. Used to do that with something called “PacMan2″ too, but can’t find much info about that one (it was blue, not the Grandstand Munchman). If anjyone know what I mean I’d be grateful of any further info (now that DID die on me- boo!).
Astro Wars represents EXACTLY my childhood, and to know I still have the original I played 25 years ago still me a happy chappy!
The pacman2 was made by Entex and has a very sophisticated screen. These regularly appear on ebay, as low as £6.00 loose to about £25 boxed, with poly inserts, instructions etc. Astro Wars was a top game no doubt about it. I have two boxed just in case one blows up. Another rock hard game though by Grandstand (and Tomy) was Scramble (otherwise known as Alien Attack) where you had to blast the cubes out the way at the end to kill the boss, very very frustrating.
Here’s a link to a YouTube clip of the Pacman 2, which I have to admit I don’t remember at all, but it looks like it was pretty cool – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU2_O0rMWgE&feature=related
I do remember the Grandstand version of Scramble though, but I never played it. I did play the original arcade version though, and that too was pretty darn difficult.
i have this game and still boxed i show my children what it was like bk in the 80’s and they are like omg what a load ov rubbish hahaha but in the days of my childhood it was awesome i’ve also got the old orange atari with the paddles lol now that is what i call retro lol great year great times the best ever
[…] my ZX81 and Spectrum from the loft and put them on display in my office/gather dust, next to my Astro Wars, Slinky and […]
Well, as a girl (now a woman) I suppose I was in the minority as girls tended not to be too bothered with electronic/computer games.
I was lucky enough to have: Grandstand’s Astro Wars, Munchman (mum was addicted to it), Firefox F-7, and one I can’t seem to find anywhere by Hanes/Epoch called Dracula (In a yellow case. I can see US/Japanese versions but not the UK one I had). Even had a Nintendo double-screen LCD Mario Brothers.
Like most of you, they were pushed by the wayside once I got a ZX Spectrum (48K Plus, in my case) but I did master all of them (apart from Munchman which was kinda unlimited score..eventually it would do a weird thing on the display, 01 or something, once you got beyond 9999?).
Lots of happy memories of these games, and of course, you couldn’t play most of them on the quiet on Xmas morning without waking the whole house! (apart from Firefox, which had a volume control On/Off).
*Woops that should be “Hales” re Dracula. http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Epoch/Epoch-Dracula.jpg For anyone who cares: “Hales seems to have been another Grandstand company and the address given on HALES game boxes and instructions is the Grandstand address.”
The Japanese version “Dracula House” is currently going for silly money on ebay mint!
[…] loft and put them on display in my office/to gather dust, next to anothe bit of old technology, an Astro Wars, Slinky and […]
I have a never used still boxed in pristine condition Astro Wars hand held games console by Grandstand. Anyone know how much this is likely worth. reason for condition is that my fists one was played to death and was later given away by accident to a jumble sale. That same year I seen one in a shop and decided to buy it with the intension of playing it again. I then put it away in a cupboard and it has followed me around from loft to loft for the last 30 plus years.
It’s actually a vacuum-fluorescent, VFD display. Not LED. Same type often used in video recorders and hifi systems. If uses a glass bubble with a vacuum, and electrodes that emit electrons, causing chemicals to fluoresce. Sort-of a bit like how neon lights work.
It’s handy because chemicals are available to give lots of different colours. Where LEDs were only available in red, green, and yellow, up until the 1990s. Then blue LEDs were invented, but they were dim and cost 50x the price of the other colours.
In the 1990s some Japanese genius invented high-efficiency cheap blue LEDs, then everything changed. That also allowed white LEDs to be made by adding phosphors in front of the blue light. Which allowed LED light bulbs, torches, and car headlights. Which are now completely all over the place! And also the backlights for very flat LCD TVs, light source for tiny portable video projectors, and loads of other things.
The bloke got, I think, a Nobel prize in some science category. The only downside is the horrible ugly little blue LEDs that infest cheap Chinese electronic stuff. Sometimes I’d like to see a red one again, or green even.
Anyway: VFD. Loads of games from that era used them.
Thank you for the correction Greenaum. I can honestly say I’ve never heard of a VFD before, but I can see from your description of how they work that these games machines would have used such a display. They always had a sort of a weird strobing feel to them, just like a neon light has, whereas LED tend to emit a more consistent light.