RSS
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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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!
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
April 9th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
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..).
April 6th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
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.
April 7th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
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 ?
April 7th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
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.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
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.
June 15th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
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!
June 15th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
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
July 19th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
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!
July 19th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
You and your Dad have good taste Elliott. Out of interest, who’s got the highest score at the moment? You or Dad?