Asteroids Hyper 64 review (Nintendo 64)

As for the music, there really isn't any. There's one bizarre track that plays at the main menu, but there is absolutely no in-game music. All you hear are the high-pitched blip sounds of your ship firing at asteroids, generic explosion sounds, and some miscellaneous sounds when you acquire various power-ups. Again, this is very uninspired and seems to show a clear lack of effort on the part of developer Syrox. It's possible Syrox didn't feel that any in-game music was necessary, but it would've helped break up the monotony that is the gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, as you've probably ascertained at this point, there are no significant differences between Asteroids Hyper 64's gameplay and that of the classic Asteroids we all know and some of us love. Asteroids Hyper 64 contains a slew of additions to the tried and true original - all of which are extremely superfluous. There are new types of asteroids to blow up, space debris, flaming comets, and a multitude of enemy ships to contend with. Nevertheless, you still only move about a small area, and all you do is shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. As for new weapons, there are homing missiles, mines, a defense satellite (known as a GunSat), and a spinning laser attack (called Armageddon). Six different zones, each of which contains quite a few stages, are included as well. The stages are ultimately no more than words on the screen since all advancing from one stage to the next entails is destroying everything. So, if you're on stage one in zone one and you blow everything up, a brownish hole will appear in the middle of the screen and swallow up your ship. That's it. There were more interesting tweaks to the classic Asteroids formula in the 1987 pseudosequel, Blasteroids. For those die-hard Asteroids junkies out there, the classic version of Asteroids has been included as a hidden bonus. Simply destroy the green object on the 15th level of the first zone and voila, you can play classic Asteroids.

Unless you really, really love Asteroids you'd probably do best by passing Asteroids Hyper 64 up and spending your money on something a little less average. It's not that there's anything glaringly wrong with the game, it's just that it doesn't add enough in the way of substantive features to make it a worthwhile purchase. The other factor that really works against it is that the extremely basic Asteroids formula hasn't aged too well. The days when mashing one button and flying around in circles was entertaining have gone and likely won't return. Buy Asteroids Hyper 64 if you really, really adore the classic Asteroids, but all others are advised to either rent it or forget about it entirely.