Asteroids is an arcade space shooter released in November 1979. The player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The objective of the game is to destroy both, asteroids and saucers. The triangular ship can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. Once the ship begins moving in a direction, it will continue in that direction for a time without player intervention unless the player applies thrust in a different direction. The ship eventually comes to a stop when not thrusting. The player can also send the ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen, at the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid.
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For some reason, Asteroids really clicks with me. Something about the vector graphics, the clunky controls, it all just feels really nice.
It's a shame that the most fun part of this--the movement--is something that you really only should do if you can't shoot something down in time. It's so slippery and difficult to control that it's better to just put all your focus into aiming at things, but when you do end up moving it makes the game so much more tense and gripping.
That's not to say that this isn't a fairly solid arcade game, and it's definitely way crazier for the time, but you really do just end up kinda sitting in one spot spamming in the vague direction of objects until something comes flying at you and you can't move out of the way in time and die. Space Invaders is definitely the best of these early space shooters, and the audio track from it being so explicitly copied here (but without the accompanying speed-up in gameplay) does kinda make me wish I was just playing that instead.