Considering that the original Asteroids just consisted of a simple black background with a white outline, it’s a very impressive feat that the N64 version of the game manages to look worse. The background is a dark and generic starfield, there’s a planet in the corner, and as the asteroids are “realistic”, it’s often difficult to spot them against the background, especially once they get smaller.

Asteroids Hyper 64 uses the same throttle forward and spin around as the original, as you blast asteroids into smaller chunks until they’re completely destroyed. This adds some simple power ups, as well as new asteroids types which, despite having abilities like being able to regenerate, you’ll be very glad as you can actually see them clearly.

It really doesn’t provide as much variety and new additions as Space Invaders does, and feels more like a side mode of a game, rather than its own complete game. It gets dull very quickly. You can unlock the original Asteroids, which is by far the best part of this game.

Poor

Whilst this might bring back pleasant childhood memories of a fag-burnt Clacton-on-Sea arcade machine, Asteroids Hyper 64 is, in reality, a bit of a waste of time.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #38. Review Score: 53%

Remake or remaster?

Not for this version, although I think Asteroids deserves it’s own type of game like “Pac-Man: Championship Edition”, a bit closer to the original game than Asteroids: Recharged is.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Asteroids Hyper 64