Astro Wars was an electronic table-top video game made in Great Britain by Grandstand in 1981. It was sold in Japan under the name ‘Super Galaxian’. There are two versions of Astro Wars, an earlier version had the Astro Wars motif printed in red and the later version printed in white.
The game runs on six volts DC and can be powered by a low voltage adapter or four ‘C’ type batteries. The display was based on VFD technology allowing bright, multicoloured in-game elements at the cost of a relatively small screen. The screen was slightly magnified to improve gameplay.
Astro Wars Gameplay
Astro Wars was a shoot ’em up game that involved four phases of dodging enemy fire and shooting back at squadrons of alien command ships, warships and fighters. Individual enemy ships can descend the the screen and attack the player. It also included a docking challenge for an additional bonus point.
The game was similar to other arcade games at the time such as Gorf and Galaxians, in that the player controls a ship at the bottom of the screen and fires up at rows of ships. The controls were very simple, it featured a tiny metal joystick to move left and right and a single fire button.
The four skill levels to Astro Wars were:
- Level 1 – Alien fighters attack one at a time
- Level 2 – Alien fighters attack one at a time but combat speed is faster
- Level 3 – Alien fighters attack two at a time
- Level 4 – Alien fighters attack two at a time but combat speed is faster
The game would end when the player had lost all five ships or the player had reached 9,999 points. If the player did manage to reach 9999 points then an electronic victory tune was played. However, the chances of reaching 9999 points was fairly slim. As the game began to speed up it would become fairly difficult and most people would have lost all their lives long before they reached that score.
This video below shows you briefly how Astro Wars was played.