Name: Mission: Asteroid
Alternative title: Hi-Res Adventure #0 - Mission: Asteroid
Platform: Atari 800
Region: USA
Media: Disk
Controller: Keyboard
Genre: Adventure - Graphic - Text
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1982
Developer: Yosemite Software Products
Publisher: Sierra On-LIne
Players: 1
Programmer: Chris Iden
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In this game, you play an astronaut who is asked by Mission Control to send a rocket up to an asteroid and blow it up before it reaches Earth. The trouble is: you will be unable to find the asteroid without a flight plan. This early adventure game is very short, and, in order to accomplish the task, the game requires you to enter one- or two-word commands to perform various actions. The game may be saved to a floppy disk at any point in the game.

Trivia:

Concluding a review, Carl Muckenhoupt makes a very interesting investigation of the game's underlying premise and the game's failure to engage it rigorously:

"Of course, no analysis of a work of asteroid-impact fiction would be complete without criticism of the physics involved. Blowing up an asteroid doesn’t make the matter disappear. It just breaks it into smaller pieces and starts them moving away from each other. If it’s mere hours away from Earth when blown up, as in this game, will the chunks be moving apart fast enough for most of them to miss the Earth entirely? Or will you just wind up 'shooting yourself with a shotgun instead of a rifle', as one astronomer put it? Mission Asteroid takes the pessimistic view here, and I can only assume it does so inadvertently. If you succeed in your mission, you get a 'congratulations and thank you for playing' message, but the game doesn’t halt. You can keep on playing if you like, even though there’s nothing left to do. And if you do, the time limit is still active. A few turns after I won, the asteroid impact happened anyway."

This game actually was the third Hi-Res Adventure after #1 (Mystery House) and #2 (The Wizard and the Princess). It was numbered #0 as it was created as an beginner level introduction for the Hi-Res Adventure series, being smaller and featuring easier puzzles.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-8-bit/hi-res-adventure-0-mission-asteroid/trivia
