Re: Astreoids Deluxe?

"This doesn't seem to match the behavior of *my* Ast. Deluxe (the saucers seem to get
more accurate earlier than 60,000 points), but it could just be that you get more
small saucers...
"

which version of the proms do you have (single or repeat shot)?
Atari came out with a couple of revs of the game.

"The read-only memories in this kit contain a new program that
 changes the Asteroids Deluxe game play. To attract new players,
 the game play is now operator-adjustable to be either easy for
 approximately the first 30,000 points, or hard throughout the
 game.
 The technical manual describes the game play correctly if the
 game PCB option switch at R5 is set to "hard". If you set the
 switch to "easy", then the following game-play changes happen:
 
 * Four large asteroids begin the game. The second wave of
   asteroids begins with five, and the sebsequent waves start
   with six through nine large asteroids. In addition, the
   asteroids move much more slowly across the screen. (If
   the option switch is set to "hard", the waves begin with
   six to nine large asteroids)

 * The large ships ("death stars") when shot will break up into
   three slowly-moving diamonds. (If the option switch is set
   to hard, the diamonds would immediately begin chasing the
   player's spaceship at high speed)

 After installing these five ROMs, we recommend you set your
 game to easy game play, To do so, refer to the figure that
 follows. You should note also that the self-test now displays
 an additional 0 or 1 to represent the game difficulty selection.

$ = suggested settings

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
                              on on english $
                              on off german
                              off on french
                              off off spanish
                    on on 2 ships
                    on off 3 ships $
                    off on 4 ships
                    off off 5 ships
                on 1 play minimum $
                off 2 play minimum
          on easier play for first 30,000 pts $
          off hard game play throughout game
on on bonus ship every 10,000 points $
on off 15,000
off on 15,000
off off no bonus ^oops, middle should be 12000
Received on Tue Feb 23 19:20:05 1999