Asteroids

Controls

Left / Right - Rotate ship
Up - Thrust
Space - Fire
H - Hyperspace jump
P - Pause
Enter - Start / Restart

About this game

This is a browser-based recreation of the 1979 Atari Asteroids arcade cabinet. The original used a vector display that drew bright lines on a black screen, giving it a distinctive look that set it apart from the raster-based games of the era. The ship, asteroids, and bullets were all rendered as simple geometric outlines.

This version is built entirely with HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript. No libraries, no frameworks, no images. Every line you see is drawn in real time, just as the original hardware did it. The physics are faithful to the arcade: momentum-based movement, screen wrapping, and asteroids that split into smaller, faster fragments when hit.

More classic arcade games

Space Invaders (1978) | Galaxian (1979)