Asteroids Hyper 64

Imagine the time it took to program something like Donkey Kong 64 or Zelda. All those lines of code, so long that that the final version seemed more like deciphering a strand of human DNA than a means of entertaining gamers for days. Now cast your minds back to the birth of videogaming around 1980 (if you can!), when Space Invaders and Asteroids gobbled the coins in sweaty arcades and cross-channel ferries. Simple entertainment for the punter who wouldn't have known a 3-D polygon if it came up and gave him a six-hour seminar. You see our problem?

Asteroids, a game so basic your granny could play it while emptying her colostomy bag with the other hand, has leapt onto the N64 with more of a whimper than a bang. Developer Syrox has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at it features-wise, naturally. But they had to. At the very least we expected it to be turned into 3-D, with the option of a classic version chucked in for good measure. Or even, with teary nostalgic thanks to Capcom and Atari, bundling it together with several other bygone classics.

Haemorrhoids

How wrong we were. All we're left with is a glorified 2-D 'extravaganza' featuring 50 levels of increasingly difficult – no make that annoying – levels of giant boulder-related mayhem. Hang on a mo, there's a four-player mode too. Whoopee-frickin'-do! Now four players can revel in the thrills of firing a peashooter at lumps of rock randomly floating around an insipid backdrop. You know there's something severely wrong when the loading screens provide more entertainment than the actual game.

To be fair, Asteroids Hyper 64 does exactly what it says on the tin. But will it stick? Unfortunately not, as it's come ten years too late. Perhaps Crave could have churned out a version a decade ago, but this hardly constitutes 64-bit entertainment. And before anyone preaches the gameplay-over-graphics argument, don't bother. The manifold options and nuances squeezed into the game hardly constitute prolonged gameplay value. Let's take a look... Ah yes, there are 15 different types of rock (in colour-coded radioactive varieties) that send your ship's functions haywire, random exploding asteroids, heat seekers and the cloaked variety which disappear and reappear at will. Everything you'd expect from a shoot-'em-up.

Space Debris

The problem lies not in the programming, as that's been achieved with aplomb – everything's smooth and the controls are responsive and tight. It's the simplistic nature of the actual game. For the record, Crave has tried to make the most of a genre that was always going to be an uphill struggle with various modes of play, but even the multiplayer games veer swiftly into the realms of extreme tedium. Throughout the levels 15 different alien types make a nuisance of themselves and there are a number of weapon-enhancing power-ups such as orbiting satellite guns, mines (homing and standard) and smart bombs with which to dispense intergalactic justice. The sad truth is that you lose interest in wiping out more of the same very, very quickly. All in all, then, Asteroids Hyper 64 is a game out of time veiled in a few next generation trimmings that virtually every player, bar simpletons and die-hard fans, will want to avoid.

This one's easy--think of the classic arcade Asteroids, except with fancy 3D graphics. In case you're not familiar with the PS version, this update from Crave and Syrox puts you in control of dinky space craft that must destroy countless numbers of asteroids, enemies, bosses and space debris through some 50 levels. Due in August, it also has a variety of power-ups and co-op and competitive multiplayer modes.