Hack description
Developed by Hal Finney as a port of the Intellivision's [I]Astrosmash[/I], [I]Astroblast[/I] is a space shooter involving using a laser cannon to destroy falling meteors, bombs, and other targets. Avoid the UFO's missiles, split up the big rocks, take out the spinners... all while trying to keep the pace and top your peak score.
The purpose of these [I]Astroblast[/I] hacks is twofold:
1) To remove the ROM's access to the paddles. [I]Astroblast[/I] is the one game designed for the Atari 2600 that permitted both paddle and joystick play, paddle being the better bet for ease of play and higher scores... but not everyone had paddles.
And... with some emulators, the default is to read as if paddles are active, making gameplay difficult on a d-pad or analog stick due to the much higher paddle input object velocity. These hacks effectively eliminate the paddle read and force the joystick input object velocity instead. This makes the game more enjoyable on an Atari Flashback, or a PSP, a DS, a modified Arcade 1up with Odroid/Raspberry Pi...
2) With more joystick-centered gameplay, to enhance the experience when using a joystick or d-pad. (Remember... original [I]Astroblast is optimally played when using paddles, so the Controlled Chaos Mod accommodates for that by being friendlier with scoring penalties, and by giving a lot more tastes of the various difficulty levels, that last difficulty extremely hard to attain and keep up with in the original game with just a joystick.)
The following romhacks are distributed as separate IPS patches, which should each be patched to an original NTSC [I]Astroblast[/I] ROM:
1) Astroblast (Without a Paddle Mod) (2020) (Double Z) (h)
2) Astroblast (Controlled Chaos Mod) (2020) (Double Z) (h)
Note that the Controlled Chaos Mod includes the Without a Paddle Mod in it already.
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