There was a Gamers exhibition that went through Melbourne and Wellington where you could play older versions of Pong and Asteroids, among tons and tons of other games old and new.
One of the amazing things about retro arcade games like Asteroids was just how clear and precise all those vector graphics were. When they're being drawn with analog circuitry with those perfect darks and brights, you get a really immersive world from a very simple concept. It was really amazing.
To be clear, the Asteroids era arcade units had microprocessors (Atari coin-op engineers tended to use 6502s then), in addition to a boardful of glorious digital and analog stuff to drive the vector display.
One of the amazing things about retro arcade games like Asteroids was just how clear and precise all those vector graphics were. When they're being drawn with analog circuitry with those perfect darks and brights, you get a really immersive world from a very simple concept. It was really amazing.