The Arcade Program Group

While the games in Microsoft Arcade were almost identical to the original Atari games, they were actually rewritten from the ground up-they were not ports of the original code. In addition, each of the Microsoft Arcade versions provided a set of customization options that were not available in the original games.

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Asteroids - Quick Help

In Asteroids, you are in command of a spaceship and your mission is to shoot and dodge your way through an endless asteroid belt. To stay alive, you must blow up the huge floating asteroids before they hit your spaceship. The asteroid field is displayed using vector graphics to present a two-dimensional view that wraps around screen.

The Quick Help dialog box helped you get started by providing you with an overview of the default game controls. Once you got the hang of the controls, you could disable this dialog box.

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Asteroids - Player Controls

If you wanted, you could customize the controls to suit your style. Your spaceship could rotate left and right, fire missiles, and thrust forward. When you activated the thrusters, your spaceship continued to float just as if it were in space with no gravity.

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Asteroids - Customize Game

You could also use the controls on the Customize Game dialog box to change the game elements and essentially create your own personalized version of Asteroids. For example, you could increase the number of lives you started out with, you could decrease the speed of the flying saucers to make them easier to hit, or you could increase the speed of your spaceship to make the game more challenging.

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Asteroids – Select Players

In Microsoft Arcade, Asteroids could be played in either a one or two player mode. In two player mode, as soon as one player’s spaceship was destroyed, it was the other player’s turn.

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Asteroids – Getting Started

The game started with your spaceship in the center of the screen with large asteroids hurtling towards you.

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Asteroids – Zapping Asteroids

When you blasted the big asteroids, you’d scored 20 points. However, they broke into smaller pieces which increased your imminent danger as there were more asteroids to blast and dodge. Blasting medium asteroids scored you 50 points while blasting the small asteroids scored you 100 points.

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Asteroids – Smashed Ship

If you weren’t fast enough an asteroid would smash your spaceship into tiny pieces.

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Asteroids - Flying Saucers

As if the asteroids were not enough, you also had to battle flying saucers. Large flying saucers fired in random directions, while small flying saucers fired directly at your spaceship. Blasting small flying saucers scored you 1000 points while blasting the large flying saucers scored you 200 points.

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Asteroids – Game Over

If you lost all of your spaceships, it was game over.

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Asteroids – Ten Best

If your score was one of the ten best, you got to enter your initials.

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Asteroids – High Score

You could then admire your high score in the list.

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Battlezone – Splash Screen

In Battlezone, you’re inside of a tank driving around an alien battlefield and you must defend your tank against enemy tanks, missiles, and flying saucers. The battlefield and enemy vehicles were displayed using a wireframe view and vector graphics.

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Battlezone – Quick Help

The Quick Help dialog box helped you get started by providing you with an overview of the default game controls. Once you got the hang of the controls, you could disable this dialog box.

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Battlezone – Player Controls

If you wanted, you could customize the controls to suit your style. However, the default keys were great as the majority of them were on the numeric keypad. Using the combined direction keys, such as the Home key for left and forward and the Page Up key for right and forward were a nice feature in that they allowed you to perform zigzag maneuvers and easily outsmart enemy fire.

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Battlezone – Customize Game

You could also use the controls on the Customize Game dialog box to change the game variables and essentially create your own personalized version of Battlezone. For example, you could decrease the number of points you had to accumulate before you got a bonus tank or you could increase the speed of your tank.

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Battlezone – Erupting Volcano

As you maneuvered your tank across the battlefield, you could see mountains in the distance and there was always one erupting volcano. The battlefield also contained obstacles in the form of boxes and pyramids.

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Battlezone - Obstacles

While the obstacles could be used as shields, behind which you could hide and fire at enemy tanks, they often blocked your path as you attempted to elude an enemy.

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Battlezone - Enemy Tank

Information about the location of enemy tanks was displayed in the top left corner of the screen and a primitive radar screen in the middle would pinpoint the location in relation to your sights. When an enemy was in your sights, you could press the fire button. Unfortunately, there was no rapid fire feature and if your missile missed its target, you had to wait until the missile reached its maximum shot distance before you could fire again

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Battlezone – Got Ya

If you were exactly on target, the enemy tank would explode into pieces when hit. Blowing up an enemy tank scored you 1000 points.

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Battlezone - Ouch

On the other hand, if you missed your target or were caught by surprise by enemy fire, your windshield cracked up indicating that you were hit and destroyed.

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Battlezone - Flying Saucers

Flying saucers occasionally appeared on the battlefield. The flying saucers were a bit different from the tanks in that they did not attack you nor did they appear on radar, but they were fast and hard to hit. Blowing up a flying saucer scored you 5000 points.

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Battlezone - Guided Missile Launcher

In addition to enemy tanks and flying saucers, guided missile launchers would also appear out of nowhere and hone in on your location. Eluding them was difficult, but if you fired at one and destroyed it, you would score 2000 points. There was also a super tank was more difficult to defeat than the regular tanks. However, destroying a super tank scored you 3000 points.

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Battlezone – Great Score

If your score was one of the ten best, you got to enter your initials.

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Battlezone – High Scores

You could then admire your high score in the list.

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Centipede – Quick Help

In Centipede, you used a mouse to aim and fire a bug zapper. Your goal in this vertically-oriented shoot ’em up game was to destroy rapidly moving centipede before it reached the bottom of the screen and smashed your bug zapper. In addition, there were a series of regularly appearing fleas, spiders, and scorpions that could also smash your bug zapper.

The Quick Help dialog box immediately appeared when you launched the game and helped you to get started by providing you with an overview of the default game controls. Once you got the hang of the controls, you could disable this dialog box.

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Centipede – Select Players

In Microsoft Arcade, Centipede could be played in either a one or two player mode. In two player mode, as soon as one player’s bug zapper was destroyed, it was the other player’s turn.

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Centipede – Player Controls

While Centipede was played entirely with a mouse, the Player Controls settings would allow you to switch the fire button to either the right button or to a key of your choice.

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Centipede – Customize Controls

Using the controls in the Customize Game dialog box allowed you to change some game variables such as the rate at which your insect nemesis’ appeared and the speed at which your bullets traveled as the sought out their targets.

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Centipede – The Screen

Beginning at the top of the screen, the centipede would move rapidly back and forth across the screen as it progressed down towards your bug zapper through a field of mushrooms.

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Centipede – Mushrooms

Each time the centipede bumped into a mushroom it dropped down a level and switched direction allowing it to quickly progress down the screen. Shooting mushrooms was to your advantage as kept the centipede moving horizontally where it was an easier target. However, blasting away a mushroom could take as many as four shots.

As you were concentrating on the targeting the centipede, spiders and fleas would quickly attack you. However, if you shot them first, you would score 300, 600, 900 points depending on how close they were to you.

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Centipede – Multiple Pieces

While eliminating the centipede was the main goal, it was tricky. Blasting any one of the end sections of the centipede created another mushroom and if you happened to hit one of the middle segments, the centipede would split into pieces. Each piece would then separately make its way down the board to attack you.

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Centipede – Imminent Demise

Once a multiple segmented centipede reached the bottom of the screen, your demise was usually was imminent. However, if you were lucky enough to destroy all the segments of the centipede, a new one with one less segment than the previous one would appear at the top of the screen and the battle would begin anew.

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Centipede – Color Change

At various junctures in the game, the screen colors would change, just to add to already dizzying, fast paced excitement.

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Centipede – Great Score

If your score was one of the eight best, you got to enter your initials.

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Centipede – High Scores

You could then admire your high score in the list.

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Missile Command – Splash Screen

In Missile Command your job as the commander of a missile defense system consisting of 3 missile bases was to protect your 6 cities from an alien attack made up of incoming missiles, planes, and assorted satellites.

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Missile Command – Quick Help

The Quick Help dialog box helped you get started by providing you with an overview of the default game controls. Once you got the hang of the controls, you could disable this dialog box.

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Missile Command – Player Controls

If you wanted, you could choose to manually select the missile base from which to fire and then select which keys to use or you could have the game automatically select the bases.

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Missile Command – Customize Game

You could also use the controls on the Customize Game dialog box to change the game elements and essentially create your own personalized version of Missile Command. For example, you could increase the number of cities you needed to protect, you could increase the speed of your missiles as well as decrease the speed of the Bomber planes and satellites to make them easier to hit.

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Missile Command – The Attack Begins

Once game play commenced, you would move the crosshair with your mouse and commence firing to blow up as many of the barrage of incoming missiles as you possibly could.

Your three bases contained a limited number of missiles so you really needed to make each shot count.

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Missile Command – Fierce Battle

Once the battle became fierce, it was difficult to balance accuracy against conservancy and your cities and bases would pay for your mistakes as they were destroyed.

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Missile Command - Last Hope

Undoubtedly, as the battle wore on, your missiles would eventually be depleted and several of your cities would be wiped out.

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Missile Command - Doomed

Once you were out of missiles, you could do nothing but watch in horror as your remaining defenseless cities were obliterated right before your eyes.

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Missile Command – Great Score

If your score was one of the eight best, you got to enter your initials.

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Missile Command – High Scores

You could then admire your high score in the list.

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Tempest – Quick Help

Tempest was a very unique game and was classified as a Tube Shooter, which is a type of shoot u2018em up game in which your craft flies through an abstract tube with a 3D perspective in order to encounter your enemies.

The Quick Help dialog box immediately appeared when you launched the game and helped you to get started by providing you with an overview of the default game controls. Once you got the hang of the controls, you could disable this dialog box.

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Tempest – Player Controls

Tempest was a very fast moving game and having the ability to configure all of the Player Controls settings for the mouse made it easier to stay focused on the action at hand.

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Tempest – Customize Game

The controls in the Customize Game dialog box allowed you to change some game variables such as increasing the number of lives, which allowed you to extend the game.

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Tempest – Choose You Level

As you started the game, you could choose your level of difficulty. Each successive level changed the shape of the tube thus increasing the difficulty but also increasing the bonus points.

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Tempest – Let the battle begin

Rotating around the top of the shape, your objective was to shoot the rising enemies before they reached your position.

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Tempest – Level Up

Once you cleared the field you would jump up to the next level and immediately begin battling enemies who were a bit quicker than those at the previous level.

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Tempest – Spikers, Tankers, and Fuseballs

As the levels increased so too did the number and variety of enemies. Here you can see the green Spikers, the purple Tankers, and the white Fuseballs.

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Tempest – High Score

If your score was one of the eight best scores, you got to enter your initials.

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Play ‘em Here!

If you want to relive some of these classic arcade games right now, you can! Just visit the Atari Play page.

When you arrive, select any one of the games listed in the Play Online section.

You’ll then see a small screen that you can enlarge to about 480 by 430 and can actually play the original Atari versions of each of the games from Microsoft Arcade. You can also play several other classic Atari arcade games such as Lunar Lander or Super Breakout.

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