Asteroids saucer hunting

[D.B. Cooper]

Could we please clarify this rule and apply it everyone. I once received the following message:

"D.B. Cooper,


It has been determined that your recent submission for Asteroids broke rule 10 of the High Score Submission Rules.

10. Do NOT Farm, Grind or Leech. Do NOT repeatedly kill the same respawning enemies or repeatedly collect the same respawning treasure without naturally progressing through the game. If the game has a time limit that would prevent you from doing this for very long or is SRAM (battery saves) enabled then you may break this rule.

In your submission there were many times where you left a couple of small asteroids behind and waited for UFO's to kill. Though we are aware this is a popular technique it does not conform to our rules and thus can't be accepted. The submission will be removed from the system.

You can find a copy of our rules at Retro Uprising - FAQ. If you have any questions feel free to ask me or another Game Mod."

I wrote out a long explanation as to why this was the wrong decision but was never told that the rule had been changed. Today my coin op high score (which I did not use saucer hunting) was beaten by someone doing the exact same thing my score was DQed for which of course is a little frustrating especially since it should be ok. Asteroids - Arcade/Coin-Op - Score Board

So, is it now ok to saucer hunt when playing asteroids and if so is it legal for all versions of the game or just the coin op version? Thanks for looking into this as I think it's important we all play by the same rules.

[Tails]

Thanks for pointing this out DBC, we'll discuss this.

[elrod21]

I completely agree DBC and I believe I was involved when this came up before. The original decision was it was not allowed and that has not changed as far as I know.

If they decide to change it then it should be added as a special rule for that title as it breaks the current rule set.

I actually wondered about this today when I saw the Asteroids score had been beat whether saucer hunting was used or not.

[JPE]

I've never been a great Asteroids player. My old record was in the 100K range only... people were able to score millions in it. Maybe using the "saucer hunt", huh?

I have never figured out how to do that. I've heard of this method but they (saucers) always kill me when I try that.

Is there a video of this available somewhere? Not that I'd want to use that method... just out of curiosity.

[Tails]

JPE, if you make a donation, you can see playback of all our verified movies, including this (if it's allowed).

[Slime Slayer]

You just leave an asteroid or 2 floating around and kill the saucers indefinitely, same type of thing for Centipede with the spiders.

[Josephjo]

Decision made - The technique is allowed on all platforms for Asteroids.

DBC's original submission was for Atari7800 - His original score has now been accepted.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[D.B. Cooper]

Thank you very much for clearing this up. The big difference between saucer hunting and spider hunting is that it can't be done forever. In Centipede, once you set up the trap, you can hunt spiders for as long as you want with no risk of having to move to the next level of the game. Not so with Asteroids. I don't care how good you are. Eventually the saucers will shoot down your remaining rocks and you will be moving to the next level.

[elrod21]

Cool! That should heat up the competition on those titles.

I fully expect to see you on top of some those Hi-Score lists now DBC.