Astro Wars was an electronic table top game made in Great Britain in 1981 by Grandstand under licence from Epoch Co., who sold the game in Japan under the title Super Galaxian (スーパーギャラクシアン).[1][2] There were two versions of Astro Wars - an earlier version had the Astro Wars motif printed in red and a later version printed in white (as shown in the photograph).

Gameplay[edit]

In concept Astro Wars has similar themes to arcade games Galaxians or Gorf in as much as the player controls a ship (called earth ship) at the bottom of the screen and fires up at rows of ships. Players can select from four difficulty ratings and the controls are a simple digital joystick to move right or left and a fire button. Individual enemy ships can descend the screen to attack the player's ship. The player has to fight through a number of variations of the enemy.

The four skill levels are:

Level 1 - Alien fighters attack one at a time

Level 2 - Alien fighters attack one at a time but combat speed is faster

Level 3 - Alien fighters attack two at a time

Level 4 - Alien fighters attack two at a time but combat speed is faster

The game ends once either the player loses five ships or exceeds 9,999 points when a special electronic victory tune was played.