Asteroids was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains, who decided to use hardware developed by Wendi Allen (then known as Howard Delman) previously used for Lunar Lander.

The player can also send the ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen, at the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid.

Paul Mancuso joined the development team as Asteroids' technician and engineer Wendi Allen contributed to the hardware.

[10] During a meeting in April 1979, Rains discussed Planet Grab, a multiplayer arcade game later renamed to Cosmos.

In response, Logg described a similar concept where the player selectively shoots at rocks that break into smaller pieces.

[7][16][17] The original design concepts for QuadraScan came out of Cyan Engineering, Atari's off-campus research lab in Grass Valley, California, in 1978.

Logg received Allen's modified board with five buttons, 13 sound effects, and additional RAM, and he used it to develop Asteroids.

[7][8] Logg modeled the player's ship, the five-button control scheme, and the game physics after Spacewar!, which he had played as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, but made several changes to improve playability.

[8] A prototype of Asteroids was well received by several Atari staff and engineers, who "wander[ed] between labs, passing comment and stopping to play as they went".

struggled to maintain grip on the thrust button and requested a joystick; players accustomed to Space Invaders noted they get no break in the game.

Programmers Brad Stewart and Bob Smith were unable to fit the Atari VCS port into a 4 KB cartridge.

[24] Asteroids was so popular that some video arcade operators had to install large boxes to hold the number of coins spent by players,[15] and Atari assembly line workers that ignored other games they built played finished Asteroids machines awaiting shipping.

[25] Asteroids went on to become the highest-grossing arcade video game of 1980 in the United States, dethroning Space Invaders.

[31] Asteroids received positive reviews from video game critics and has been regarded as Logg's magnum opus.

[33] Edwards commented that "this home cartridge is a virtual duplicate of the ever-popular Atari arcade game.

[35] William Cassidy, writing for GameSpy's "Classic Gaming", noticed its innovations, including being one of the first video games to track initials and allow players to enter their initials for appearing in the top 10 high scores, and commented that "the vector graphics fit the futuristic outer space theme very well".

[36] In 1996, Next Generation listed it as number 39 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", particularly lauding the control dynamics which require "the constant juggling of speed, positioning, and direction".

The asteroids rotate, and new "killer satellite" enemies break into smaller ships that home in on the player's position.

Space Duel, released in arcades in 1982, replaces the rocks with colorful geometric shapes and adds cooperative two-player gameplay.

The game is half of the Atari Lynx pairing Super Asteroids & Missile Command,[45] and included in the 1993 Microsoft Arcade compilation.

[46] Activision published an enhanced version of Asteroids for the PlayStation (1998), Nintendo 64 (1999), Microsoft Windows (1998), Game Boy Color (1999), and Mac (2000).

[47] The Atari Flashback series of dedicated video game consoles have included both the 2600 and the arcade versions of Asteroids.

Released in November 2007, the Xbox Live Arcade port of Asteroids has revamped HD graphics along with an added intense "throttle monkey" mode.

[64] Three clones for the Apple II were reviewed together in the 1982 Creative Computing Software Buyers Guide: The Asteroid Field, Asteron, and Apple-Oids.

Two independent clones, Asteroid for the Apple II and Fasteroids for TRS-80, were renamed to Planetoids and sold by Adventure International.

A poorly implemented Asteroids clone for the VIC-20, published by Bug-Byte, motivated Jeff Minter to found Llamasoft.

[69] Lopez and di Bonaventura were still attached to write and produce the film adaptation, respectively,[70][71] but Emmerich passed on directing, while Evan Spiliotopoulos and F. Scott Frazier were hired to rewrite the screenplay.

[74] An Asteroids machine appears in the music video for 38 Special's song Caught Up in You,[75] and one is also briefly seen in the movie Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

In 1998, to congratulate Safran on his accomplishment, the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard searched for him for four years until 2002, when it was discovered that he had died in an accident in 1989.

[77] In a ceremony in Philadelphia on April 27, 2002, Walter Day of Twin Galaxies presented an award to the surviving members of Safran's family, commemorating his achievement.