Ha! No. I'm not that smart. I just did a bunch of research (I even found an article online that showed the original sketches on graph paper of the ships + asteroids so I could get those vectors exactly correct), found the sounds online, played a ton of the MAME version, etc., etc., etc. It's fun reverse engineering the old games. Gives me a better appreciation of the effort that went into the originals.
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Okay that's impressive. Plus rewriting Asteroids probably much more fun than writing an emulator.
nevertheless hats off 
the port you made is really accurate, but i think it is too hard to play on the playdate. e.g. the bullets that the ship fires are so small that they hardly can be seen. Furthermore the speed of the astroids can be a bit slower. If you manage to fix that, then you nailed this port
@basvandesande These are really good ideas. I had thought more or less the same thing once I saw the game on the actual device. It was a completely different experience in the Simulator. Even though the shots are equally as hard to see in the real arcade version, I agree with you. And the smaller screen does beg for slowing the whole thing down a bit. I may play around with those changes and repost another version. Stay tuned.
@basvandesande (and anyone else who wants to weigh-in), try re-downloading either .pdx link above (original or the new version with the "invert" option) and let me know what you think of the bullet sizes and asteroid speeds now. Seems to be easier to play.
Thanks for the modifications on the game. Ill take a look tomorrow
It looks fantastic. Bullets are perfectly visible and the speed is super.
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