Asteroids Outpost Revives Atari IP, Transforming It Into Open World Online Survival Game

Asteroids, the 1979 space shooter from Atari, is being revived, but as a completely different kind of game.

Asteroids: Outpost is an open world online game set in outer space, where players mine and build bases to amass fortunes Wild West-style. They can ally or feud with other players, and in a nod to the original, will occasionally have to throw showers of asteroids off their bases and claims.

The game is being developed by Salty Games, who includes devs who worked on the Call of Duty games andStar Trek Online, with technical assistance from Arktos Entertainment, the devs behind The WarZ/Infestation: Survivor Stories.

Before you cry blasphemy, of course, this is not the first time a classic game like Asteroids received a dramatic revival like this, and they don’t always turn out badly. Case in point, Metroid, originally a side scrolling action adventure, received a dramatic recreation into a successful first person adventure series called Metroid Prime. Fans were initially skeptical of Prime as well, but it is now accepted as a successful transition of the franchise from 2D to 3D.

WhetherAsteroids will enact a similarly successful transition remains to be seen, but of course, execution is what matters.