Grandstand’s Astro Wars is loud. Almost piercingly loud, in fact. When switched on, the game emits a cheerful “DEE DEE DIDDLEY-DEE! / DEE DEE DIDDLEY-DEE!” in greeting, unwittingly violating several noise pollution laws and potentially causing inner ear problems in nearby household pets. Alright, it’s not quite that deafening - but it definitely sounds like a weird dawn chorus from a parallel digital world (think Tron, but with less songs by Journey). Pity the poor parents who bought this for their children and then discovered there was no way to play it with the sound off. Unless, of course, you locked the player in a room, smothered with special noise-reducing pillows. But that might be considered poor childcare.

Released in 1981, Astro Wars was licensed in the UK by Grandstand from another company named Epoch - who distributed the game in other territories as the somewhat boringly-titled Epoch’s Galaxy II. A moderately sized piece, it clearly stems from an era before designers had figured out how to squeeze this type of thing inside a smaller handheld case or disguise them as air fresheners.

No-one is going to be playing Astro Wars in the family car or on any kind of public transport in a hurry - not least because the sound effects would have induced murderous rage in your fellow travellers long before the destination was reached. Despite this, Grandstand optimistically catered for anyone brave enough to play on the move by providing an option to power the game from four C-type Batteries (those chunky ones which look as though they should be fuelling FBI torches on high-profile drugs busts). It seems likely, however, that the sensible method of play would be to plonk the unit on a surface near a socket and plug it in with the official Grandstand Adapter™; creating a “tabletop” game, if you will. Cheaper than one of those new-fangled home computers and nudging towards the thrill of owning an actual arcade cabinet, Astro Wars provided an attractive, alternative option for entry into the big bad world of videogaming.

 

The game housed inside this grey, plastic shell (and it is just one game, though divided into four different stages) is a compressed version of Space Invaders, merged with echoes of more advanced takes on the theme, such as Galaxian. As ever, the player is cast as the lone layer of defence against an oncoming alien horde (tsk, budget cutbacks eh?) - or, as the box blurb has it: “Ultra-modern arcade excitement is now yours, as you defend your earth ships against a fierce invasion.” The term “fierce invasion” is perhaps pushing it a bit, because the screen is really only wide enough to fit about five enemy vessels on - and attacking in squads of more than two is considered a groundbreaking tactic by this particular extraterrestrial culture. Who knows, maybe they’re just being gentlemanly and the whole conflict is an internal misunderstanding about government memos or something?