The Game: Players control a space fighter on patrol as alien attack fleets gather in deep space. Always keeping a wary eye on his ship’s fuel and laser temperature, would-be space heroes must blow away every alien ship on the screen before collecting the reward – namely, the privelege of blowing away another wave of alien attackers. (Sierra On-Liine, 1983)
Memories: Another of Sierra’s early forays into non-computer game software via its “Sierravision” imprint, Threshold admittedly fills a gap in the Colecovision library – that system somehow managed to avoid accumulating heaps of slide-and-shoot Space Invaders derivatives. But it doesn’t do it particularly well, as Threshold is simply a watered-down Colecovision edition of Astro Blaster.
What’s watered down the potent rocket fuel of Astro Blaster? Threshold lacks the original arcade game’s dizzying speed, and – surprisingly for the Colecovision, a system which was sold on the merits of its arcade-quality sound and graphics – it just doesn’t look great. Threshold smacks of a third-party game that was cranked out to make a quick buck.
Years later, the balance was redressed with a nearly-arcade-perfect Colecovsion homebrew port of Astro Blaster itself. With its vast improvement in both visuals and game play, Astro Blaster simply blasts Threshold away, leaving little to recommend the older game.