Iconic game publisher Atari is augmenting some of its best-known retro titles with blockchain tech, starting with the classic arcade hit, Asteroids. Players can compete to rank in the top three of the global leaderboards to win weekly prizes, including a $1,000 Atari gift card.

Built on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base, Atari is making some of its classics playable via what’s essentially an on-chain arcade, with NFT access passes and scores that are recorded to the blockchain. First up is Asteroids, the classic arcade game where players operate a spaceship and destroy asteroids to progress. 

In order to play, you must mint an NFT access pass for $5.25 (0.0015 ETH). Players have the option to mint up to 1,000 NFT access passes per wallet, but owning more than one pass will not affect your in-game score, according to the official site.

While it’s true that you can play Asteroids for free on multiple websites and through various retro game compilations, the small fee enables you to compete against other players in a weekly leaderboard to win prizes—and potentially take part in a growing ecosystem of games and on-chain rewards.

“All scores are logged on-chain, and from there it gets pretty fun,” Atari director Tyler Drewitz said on a Twitter broadcast that also featured Base creator Jesse Pollak. “There’s a weekly leaderboard, and we have an overall leaderboard with some pretty big prizes.”

Each week, the top three weekly winners will win an Asteroids: Recharged game code on Steam, a $35 merchandise credit, and the Atari 2600+ retro console. This is part of Base’s ongoing “On-Chain Summer” campaign, and the top three winners of this Asteroids event will each receive Atari gift cards—ranging up to $1,000 for the high score holder.

“Once you participate, it can evolve and change—the level of prizes, what games come next, [and] who owns the high-score cartridge,” Drewitz added, alluding to more to come from the on-chain arcade project.

No further games have been officially revealed, but the project website suggests plans to add more games, plus a tweet from Base also mentioned the classic brick-breaking game Breakout as an upcoming addition.

Atari has been playing in the crypto space for years now, and back in 2020, then-CEO Frédéric Chesnais told Decrypt that he’s “a strong believer in blockchain.” Such endeavors included an Atari token and plans for on-chain video games and a crypto casino, along with a VCS console that could also be used as a node to validate blockchain transactions. 

At the same time, Atari released virtual fashion non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in partnership with the blockchain gaming platform Enjin. This alliance also allowed developers to build blockchain games using Atari’s brand via licensing agreements, while an Atari experience is also due to be built in the Ethereum gaming metaverse, The Sandbox.

Edited by Andrew Hayward