Welcome aboard, sound surfers! It’s your favorite aquatic archivist, Finnley the Dolphin, here to take a deep dive into a cosmic corner of the 1980s. Today we’re charting a course through the arcade asteroid fields and landing squarely on a vinyl time capsule you might not expect. Sure, you’ve mashed buttons and dodged flying saucers, but have you ever heard Asteroids? That’s right—we’re talking about a children’s LP adaptation of Atari’s arcade smash, produced by none other than John Braden for Kid Stuff Records. Buckle up and prepare for some photon-powered storytelling with a splash of synth.
Blasting into arcades in 1979, Asteroids carved out its legacy with minimalist visuals and a white-knuckle challenge that kept players glued to the controls. With its crisp black-and-white vector graphics and minimalist design, it captured the feeling of navigating deep space better than most games of its era. The player’s triangular ship was set adrift in an asteroid field, with no soundtrack beyond a pulsing bass thump that mimicked a heartbeat. As you blasted asteroids and evaded flying saucers, the field wrapped around the screen edges, creating a continuous, boundaryless void. This design choice contributed to the game’s distinctive style and helped immerse players in its stark, futuristic setting.
The creation of Asteroids began when Atari’s Lyle Rains pitched an idea to designer Ed Logg: build a game where players shot asteroids to avoid inactivity and maintain engagement. Logg knew vector graphics would be essential for the clean lines and smooth motion he envisioned, especially if he was to include flying saucers that would show up unexpectedly. Atari already had high-resolution vector technology on hand from Lunar Lander, which allowed Logg to make a bold visual leap. Instead of raster pixels, Asteroids used a 1024 by 768 resolution vector display that rendered ships and asteroids with unbroken lines of light, giving the visuals a futuristic sharpness that standard arcade monitors couldn’t match.
In terms of gameplay, Asteroids placed the player’s ship in the center of the screen as asteroids drifted in from all sides. Shooting a large asteroid would break it into two medium pieces, which would then shatter into smaller, faster-moving fragments. Bonus points came from destroying flying saucers, which appeared after certain score thresholds. The larger saucers were slow and inaccurate, but the smaller ones moved quickly and fired with deadly precision. Players controlled their ship with five buttons, including thrust, fire, rotate left and right, and hyperspace, which teleported the ship to a random location. This could either save the player or drop them directly into danger, adding a layer of risk to the mechanic.
The impact of Asteroids was immediate and lasting. It sold over 70,000 cabinets and topped arcade revenue charts into the early 1980s. Its popularity inspired many imitators and helped shape expectations for space-themed games. Atari’s home version for the 2600, released in 1981, was notable for being one of the first to use bank switching, a technique that allowed the console to access more memory than its hardware natively supported. While the home version couldn’t replicate the vector display, clever use of colored raster graphics and altered asteroid behavior made it one of the system’s best adaptations. Whether in arcades or living rooms, Asteroids demonstrated how gameplay depth, visual innovation, and smart design could create a lasting classic.
The success of Asteroids extended far beyond arcade cabinets and living room consoles. Its cultural footprint was large enough to inspire adaptations in unexpected formats, including music and storytelling aimed at younger audiences. As video games became a dominant part of childhood in the early 1980s, companies sought creative ways to expand their appeal. One of the more curious and charming byproducts of this trend came from Kid Stuff Records, which transformed Atari’s minimalist space shooter into a narrated musical adventure for vinyl.
In 1982, Kid Stuff Records released Asteroids, a children’s story-and-song LP inspired by Atari’s popular arcade game. Known for its licensed tie-ins with brands like Pac-Man, Garfield, and Masters of the Universe, Kid Stuff specialized in low-cost records that combined narration, music, and sound effects to entertain young listeners. Asteroids was part of their video game-themed line and followed the label’s recognizable formula: a light sci-fi story, upbeat original songs, and a dramatic voice cast. The album was produced by John Braden, whose unique background in both folk music and children’s media brought an unexpected musicality to the project.
Before his work with Kid Stuff, Braden released a self-titled folk album in 1968 on A&M Records. That album featured an impressive roster of session musicians including Ry Cooder, Bruce Langhorne, Sneaky Pete, and Chris Ethridge. Though largely forgotten today, it revealed Braden’s ear for arrangement and melody, traits that would later resurface in his work for children’s records. With his shift into audio storytelling in the 1980s, Braden brought a more sophisticated touch to what could have been throwaway tie-in content. He reportedly earned nine gold records during his time at Kid Stuff, often collaborating with arranger Jeff Waxman, credited as J. Waxman. According to a family source, Braden was born in North Carolina in 1946 and passed away in New York City in 1987.
The Asteroids LP follows the adventures of Captain Jim Stanton and his rookie co-pilot Chip Brain aboard the Intrepid as they attempt to stop an asteroid threat—while also navigating a bizarre journey back to 1983. The record blends spoken dramatization with original music, the most notable of which is “Asteroids,” the final track on Side A. This synth-pop-inspired number features dramatic narration over pulsing electronic rhythms, and a chorus that’s both catchy and stylized to fit the era’s love of techno-futurism. Another track, “Time Warp,” leans even more into the vocoder-heavy electro sound. A rhythm pattern in the second track appears to be from the Casio VL-1, recognizable from the Trio song “Da Da Da,” reinforcing the record’s connection to the era’s DIY electronic aesthetic. Other rhythm tracks from the Casio VL-1 are heard throughout the record. This was cutting edge being that the Casio VL-1 was released one year prior in 1981 to this record’s release date 1982.
The album’s tracklist is:
A1. Atari Theme
A2. Story Pt. 1
A3. Asteroids
B1. Time Warp
B2. Story Pt. 2
It was released in the US under Kid Stuff Records (KSS 5032) and reissued in Canada the following year. All music was published by IJE Music, Inc. and registered with ASCAP. Though aimed at children, the record’s strange mix of genre tropes, inventive music, and sci-fi jargon has earned it a cult following among collectors of retro media. As a cultural relic of the video game boom, Asteroids is as much a snapshot of 80s pop media as it is an adaptation of an arcade classic.
From arcade cabinets to storybook grooves, Asteroids proves that even the simplest games can launch wildly creative spin-offs. The Kid Stuff Records version might be full of techno jargon and melodramatic laser battles, but that’s what makes it such a charming oddity. It’s a snapshot of a time when video games were still new and mysterious, and kids could imagine entire galaxies between record tracks. Whether you’re here for the funky VL-1 rhythm, the retro narration, or just to hear Captain Jim Stanton yell about torpedoes, this record definitely earns its orbit in the archives. Until next time, keep your fins on the faders and your stylus on the stars.
Sources
Lendino, Jamie. Adventure: The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming. Steel Gear Press, 2018, pp. 103–105.
Lendino, Jamie. Attract Mode: The Rise and Fall of Coin-Op Arcade Games. Steel Gear Press, 2020, pp. 100–102.
“John Braden – Asteroids.” Discogs, https://www.discogs.com/release/2436717-John-Braden-Asteroids. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
“Kid Stuff Records.” Discogs, https://www.discogs.com/label/95913-Kid-Stuff-Records. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
“John Braden.” Discogs, https://www.discogs.com/artist/910915-John-Braden. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
“John Braden (1946–1987).” Windfarms is Records, 9 Feb. 2009, https://windfarmisrecords.blogspot.com/2009/02/john-braden-19.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
“Kid Stuff Records and the Golden Age of Video Game Records.” All in Color for a Quarter, 8 Sept. 2014, https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-literary-history-of-golden-age-of_8.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
