Astro Bot Is Becoming The Game Of A Generation

Astro Bot is celebrating its 1-year anniversary today, September 6, 2025. Below, we reflect on what the plucky robot has come to represent for some burgeoning gamers.

More than 30 years ago, I fell in love. I was visiting extended family with my parents and two siblings, and the object of my affection was a boxy gray-and-black video game console hooked up to an equally boxy CRT television. I had seen video games before in arcades, and had played some rudimentary Mac games on our family computer. But Super Mario Bros. was something else entirely. The simple but flexible controls, the stage variety, the music. By the time we left my aunt's house, we three children were staging a coordinated influence campaign to convince our parents to buy our own Nintendo Entertainment System, eager to play more Mario. The rest is history.

My story isn't unique. Lots of children of the 1980s have similar origins for their gaming obsession. But now, decades later, as a parent myself, I'm struck by how Astro Bot has enraptured my own kids in ways that remind me of my experience with Mario. Years in the future, it will almost certainly be Astro that they credit with first igniting their love of games.