Astro-Blast is based on the arcade game ASTRO FIGHTER (not Astro-BlastER, weirdly enough). It holds a special place in my memories, as it was the first non-Radio Shack game I ever saw, and also the first one I ever saw that used artifacting colors in PMODE 4 (not the first to use this technique; just the first one I saw that did). It had three skill levels, and 4 waves to go through (as seen by the above screenshots). The refuelling sequence in particular made a lot of use of the artifact colors, including the not so common yellows & purples that are also seen in the intro screen for THE SANDS OF EGYPT (unfortunately, this screenshot does not properly display the full range of colors that the original artifacting does). It also has nice little touches; swapping graphics modes when you get hit and your shields get depleted; little comets that you can shoot (or even burn up with the exhaust from your ship, if you time it just right), and nicely done explosions of the enemy ships (they disappear in a puff of smoke).
I have seen alternate language versions of this game on the web (Spanish in particular), so it was pretty widespread.
Title: Astro-Blast
Author: Ron Krebs
Publisher: Mark Data Products
Released: July 1982
Requires: Color Computer 1,2,3*, 16K RAM (cassette) or 32K RAM (disk), joystick.
*Please note: on the Coco 3, the level of play select screen will NOT display properly, as it uses a semi-graphics mode that does not exist on the GIME chip.