A common pattern (I use the word loosely) in my C programs is to have an array of structs to hold things like asteroids and bullets in the game. There are two ways to process an array:

1. As an array e.g. asteroids[index].
2. As a pointer to an individual array element. Asteroid * pAsteroid = &(asteroids[index]); then refer to pAsteroid ->

One of the tents of software design though not that often said is that the easier the code is to read, the easier it is to understand. Programmers spend a lot of time reading code. Anything that lightens the cognitive load is good. I suspect it might also be faster, but not by a great deal.

Of course pointers make some programmers nervous. To me though they simplify the code. There is however another way to simplify the code. Use #define so you might have something like this:

#define table asteroids[index]

So everywhere you have a asteroids[index]., you put in table instead.
This for example from Chapter 36 DrawAsteroids()

	for (int i = 0; i<MAXASTEROIDS; i++) {
		if (asteroids[i].active) {
			numAsteroids++;                    // keep track of how many onscreen
			int sizeIndex = asteroids[i].size; // 0-3
			int asize = sizes[sizeIndex];      // asteroid size 280,140, 70,35
			target.h = asize;
			target.w = asize;
			asteroidRect.h = asize;
			asteroidRect.w = asize;
			asteroidRect.x = asize * asteroids[i].rotdir;
			target.x = (int)asteroids[i].x;
			target.y = (int)asteroids[i].y;

Would become

	for (int i = 0; i<MAXASTEROIDS; i++) {
		if (table.active) {
			numAsteroids++;                    // keep track of how many onscreen
			int sizeIndex = table.size; // 0-3
			int asize = sizes[sizeIndex];      // asteroid size 280,140, 70,35
			target.h = asize;
			target.w = asize;
			asteroidRect.h = asize;
			asteroidRect.w = asize;
			asteroidRect.x = asize * table.rotdir;
			target.x = (int)table.x;
			target.y = (int)table.y;

What do you think?