Tempest (video game)

Tempest
North American arcade flyer
Developer(s)	Atari Inc.
Publisher(s)	Atari Inc.
Designer(s)	Dave Theurer[1]
Platform(s)	Arcade (original) Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum
Release	October 1981 (1981-10)[2] 1985 Spectrum, BBC 1987 Amstrad 1989 Atari ST
Genre(s)	Tube shooter, third-person shooter[3]
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet	Standard, cabaret, and table
CPU	6502
Sound	POKEY x 2
Display	Vertical orientation, Vector (color), size: 19 inch

Tempest is a 1981 arcade game by Atari Inc., designed and programmed by Dave Theurer. It takes place on a three-dimensional surface, sometimes wrapped into a tube, which is viewed from one end and is divided into a dozen or more segments or lanes. The player controls a claw-shaped spaceship (named Blaster) that crawls along the near edge of the playfield, moving from segment to segment.

Tempest was one of the first games to use Atari's Color-QuadraScan vector display technology. It was also the first game to allow the player to choose their starting label (a system Atari dubbed "SkillStep"). This feature increases the maximum starting level depending on the player's performance in the previous game, essentially allowing the player to continue. Tempest was one of the first video games to sport a progressive level design in which the levels themselves varied rather than giving the player the same layout with increasing difficulty levels.

Gameplay

Gameplay screenshot of the ninth level.

The objective of Tempest is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as possible by clearing the screen of enemies that have appeared on the playing field. The player's ship can rapid-fire shots down the tunnel, destroying any enemies within the same segment, and is also equipped with a Superzapper, which destroys all enemies currently on the playfield once per level. (A second use of the Superzapper in a level destroys one random enemy.)

Enemies swirl around at the far end of the playfield, then enter the playfield and move toward the player. There are multiple types of enemy, each of which has different behavior. At higher levels, some enemies leave a spike in the middle of the lane as they travel toward the player; a spike can destroy the player's ship when the player warps out to the next playfield. Other enemies travel to the player end of the playfield and then flip from lane to lane, killing the player if they move to the lane that the player is on; firing while the enemy is changing from an adjacent lane kills this type of enemy. When all enemies in a level are destroyed or reach the near end of the playfield, the player "warps" to the next level by traveling down the playfield. As the player warps to the next level, he or she must avoid or shoot away any spikes. The player loses a ship when an enemy comes into contact with their ship, shoots it or otherwise destroys it, or if the ship hits a spike while warping. At certain point thresholds, the player earns a new ship. The game is over when the enemies destroy all of the player's ships.

The game consists of sixteen screens with unique geometric shapes, some of which are closed tubes that allow the player to loop around, while others are open fields that have distinct left and right endpoints. When all sixteen screens have been played, the sequence repeats with a different color scheme and a higher difficulty level, including the invisible (black) levels (65–80). Each sequence of levels adds additional enemies that are faster and more deadly to the player's ship. The numbered levels stop incrementing at level 99 and a random one of the 16 variations will appear after each player death or the successful completion of subsequent levels.

There are 8 enemy types: Flipper, Tanker, Spiker, Spike, Fuseball, Pulsar, Fuseball Tanker, Pulsar Tanker.

Production

The game was initially meant to be a 3D remake of Space Invaders, but early versions had many problems, so a new design was used. Theurer says that the design came from a nightmare where monsters crawled out of a hole in the ground. During the prototype stages the game was entitled Aliens, then Vortex, and finally titled Tempest.^[4]

Three different cabinet designs exist for Tempest. The most common cabinet is an upright cabinet in the shape of a right triangle sitting on top of a rectangle, when viewed from the side. This cabinet sported colorful side art. A shorter and less flashy cabaret-style cabinet was also released with optional side art. A cocktail-style table cabinet allowed two players to play at opposite ends of the table; the screen automatically flipped for each player.

In the first games Atari shipped there were glitches in one or more of the ROM chips. The problem code allowed a player to do unintended things when ending their score in certain 2 digit combinations. According to Joystik magazine, which detailed these combinations, the most useful were the ones that earned the player 40 free credits (06, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18) and the "jump to green" trick (46).^[5] Another useful combination mentioned was 05 which allowed the player to play the game in the attract mode. In this scenario pausing at one the combinations would cause the effect to take place immediately without losing the balance of the player's lives. Also, in the attract mode, pausing at an end score of 48 gave the player 255 extra lives. After this issue was discovered, Atari corrected the problem so that further shipping machines were incapable of allowing the end score tricks. It was also noted in Joystik that Atari shipped updated chips to be replaced in the field.

Ports

An official port was released for the Atari ST. An official port that bears the Atari logo was released by Superior Software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron in 1985, and another by Electric Dreams for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC in 1987.

Versions for the Atari 2600^[6] and 5200 consoles^[7] were in the works in Atari, Inc. during 1984; unfinished prototypes exist for both of them. After the unfinished 5200 prototype was found in 1999, its original programmer, Keithen Hayenga, resumed work on finishing the port. The version for the 5200 was finally published through the AtariAge store on 7 February 2013, with an initial price of US $50.^[8] The 2600 port was also released as part of the Atari Greatest Hits compilation for Nintendo DS and iOS devices.

Reception

Reception
Review score Publication Score AllGame [9]

Chris Crawford wrote in 1982 that unlike Pac-Man, Tempest "intimidates many beginners because it appears to be unwinnable"; its smoothly increasing difficulty, however, encourages players to continue playing.^[10] In 1996, Next Generation listed the arcade version as number 74 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that, "It's very fast, it has abstract, color vector graphics that remain unequaled to this day, and its novel 'paddle' controller makes playing Tempest effortless. The game's difficulty advances smoothly, and the play is extremely well balanced."^[11] Tempest is #10 on the KLOV's list of most popular games, tied with Centipede.

The game has been cited as an influence on the careers of video game designers Jeff Minter and John O'Neill.^[12]

Legacy

Shortly after the original game was released, an arcade owner named Duncan Brown hacked the level data and made an altered, more difficult version: Tempest Tubes. It was eventually included with Tempest in the Hasbro compilation Atari Arcade Hits: Volume 1 for PC in 1999.

See also

• Golden age of video arcade games
• History of video games

References

External links

• Tempest at the Killer List of Videogames
• Tempest at the Arcade History database
• Interview with Dave Theurer at the Wayback Machine (archived June 14, 2008)
• Tempest Code Project to reconstruct and document an assembly source code version of the game