Tempest (Arcade) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 147
19Prepare your mind, for the infinite abyss of SPACE (circa 1981)!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Tempest
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(video_game)
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[vague] 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 level[citation needed] (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[vague] 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.
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 landed on the playing field. The player's ship can rapid-fire shots down the tube, 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 after level 99 and a random one of the 16 variations will appear after each player death or the successful completion of subsequent levels.