Tempest

"Shooting ever inward"

In Tempest, there's no denying that you control a cool ship--this claw that fires shots into the center. You skulk on the outskirts of a convex shape divided into sixteen arcs, with a circle in the center full of red dots that become enemies. In some cases they're all at the top, and your board actually has edges. And in another your path twists back on itself. The object is more or less to shoot everything and make it to the next level--not much plot, but it's a fast paced game that gets a bit too slick at times. You won't regret playing it if you can find it.

Armed with just a knob that twirls you around a shape border, a fire button(six bullets on the screen at once,) and a Super Zapper(first try blasts everyone else, but sometimes not fast enough to save you, second try knocks one off, recharge every level) you need to eradicate all the bad guys that spawn from the center. Probably because they look more orderly and less cool than you do. And if the early levels are too easy, you can cut to the chase of harder levels for a huge bonus--the better you've done, the higher you can start. Solve one level, and you get a whopping bonus but with intermediary extra lives sadly cut out.

Flippers are your first enemy, red bow ties that wobble out from the center, switching rays until they get on the border. They don't chase after you, but they will be annoying in any case. You can fire with one about to catch you to destroy it, and in fact a big tactic is finding a corner and blasting away--doesn't work all the time as you can run out of ammo, and it dulls the experience, but it's a tempting evasive action. Then tanks appear on later levels: purple squares with a tiny square inside, like an aborted potential level that was too simple and the wrong color anyway. Shoot a tank, or watch it reach the side, and it splits to two flippers. Spikes then pop out, as these green spirals expand to near the edge. You can shoot these spikes, which serve as quick transportation to the boundaries for other monsters, and they are also lethal once you've cleared the level and the hyperspace sucks you to the center. Other monsters include a fuse that bumbles around until it gets to the edge and yellow pulsars that can kill you from a distance(most other enemies just shoot.)

Enemies appear gradually in a level, so you have a chance to fight being overwhelmed, and if you find a good niche you don't have to rush and take out enemies. The only problem is how addictive the niches are, and how they kill some spontaneity. While it's fun to be able to flip your control and fly past flippers on the edge without contact, it's more solid just to shoot away at a spike, and you'll find yourself doing that a lot. Also some of the rays, to keep up the perspective of the later warped shapes, pretty much block you from seeing what is going on, restricting your squares further. The sights are worth it though if you're a fan of optical illusions. There are standard levels like a U or V shape that still look nice, but you also have a heart and a star and even a bow tie where you switch clockwise and counterclockwise to move around. The memory required here piles on top of the occasional blank you'll draw after staying put to shoot immediate enemies, as swerving the wrong way is fatal.

Once you've cycled through the levels you get new and faster monsters, and bizarrely the board turns invisible later after running through the primary colors. This frustration is only open to seasoned players who probably love the game to have gotten that far, so it's hardly unfair.

Along with the enthralling rickety space-travel jungle gym, Tempest also throws in some good old fashioned Fourth-of-July style fanfare to dazzle you. The enemies aren't much to look at, but boring old white is banned, and with each super-zap or extra ship you get a flux of rainbow colors and sugary fake siren that will distract the novice, leading to the disgusted snarl signaling your claw's demise. Until then, it manages to slouch between arcs and often changes its posture within one just as you wanted to move over a place. Tempest always shows where your shot will focus, which is nice except for the areas that look thin in perspective. The reward for all this is a firework display with your high score.

One great part of Tempest is that it is easy to imagine new levels with unique looks based on the developers' template, and those who feel the bow-tie level, number sixteen, was a trip they needed more of, even after playing through it a few times, will be glad to know that a programmer created a game with new levels called Tempest Tubes. The designs border on optical illusions, and though it's tough to figure what's going on the same panicked shoot-and-duck which serves for fun in the original still has effect.

Ports of Tempest to more modern machines miss the mark a bit; the knob on the original machine can't be perfectly simulated, and on some levels you will need to push left when you want to go right. But the levels are worth one pass, and just the experience of shooting other ships on something other than a grid or plain old outer space(that's SO 1979) is something you don't see much of today. It's a bit arbitrary, but so what? There's lots of shooting and noise, and it's cohesive and effortless enough. But the challenge and all those esoteric shapes you skirt outside make sure it's never dopey.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/00, Updated 08/28/03