Tempest is an arcade game by Atari from the early 80s, programmed and designed by Dave Theurer. It originally was to be a 3D-Space Invaders clone called 'Vortex', but after the engineers did not come back to play the game (which was kind of a quality test at Atari back then), Dave changed it into something different and unique. The first prototype had the wireframe "web" spinning and the claw remaining fixed. Since that caused motion sickness after a while it was changed around.

The game was controlled by a so-called spinner instead of a joystick, basically a free-turning wheel that allowed full 360 degrees rotary control. The only additional control were a fire button and a button for the superzapper.

Tempest introduced Atari's "Skill-Step", which offers the player the opportunity to select the starting level before launching the game.

The monitor used was a vector monitor. These monitors actually draw diagonal lines instead of "faking" them with pixels. The result is a very crisp and clear picture. This was Atari's first game that used a color vector monitor ("Color-Quadrascan"). Among their downsides were the low reliability of the monitors and their inability to draw filled polygons. Everything was made out of lines.

About 30000 Units were produced, 20000 were ordered before the game was even released. It was available in three variants: An upright, a cabaret, and a cocktail. The upright machine came in a nice arrow shaped cabinet that featured one long straight angled line from the top of the cabinet to the bottom of the control panel.

Apart from the original there was also Tempest Tubes, which was basically a "remix" of the original with different and more difficult webs.

- Most of this information was taken from mameinfo.dat, a support file for the MAME emulator. -

• Tempest: Detailed theory of operation
• Tempest Flyer at The Arcade Flyer Archive
• More Information about Tempest at MAWS

Since, as mentioned, the Tempest arcade machine did use a vector monitor, these screenshots are only an approximation of "the real thing". In fact, they come straight out of the MAME arcade emulator. Well, almost. I added some glow to make things look more realistic (the lines on vector monitors tend to have a slight glow around them).

Tempest was also released for a few home computers. This is how the Amstrad CPC version looks like on a color monitor:

And this is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version. It lacks color in the game-area because of hardware limitations, so things are a little harder to identify than on the CPC. The screen resolution is lower as well.

The CPC and the Spectrum-version were actually made by the same guy: David Pridmore.

The only released version for Atari computers was for the Atari ST. The title screen features a quite good rendition of the original arcade marquee.

Of course Atari tried to get Tempest on their own consoles as well. Sadly both versions stayed in the prototype stage.

The VCS 5200 version actually looks quite decent, it has a main menu and all. Unfortunately it is not really playable.

Where the 5200 version succeded the 2600 version failed. Utterly. Sorry, but there are games that the 2600 is not exactly made for...