In 1993 Atari released the ill-fated Jaguar 64-Bit console. It did not last long and had not many games made for it but a few of them were truly spectacular. One of them was Tempest 2000, an upgrade to the original Tempest. T2K, as it is sometimes called, was created by Jeff "Yak" Minter, who is a legendary game programmer and the founder of Llamasoft. Jeff took the basic gameplay that was in the original and spiced it up like only he can do. The result is a mind blowing assault on the senses...

Most gameplay elements remained the same, so there is the web, the claw, the flippers, tankers, spikers etc. In addition to that are the demon heads, the UFOs and the mutant flippers, that try to ruin your day even more than the "standard complement" of enemies did in 1981. But the biggest addition has to be the powerup-system that gives your claw greater firepower and the ability to jump. Another new feature were Bonus Warps that could be unlocked by collecting Warp Tokens during the regular levels. In the Bonus Warps you could of course collect bonus points, but if you manage to complete the Warp you will skip five levels ahead!

Since the "Jag" has only a D-Pad, it was necessary to change the control mode slightly. The Spinner in the original arcade version of Tempest was an analog device that could be moved freely around its axis without any limitations. In Tempest 2000 this movement was duplicated with just the left and right digital controls. To get greater flexibility the movement of the claw accelerates slightly the longer you push into one direction. But, if you have the skills, you can build an analog controller out of an ordinary Jaguar controller by adding a paddle, and then you can switch the game into "analog mode" with a special key combination.

Sadly, Tempest 2000 (even though it received generally good reviews in the gaming press) did little to boost the sales of Ataris Jaguar console and so did not reach a wider audience. Tempest 3000, an updated version of Tempest 2000 that was released only for Nuon-enhanced DVD-Players was to suffer the same fate later on.

But all hope is not lost - currently Jeff Minter is hard at work on an T2K inspired shooter for the Xbox 360 that (for the time) is simply called "Space Giraffe". It features the same basic design (web, "claw", enemies ascending from the core), but will definitely not simply be "another" Tempest. We will have to wait and see what Jeff has in store for us this time...

• Tempest 2000 at AtariAge
• The Tempest 2000 Soundtrack CD at AtariAge
• The Atari Jaguar at AtariAge

Tempest 2000 was also available as a PC DOS Version on CD-ROM. The main differences were:

• Adlib, Roland or CD-Music instead of the MODs of the Jaguar version
• Only 256 colors on screen
• No gouraud shading, only plain old flat shading
• The framebuffer-effects of the Jaguar-version are missing (compare the title screens to see what i mean)
• Other Effects are simplified (most notably the "wobbly message" that appears every time you collect a powerup)

Apart from that it was a good conversion that retained the feel of the original pretty well.

The Jaguar was Atari's last game console. it was quite sophisticated, but never really catched on with the public, part of the blame lies in the choice of the pack-in game (they really should have used Tempest 2000 or Alien vs. Predator instead of Cybermorph) and the less than spectacular first batch of games. Still it was technically vastly superior to anything else at the time (with the exception of the first Playstation) and still has a loyal following.

The console was usually "fueled" with cartridges, but a CD-ROM upgrade was available as well.