I decided to try to review some of my favorite games. I’m starting with the classic console game I have played the most this year so far, and one of the all-time best.
Title: Tempest 2000
Platform: Atari Jaguar
Release Date: 1994
Developer: Llamasoft
Publisher: Atari Inc. (1984-1996)
Format: Cartridge in cardboard box (A music CD of the soundtrack was also released later on)
Ports: There are many ports of this game. Emulated ports are in the Atari 50 collection for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One/Series, and PS4/PS5. Older, more heavily altered ports were released back in the ’90s on PC, Saturn, and PlayStation (as Tempest X3). This review is of the game being played on real hardware on an actual Jaguar. I have discussed the PlayStation version of Tempest X3 and the Atari 5200 version of the original Tempest before, but not the Jaguar title or the arcade game itself.
Introduction
Tempest 2000 is Jeff Minter’s magnum opus. This exceptional masterpiece is is one of my favorite games ever. T2K is one of those ‘peak of the mountain’ games, one of those titles that shows how amazing gaming can be at its absolute best. And that’s the problem, for this review at least: praise is hard! It is, sadly, often easier to criticize than to praise, to write or say reams of reasons why something is bad than to write ones why something is great. I guess we’ll see how this goes, because there aren’t many things to criticize about T2K.
Tempest, the original arcade game, was released in 1981 in arcades by Atari, and was programmed by Dave Theurer, the same man who also designed the famous megahit Missile Command. It was a successful game, but not on Missile Command’s level of popularity. While Tempest 2000’s developer Jeff Minter was not involved at all with its development, Minter was an active game developer at the time. However, at that point he was making smaller games for home computers, not arcade games. He may not have worked with Atari until the early ’90s, but Jeff Minter is probably gaming’s longest-termed programmer. He with an amazing record of consistency for spending the last 45 years almost exclusively making simple-looking, pre-crash-styled arcade-inspired score-focused games. If you look at a Jeff Minter game from the early ’80s such as Aggressor or Gridrunner and then his most recent releases such as Polybius or Akka Arrh, you will see the most consistent record in gaming. All four titles are easily recognizable as Jeff Minter productions. I have loved Minter’s games ever since I first played Llamatron 2112 back in the early ’90s.
A Review of the Original Arcade Game Tempest
At its core, Tempest 2000 is a remake of the 1981 vector-graphcis arcade game Tempest. So, I should discuss the arcade game first. Tempest is a space shooter, a popular genre at the time, except instead of shooting enemies on the top of the screen, you shoot from the edge of the screen at enemies coming at you from the center. It was inspired by Space Invaders turned vertical, crossed with a nightmare of Theurer’s about monsters crawling out of a hole. (Source: https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/atari-tempest-dave-theurers-masterpiece/)
Learning that makes sense, because I have long seen the nightmarish, horror-esque element of this game and Tempest 2000 as well. Tempest is kind of a horror game. It isn’t, but it is. This is a game designed to make you focus, but also to kind of creep you out and instill a sense of dread in the player, as the monsters just keep coming, and coming, out of the depths… until eventually, you get overrun. Tempest and T2K are maybe the best horror games ever.
Again, the central gameplay of both titles is the same: you control a little ship, and can move around the outer, and upper, edge of the play area, which is called the ‘web’. The web is made up of lines going from the middle of the screen to the upper edge where you are, connecting them in a vector shape. Your ship is pointing towards the center of the screen, aiming towards the middle where the enemies come from. If the enemies reach the top of the web, they move around the top and once either an enemy touches your ship or you run into one of their shots you die and lose a life.
When you move left or right you flip around the edge, moving between sectors of the top of the web. You can only move in two directions in this game, so while the game is three dimensional in that enemies move up a 3d angled route towards you, you only need to worry about moving horizontally to shoot them. For controls, the original arcade game used a spinner-style stick, giving you precise analog control of your movement. You shoot with one button and use the Superzapper, a superbomb which kills all enemies on screen. You can use the Superzapper once per level. Once all enemies in a stage are dead you clear it and move on to the next web. If you die, you restart the stage from the beginning.
The game has 16 stage layouts, and after you clear stage 16 the web color changes. There are six colors: blue, red, yellow, cyan, invisible, and lastly green. After level 99 the levels stop increasing and you just play at that difficulty until you run out of lives, if you were so lucky to get that far. One interesting feature, though, is that there is a continue function of sorts! When you get game over, you can continue from the last checkpoint level that you reached. You can select which level you want to start from from the checkpoint levels you have reached. The game doesn’t save these permanently, of course, so if powered off the checkpoints and scores will be lost, but still it’s a very interesting feature, as continuing in arcade games like that was not really a thing when this game released in 1981.
When enemies reach the top of the web, you have two options. One is to try to shoot them as they flip onto your section of web. Yes, you can do this, so letting enemies get to the top is not an instant loss, but timing that shot is tricky. You can also use the Superzapper of course, if you still have it. It’s much better to get rid of enemies before they reach the top, but sometimes it won’t be possible as you get farther in and enemy counts increase. Overall Tempest is a great game, with a creepy vibe and a great balance of challenge and the feeling that if you play well you can get far in the game.
As with most pre-crash games, Tempest has no music and simple presentation, but the graphics were groundbreaking at the time. The graphics are amazing looking with that color vector display, and the sound effects are fantastic and fit perfectly as well. The striking look of this game is extremely memorable. Color vector displays were a rarely seen, expensive technical feat, and this game uses that kind of display and it looks amazing! Still, as was common at the time there is no background other than black space except for some stars that appear while you fly from one level to the next. The result focuses you on the action.
It is of course an endless game you play for score . Tempest is intense, though. Where a game of Donkey Kong or Space Invaders can last many hours, the world record for Tempest at its hardest settings is a video about 20 minutes long. You will die. There are several different web designs, but the stage layouts repeat after a few stages and then you’re on the endless loop until Game Over. And while there are a handful of enemy types, there aren’t all that many of those either. There is no background either of course, just black space. Still, the wireframe 3d vector graphics look amazing, and the gameplay is a lot of fun.
However… however, I find it hard to play Tempest because as good as it is, I could be playing Tempest 2000, the game that takes Tempests’ model and improves on it in almost every way. And when I want to play a Tempest game, that is usually what I do: play Tempest 2000. Tempest 4000 (for modern consoles) is also quite good, but while Jeff Minter has made multiple Tempest-style games over the past three decades and all are great, none quite match the exceptional genius of his first effort.
Tempest 2000: The Fundamentals and Features
Tempest 2000 is a modernized update of Tempest. The main mode is called Tempest 2000 mode. The core gameplay is identical, with you moving around the top edge of weblike stages, shooting in at the enemies moving up the web at you. You again need to dodge their fire while taking them out before they reach the top. This time there are interesting varied backgrounds, though, as the game has trippy light synthesizer-style backgrounds and pounding techno music. There are also new powerups, new enemy types, a lot of new maps, an actual ending when you reach level 100, a harder difficulty unlocked after clearing the game, the ability to continue from every few levels so that you don’t need to start the game over every time you get Game Over, and more. Outside of the main Tempest 2000 mode the game has several other modes as well. There is a two player multiplayer versus mode; a port of the original Tempest game but of course with regular graphics instead of vector ones; Tempest Plus, a mode which is basically standard Tempest but with T2K’s visuals; and an options menu with some interesting options in it.
The game saves your settings, which levels you can start from, as you can start from the last odd-numbered level you have beaten if you wish — and the high score table. The game saves everything necessary. The Jaguar is the first console where almost every single game supports saving, and it’s a hugely important and wonderful change versus what you see on other classic consoles. Even in years after the Jag’s release a lot of console games didn’t have saving in some genres — no Sega CD shmup supports high score saving, for example, and even some PlayStation shooters don’t. But on Jaguar all official games save at least scores and settings. It hugely helps this kind of game for the game itself to keep track of your scores, no need to write down your best scores or take screenshots or something. And because all Jaguar saving is done to EEPROM flash memory chips and not batteries, the system has no problem with old batteries, unlike most of its contemporaries. I think that that everything saves is the number one most next-gen thing about the Jaguar as a console; even the games that otherwise look like last-gen ports almost always have saving added. Tempest 2000 takes advantage of it well.
In the single player modes Tempest 2000 plays almost exactly the same as the original Tempest, just improved in every way other than losing that amazing color vector display. T2K has the best graphics possible with its regular pixel-graphics display, but vectors do look amazing in a way no regular display can match. Ah well. So, as with the original Tempest, you move around the top of levels, shooting at enemies climbing up at you. All enemies from the original game return, with some new additions to the roster. New enemies get introduced once you get farther in the game, as well. As with the original the web colors change every 16 levels, but this time you don’t only see the same 16 levels over and over, new webs are introduced as you progress. It’s Tempest, but more.
The Controls and Powerups
The controls are, by default, a small step below the arcade game, because the standard Jaguar controller only has a d-pad on it for movement. I think the digital controls are just fine, as each press moves you to the next section of the web, but if you want analog controls the game does support them, which is pretty awesome — Jeff Minter made sure to include hidden support for a rotary-stick controller, even though no such controller existed for the system at the time other than a homebrew one hacked together. I do not have one right now, though I really should get one, but it’s just fantastic that the option exists. It means that controls are even with the arcade game.
As for buttons, T2K uses three, the three regular Jaguar face buttons, for Shoot, Jump once you have it in a level, and Superzapper. On the last of those, yes the Superzapper bomb returns to help you out, as beofre usable once per stage. Also, once again, if you die you restart the current level from the beginning. Otherwise, Start pauses as you would expect. The keypad is used for muting the music as usual — a keypad music mute feature is common on Jag games with music — and for shifting the view around, adjusting how the web moves on stages that go slightly over one screen in size, adjusting the screen size, and such. It’s a good use of the keypad for something a game for a newer platform would put on a second stick or somesuch. You won’t need to touch it during play, thankfully. The Jaguar controller is surprisingly comfortable, I think; its bad reputation is hightly over-stated. Using the keypad during play is awkward and not great for anything fast-paced, but for games that only use the dpad and three main face buttons, or for games that just use it for options, I think the Jag controller is just fine. T2K controls well with the regular controller, I’ve never had any issues with it. I’m sure that the rotary controller controls are even better, but these are quite good.
On top of that, some other new powerups have been added. These powerups all only last for the current level, as everything resets to default no powerups once you get to the next stage. The way it works is that some enemies drop a powerup which then moves up the screen. Get in position to grab it as it flies upwards and you get one level of powerup. The first enemy you kill in a stage will always drop a powerup, and this powerup gives you a more powerful shot. It’s essential to get this because the gun without it is very weak. Some time later more powerups will drop. The next few will give you a Jump button and an AI droid ally. The Jump button uses your third face button and jumps upwards, moving you out of the way of enemies if they reach the top of the web. They can’t jump to hit you up there, but you could still get hit by shots, and of course you will need to land somewhere clear at the end of your jump so while helpful the jump won’t keep you alive if there are too many enemies on top of the web. Still, it’s great. The AI Droid is similar to the one in Llamatron 2112, and moves around on its own a above the web shooting down at enemies. It cannot be killed and is fantastic if you can get enough powerups to get it. There is also a rare random-drop powerup which immediately skips the current level, and once you have all other powerups in a stage further powerups give you a 2000 point bonus.
The Bonus Games
There is one more powerup, however. Lastly powerup-wise, getting enough powerups in a level will give you a green triangle. You can only get one green triangle per level. Once you get three green triangles, you go to a bonus stage. There are several different types of bonus stages, changing as you proceed through the game. The first bonus stage type has you flying through space, trying to fly through gates. There are no enemies, you just move with the d-pad to get through the gates. This bonus game is a lot of fun, it’s very calming after the intense action. However, if you want the best possible scores you will want to avoid actually completing the bonus games, because if you finish a bonus game you warp forward five levels. You get a point bonus, but the point bonus is a whole lot less points than you would have gotten if you played those levels.
There are three different layouts of each bonus game, though you will never complete all three in a single game because after a few skips you are sure to have progressed far enough to get to the second bonus game type. That one I find much, much harder — you have to stay on a green track that curves around a tube that you are driving through. I must admit, I don’t think I have ever completed a stay on the green track bonus stage, and if I ever did I sure haven’t again. Still, it’s fun enough. After that… well, there is a third type of bonus game later on, but play the game to find out what it is. The bonus games are fun stuff and do a great job of giving you a break from the frenetic action. I particularly love the first bonus game, flying down a tunnel through those rings is great fun.
The Enemies and Scoring
When you fire, enemies in front of you and their regular shots die. That latter point is important: your shots and most enemy shots kill eachother. Some enemy attacks cannot be stopped, however, so you need to stay on your guard.
The enemies you will face include: basic ones which go straight up one path, heading towards the top; ones which do that but also shoot upwards; larger ones that split into multiple regular enemies once shot; ones which move around between paths as they go, trying to get closer to your position; a strong monster which has these two invincible scythelike limbs it shoots out you before going to the top that you must avoid while trying to shoot the main body; small enemies which stay at the bottom and electrify a whole section of the web, killing you instantly if you are in that section after it lights up; spikes, which can be in lanes towards the centerand will kill you if you run into them while traveling through the web after beating the level; and some more that come in to play later. There are a total of ten enemy types. The enemy variety is enough to keep things interesting while remaining easy enough to remember and identify each type.
As you kill your foes you get points, and scoring in this game is simple: kill stuff, get points. There is no complex scoring system and that is entirely fine with me, there’s more than enough here to keep anyone hooked. As you get points you will earn 1-ups, and there is no maximum. Your life count is displayed as a row of ship images instead of a number, though, so once you get past about eight lives in reserve you won’t know exactly how many you have. It’s enough, though, to know that once you know how many lives you have left things are starting to go wrong… heh.
The Graphics in General
Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional, and are one of the many reasons why I love this game so, so much. The visualizer-style backgrounds are incredible, first. And somehow, T2K has some of the best-looking graphics ever. Even though the game is running at 320×240 regular graphics, not the ultra-sharp lines of the originals’ arcade vector graphics display on its special vector monitor, it looks exceptionally sharp. I don’t know what wizardry was done here but somehow T2K’s lines look straight and not jaggy.
Of course the game is made of pixels, and some of them are noticeable square ones, but they are used perfectly — the moving square pixels that form the background’s laser-light-visualizer style show are the exact right thing to use for that job. Minter would go on to use a similar look for the visuals for his VLM, or light synthesizer, for the Atari Jaguar CD, and my opinion is that that is the best-looking visualizer ever. And that’s not said because of nostalgia, I did not have a Jaguar or Jag CD in the ’90s. It just looks incredible, better overall than more powerful visualizers do.
Tempest 2000 is similar; sure, newer games, including some from Minter himself such as Tempest 4000 for modern consoles, look ‘better’ than this game and run more smoothly, but T2K’s overall visual style just cannot be beat. The enemy sprites, the web, the creepy fear this game instills on the player, it’s all nearly perfect. So, the sharp, clear graphics look unbelievably good. The game does have problems with dropping frames or slowdown when the screen gets full of enemies, I will admit, and I have died because of this for sure, but despite that I do think T2K is one of the most amazing looking games ever.
Everything works together to make the game both look and play great. The stage layouts are each interestingly different, giving you something new to look at and changing the gameplay; the enemies are varied and stand out and all look nice and are each immediately recognizable even when the game becomes more cluttered with foes because of their distinct designs and colors; and the sound effects of the enemies and your shots fit perfectly with the visuals. Jeff Minter definitely likes that early ’80s pixel art slash vector graphics look, so Tempest was a perfect game for him to remake, and he did a fantastic job of it.
Overall, despite the occasional slowdown, as I mentioned I think that T2K has some of the best graphics ever. While playing T2K I often think, is this the best looking game ever? The look of this game is just exceptional, every element is done fantastically. When output via RGB, in my case via a Jag to SNES adapter that I use my SNES component cable with, connecting to a Retrotink 4K that I have attached to my 4K TV, T2K is so amazingly great looking that it is kind of hard to believe that it is actually a game from 1994 and not a 4K remaster of the game on my Xbox Series X, or something. I do not say that to brag about my setup; honestly, most games don’t really look different enough on the Retrotink 4K to definitely justify the high expense. Tempest 2000 is the one game that has actually made me think that maybe it was worth the money.
An Aside on the Scanlines Option
The game has a few graphics options, too. Most notably, you can turn on or off an optional scanline-style effect. So, CRT television screens work by not drawing every line, but by drawing every other line and having the lines blend together due to the nature of the technology. For a long time, despite this consoles worked by drawing every line they could, progressive scan style, because that was much easier technologically. Of course the screen would then display the results with scanlines, so your standard 224×240 or 320×240 console would display at the TV’s effective resolution of 640×480 because of the scanlines doubling the output.
However, at some point in the early ’90s developers started adding interlaced scanline output right into the consoles’ hardware, in order to increase output resolutions. By adding interlacing, you can draw 640×480 for a similar amount of graphical power required for 320×240 without interlacing. The first model of 3DO in Japan actually has a switch to turn on or off the scanlines; all other 3DOs are interlaced-only. The N64 and PS2 particularly were designed around interlaced output. The Jaguar, however, was not, and like a classic console displays a usually 320×240 image drawing all the lines.
However, in Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter tried to program a scanline option to increase resolution, but apparently couldn’t get it to entirely work so instead an option was added which calls itself a scanline option but in fact adds a sideways jitter effect to the screen, blurring the graphics. The results look alright on a CRT, but I think that on a HDTV, with an upscaler, the interlacing option makes the graphics look significantly worse, as the blurry jitter does not look great.
I do think that the ‘interlacing’ mode performs a bit better, though. I am very bad at judging framerates, but I do think that while the jittering looks kind of awful interlacing reduces slowdown. While Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional and are among the best ever, it is true that things can slow down very noticeably in areas dense with enemies, particularly as you get deeper in the game. I noticed the framerate problems less with interlacing on, though it negatively affects the graphics so much that I cannot recommend using it.
Some information in this section comes from this this thread: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/51325-why-nothing-beyond-320×240-why-no-interlaced-screens/
The Music and Sound
In addition to everything else, Tempest 2000 has an exceptional soundtrack as well. With an intense euro-style techno score, Tempest 2000 has what is easily one of my favorite game soundtracks ever. I do like the music CD version of the songs maybe slightly better than the versions on the actual cart, but the music on the cart is shockingly great! This may be music on a cartridge but it’s some of the best cart chiptunes I’ve ever heard, and it has great variety and dynamism too, as the music changes depending on which level you are on and what’s going on. There are even vocals in some songs. On that note, there are also a lot of vocal sound effects in this game too. Quite unlike your usual budget bargain-basement Atari Jaguar game, and that’s how most exclusives on this console feel, Tempest 2000 feels like a top-flight production for its time, and the audio is very much a part of that. Every song is just so fantastic! I love techno music and game soundtracks and this is one of the best ever at both.
Strategy
I would say that I am decent at T2K. I’m not amazing at it, but I’m not bad either. My best score is a bit over a million points, which I think is an above average score. I will admit that my best score on real hardware is a bit lower than on emulator, because in emulator it runs fully smoothly, but despite this I have more fun playing on real hardware so that is what I play now. My best on real hardware is about 650,000; decent, but I know I can do better. So what is the best way to play this game? It’s best to keep moving and focus on getting rid of the most dangerous foes. Always make sure to get out of lanes that are about to electrify, kill those large enemies, and try to keep the web clear if possible and focus on timing your shots correctly to take out enemies on top of the web before they get you if you can’t do that.
It’s fun to just hold left or right and fire and shoot stuff, but this won’t get you very far once you get past the first set of levels. You need to pay attention and move carefully, though you don’t want to just stay in one place either, that will lead to a quick death. Balancing this can be difficult given how fast-paced the game is, but quickly scanning the bottom of the web for what foes are coming at you while also avoiding whatever is on top is vital for survival. T2K is the perfect game to get ‘in the zone’ with. Focus, move to defeat the most important threat at each moment, and stay in the zone, staring at the monster-filled abyss in front of you. Yeah, again, there’s something about Tempest that is disturbing to look at, but there is also beauty to it. Hours feel like minutes when you’re in the zone in Tempest.
Conclusion
What more is there to say? Well, I didn’t mention the multiplayer mode, but honestly I’ve never played it. It’s just a two player versus mode though so it’s definitely not the main attraction. Beyond that though, Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar is the greatest shooting game ever made. One of gamings’ great masterpieces, T2K is unmatched in its field. The stunning visuals, the sense of tension this game evokes, the feeling of getting into the zone, the amazing soundtrack, the pretty much flawless controls, the interesting and varied level webs you will face, the varied enemies and how as you proceed new foes are added at just the right moments, everything here is peak. Tempest 2000 is an A+ classic and is flat-out one of the best games ever made. This is a top 5 all time console game without question and the only non-Nintendo game that high on my best console games list.
So that’s my review. I think I spent too much time saying ‘this game is great’ and not enough saying why, maybe I will continue working on improving this. But that’s it for now. Also please correct me if I got any facts wrong, which I may have.
