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Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

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Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#41

Post by jeroennoels »

joezydeco wrote: post #16
dylan604 wrote: post #6

I knew a guy that specialized in repairing these types of games. I was fascinated in hearing about how the game controlled the scanning of the electron beam from the normal CRT horizontal scan. I was always curious of what was the genesis for the idea to use a CRT in this way. The first thing I had always thought about was sending this method of scanning an audio signal to let it draw the sound. For the time period,…

You'll definitely want to read Jed Margolin's "The Secret Life of Vector Generators" http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm And "The Secret Life of XY Monitors" http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm (Jed was an Atari engineer during the vector era and beyond)

Thanks for sharing this! It instantly brings back good memories -- running simple BASIC programs when I was a kid, on a tektronix 4050 workstation my dad brought home from time to time (he worked for tektronix during the eighties). I believe it had something similar to these XY displays. Those smooth lines and distinct glow... you have to see it with your own eyes.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#43

Post by mcndjxlefnd »

Mistletoe wrote: post #39
trailbits wrote: post #27

Best. Game. Ever. Tempest came out when I was in high school, and my buddy and I would rather skip lunch and play this instead of eat each day. We produced a little booklet of each level we kept in our wallets so we could jot down where we had the best luck leaving the flipper while we fired away. I was thrilled to find a working Tempest at the “Game Master” exhibit in San Diego's Balboa Park last summer.

I don't think we could ever make people from this generation understand how awesome and mind grabbing this game was back then. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I just wanted to watch it, mesmerized.

I was born in 1987 and I totally get it. This has always been my favorite retro game; I first encountered it for PS2 I think. I've only found one multicade machine at a local juice bar that had it. I've never before or since been devoted to maintaining high score on a public machine like that before. Unfortunately, that machine is now gone.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#44

Post by igravious »

empath75 wrote: post #5

Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar is still one of my favorite games of all time. I can’t think of any other game that can get me into that pure zen mind/no-mind state as quickly and for as long. I was playing it at the video games exhibit at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago and setting all the high scores and eventually a small audience was watching me play and asking me questions about it. I wasn’t sure if the g…

Omg that's a blast from the past! Is it possible I played this on a speccy 48k? Forty Eight K! Someone's uploaded the OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ9QHGaxdig

Jeff Minter is God. What was the deal with llamas? Llamatron, is there a cooler name?

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#45

Post by ZenoArrow »

mcndjxlefnd wrote: post #43
Mistletoe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we could ever make people from this generation understand how awesome and mind grabbing this game was back then. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I just wanted to watch it, mesmerized.

I was born in 1987 and I totally get it. This has always been my favorite retro game; I first encountered it for PS2 I think. I've only found one multicade machine at a local juice bar that had it. I've never before or since been devoted to maintaining high score on a public machine like that before. Unfortunately, that machine is now gone.

I remember going to a classic games exhibition in London around the year 2000, I played Tempest for the first time there, it was one of my favourite games I played at the show.

Jeff Minter is clearly a fan as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePW33ZmC04c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS9alQbHHPk

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#46

Post by ZenoArrow »

egypturnash wrote: post #19
empath75 wrote: post #5

Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar is still one of my favorite games of all time. I can’t think of any other game that can get me into that pure zen mind/no-mind state as quickly and for as long. I was playing it at the video games exhibit at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago and setting all the high scores and eventually a small audience was watching me play and asking me questions about it. I wasn’t sure if the g…

Have you tried Jeff Minter's other riffs on Tempest and/or any of his other games? Jeff did T2k; his other Tempest riffs include Space Giraffe (360/PC), TXK (PSVita), and Tempest 4000 (forthcoming, maybe). I also highly recommend Polybius (ps4, vr helmet optional)

Jeff Minter also created Tempest 3K, but as other commenters have already pointed out, it was for a very obscure system (the Nuon).

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#47

Post by throwaway7645 »

_lbaq wrote: post #38

Think your compiler works too slow ? "The programmer had to do everything: Write the whole operating system from scratch, design all the graphics, write the tools to do the graphics, create sound tools, and do the sound design – everything from scratch for every game….I’d write the code on programming sheets and turn it in to the typists who’d type them in to a DEC computer, then give us a tape with the resulting com…

Was Forth just for debugging the hardware, or did the full thing run in Forth?

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#48

Post by crispyambulance »

trailbits wrote: post #27

Best. Game. Ever. Tempest came out when I was in high school, and my buddy and I would rather skip lunch and play this instead of eat each day. We produced a little booklet of each level we kept in our wallets so we could jot down where we had the best luck leaving the flipper while we fired away. I was thrilled to find a working Tempest at the “Game Master” exhibit in San Diego's Balboa Park last summer.

Goddamnit yes!

Raw, minimalistic, and utterly satisfying. Atari did so much with so little. The end of every level felt like a rush of endorphins.

This needs a youtube link for the young ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af4uPgYcm04 [this one seem to capture the bass in the audio effects]

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#49

Post by 0x445442 »

trailbits wrote: post #27

Best. Game. Ever. Tempest came out when I was in high school, and my buddy and I would rather skip lunch and play this instead of eat each day. We produced a little booklet of each level we kept in our wallets so we could jot down where we had the best luck leaving the flipper while we fired away. I was thrilled to find a working Tempest at the “Game Master” exhibit in San Diego's Balboa Park last summer.

I'm fortunate enough to live a few miles from this place... https://www.yelp.com/biz/starfighters-arcade-mesa?adjust_cre...

They have Tempest as well.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#50

Post by bpd1069 »

mey wrote: post #25
SwellJoe wrote: post #22

In my memory the sound of an arcade is Tempest. If I think about it for a moment, other sounds come into focus, but Tempest is the first and primary sound I can identify. Tempest epitomizes early arcade games, to me. It was subject to all the same technical limits of games of the era, but it seemed to be apart from them; there's nothing you'd need to add to make it better. The sound and the look of it, from the intro…

May I suggest, http://plork.princeton.edu/listen/green/ and listen to "The Future of Fun (1983)"

Hexstatic - Vector: https://youtu.be/PXVUa6b-r4Q

This is the best video/music I have heard that captures the feeling of the early arcade from my childhood.

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