The History of Tempest - arcade/console documentary
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- Credit goes out to Synthwave Neon 80's Background - by Rafaël De Jongh © Yama.Digital
Please visit my Patreon at / pdbowl
The history of the innovative color vector arcade game from Atari
One of my favorite games ever. "Tempest" was featured in the music video for the Rush song "Subdivisions".
That is correct, which is why I play both quite gracefully!
In The High School Halls.
In The Shopping Malls.
Greatest band of all time.
My favorite Rush song, along with Where's My Thing? I'm not the biggest Rush fan, but I really loved them growing up. They filled a purpose that other bands couldn't/wouldn't.
@@psterud I miss that band. Neil Peart’s cancer was the reason for the bands retirement, his death almost three years ago really left a void. A drummer like no one else.
The fact that this game was featured in one of my favourite cult movies 'night of the comet' just adds to the nostalgia😁
Was about to mention this too, but you beat me. ;-) Here ua-cam.com/video/RqTdDEVWj3A/v-deo.html a snipped from the begin of the movie when a hot Catherine Mary Stewart plays it. Heads up Star Trek Voyager fans.A young Robert Beltran (Chakotay) also plays in it. Awesome 80s trash (I love it!) science-fiction movie.
While we're mentioning references to Tempest in pop culture, the game was also shown in the band RUSH's video for Subdivisions, released in 1982.
I'm still waiting for night of the comet to happen in real life
@@TheAnkMan Trash, seriously!? That sounds terribly derisive, can you just say "80's Cheese"?
Dope movie
Was a kid around 84 when my dad bought two arcade games to keep me occupied in his office-donkey Kong and Tempest! It was the best!!
Excellent
Cool. When I was a pre-teen my dad brought home a Tempest and a Donkey Kong Jr. one night. He got them as a trade-in at work and they were in our garage for a year or so before we got bored with them.
Can I borrow your dad, please?
BroqHans Yahahaha!! If he was REALLY cool he would have shared that whiskey he kept in the drawer with me!
I remember playing Tempest, at a skating rink, in ‘82. I don’t know what happened, but the game was stuck on freeplay. It was freak’in awesome, as quarters were hard to come by, back then!
Btw: Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar is the best!
That's only happened a couple of times in my lifetime but when it did it was like finding buried treasure :-)
There are dip switches inside the original arcade version to set the game to free play. One logical reason to put the game into free play mode is for arcades businesses that charge for admission into the arcade and then have some or all games set to freeplay. Another reason is have something like a "Free Game of the day", allowing people to play that game for free just for a single day; with the idea is that they would play the game a few times to learn the basics and then come back another day spending their own money.
@@nrnoble I have no explanation for how this happened - dip switches or not. I just know, everytime I pressed the button, I played as-if I stuck a quarter in the slot! I screwed up thought...I let another kid jump in, and he wouldn't give the machine up! ☹️ 😑
@@d.vaughn8990 That's pretty good. A friend said he put money into a vending machine, pressed a letter-number combo and ALL the junk food came out! Apparently the vendor left it in his mode.
I was too young to reach the controls to play Tempest. But i loved watching it. When I was tall enough to play the arcade closed.
I miss the 80s
So do I, the golden age of arcades
Look to see if you have an arcade near you.
@@MeanMrMustard1 There are a few small ones. And once a year I trip to Galloping Ghost in Chicago. Has hundreds of working machines.
@@Alamyst2011 coolness. I go to GGA a lot. I just went the other night.
@@MeanMrMustard1 That's awesome. I wish I lived closer. But I live in NY. Its almost 10 hours driven. Still worth it.
I absolutely loved this game in the arcade~! I'm not good enough at it to get very far, but enjoyed it all the same. Most of the time I would just keep spinning around the edge while constantly firing, praying that I hit the enemies before they reached the top. ( spray and pray method ) I think my favorite part is when you warp / travel to the next level; no other game had that. Thank you for this definitive review, PatmanQC~!
That's exactly what I used to do as well :-) thanks for the nice words
Excellent video.
@3:31
"Object of the game"
Initially, scoring high is important.
But that gets replaced (for me it got replaced) with getting to an even higher level -- playing a screen you never played before (and perhaps never saw anyone ever play before).
@4:22
"Superzapper -- Will clear all enemies once per level"
It will clear only the enemies that are already travelling up the tubes. The enemies that have not yet entered the tubes remain unaffected.
@5:04
"...where the player could earn up to 40 credits"
That version also allowed the player to advance to level 81 (the green circle).
I have never seen anyone reach the green circle by completing all of the levels leading to the green circle.
I agree with master players that I have heard say that the invisible levels (which immediately precede the green levels) are harder than the green levels.
I could have made it to the green levels, if only the invisible levels had one or two more starting points. I have never heard of anyone completing all of the invisible levels. But I have heard of people completing all of the green levels (and that is very, very difficult). So they probably used the cheat, to start on level 81, and played from there.
My best is getting to level 87. So there are both invisible levels and green levels that I have never seen. :-)
Cheers!
Thank you, Excellent playing my friend much better than I could ever do
Yes getting to a new level was the key
There should be a "This game history by PatmanQc" section on every emulation front end! Superb work. I want more, so I subscribe.
That's very nice of you to say, glad you enjoy the content :-) thank you
"Tempest" actually sounds more like "Tampax" than "Vortex".
Exactly what I thought too.
What I came to comment on.
I'll never look at this game the same way again. Lol
im thinking kotex
Even stranger: Tempest/Tampax, Vortex/Kotex
My dad bought a cab cheap in like 1985. I loved playing this. He even patched it out to the stereo.
I have this on the Jag, with a spinner. Nothing can replace the stock spinner on the cab however.
I agree 1000%
I always said no home port could come close to playing it at the arcade due to not having the spinner, but I recently tried it on the “Atari Vault” on PC and was very impressed by how it controls with a mouse.
theres also a mini arcade version of tempest that has a s[inner attached
Larry Bundy Jr To add to that, the original arcade version also has a mini (cabaret) version notable for its wood grain sides and optional “casket” sideart sticker.
Definitely one of my favorite arcade games of the day. I have TxK on the Vita and it's such a blast to play!
Thanks for referencing Jeff Minter (Yak the Hairy)'s work - Those later versions are superb and expand and improve the original game immensely
Absolutely, I was just telling my son about him earlier. I can recall reading European magazines in the 80s and he was always a prominent fixture in their
I really like how you compare all the ports in your videos. It's fun to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and assess the effort that the devs put into the port.
Glad you like them! I have always enjoyed that even as a kid
One thing not mentioned, in early development, the tubes themselves rotated and not the yellow shooter. The shooter remained stationary. However early playtest showed people getting motion sick from it and was scrapped.
I can just imagine it. No wonder people would get motion sick from it.
Another great video! Thank you!
Thank you so much, glad you liked it
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries i wish you could do a history of asteroids arcade for the origin of it.
I have to admit. I am very impressed with the pace of which you are growing. It was either the beginning of last week or the some time the week before when I started seeing your videos. You were at something like 8K followers, and now you are at almost 21K at my time of writing. Keep up the amazing growth and the great video work!
Yes I'm rather shocked as well is To how quickly things grew.… But I'm not complaining :-) thanks for the nice words, I really appreciate it and thanks for being a fan
At minute 16:10 you narrated "Atari tracked down Mr. Brown..." and I feared you would say: "then they handcuffed him and read him his Miranda rights". I don't feel he deserved to be cuffed. If anything he deserved more money, and possibly should have been working for a gaming company, because to do what he did, he was gifted. As are You Patman QC at making your video's. Hats off to you! God bless!
Thank you very much, that's very nice of you to say
Absolutely loved Tempest and still play it when I visit my local retro arcade.
Over 12K views and 300+ Comments!
Patman, you're totally smashing it mate!
Keep these coming buddy, because they're just getting better and better!
All the best from over the pond! 🇺🇸🇬🇧
Thank you very much my friend. Hopefully it continues to grow. Cheers from this side of the pond :-)
Im glad you did this game! Its the 1st arcade game I remember playing, at a Greyhound bus station in North Hollywood Ca., I was short and would walk with a milk crate almost a mile to play it.
nationalist818 awesome
I'd like to mention that Jeff Minter was developing a VR version of TxK. It eventually was released as Polybius, borrowing the classic name, and it's available in PSN
Thanks for the tip
SUPER VIDEO... Thank a lot... I played Tempest over and over again when much younger. It was super fast and awesome.
Thank you very much, Tempest is a classic that's for sure
Tempest, the great and powerful storm.
Tempest, an economic small to mid sized sedan or Wagon produced by Pontiac in 1961-1963. Then in 1963 the Super Duty 421 V8 was installed in the lil Tempest & Lemans making them very powerful and historically significant vehicles. In 1964 the Tempest/Lemans became mid sized and was offered with a GTO package 1964-72.
FYI Arcade 1up included tempest in two of their game cabinets. The spinner was not a spinner, but a rotary switch and it was garbage. I had to mod my cabinet with the Thunder Stick spinner I got from Amazon.
@Airock the Great I would not purchase the it unless it is real cheap because you will have to replace the rotary switch with a real spinner, and one of the games locks up(I cannot remember which one). No it does not save high scores.
My gosh PatMan, your videos are delightful
How nice of you to say, thanks a lot
Little late to the party but: I was nine, my uncle would babysit me and my brother. He said, "Do you like Tempest?" I had no idea what he meant. Around the corner of his house was a laundromat with a Tempest machine. I still see it in my head and how much awe I was in hearing and playing that game. Still my favorite arcade game. The sounds are so iconic.
Everything about the game is a mind trip. And as the series progressed so did the psychedelic colors and sounds :-)
The youtube gods must really love your channel because it is blowing up! I don't think I have ever saw a small channel get so much attention. I just found it less than a week ago and already watched almost every single video. Keep up the good work!!!
Thank you very much, I'm surprised at how quickly it's growing but I am definitely not complaining :-) glad you enjoy the content,, thanks again
Love this channel. Great job! Glad to see you are getting a huge surge of subscribers. Keep up the fantastic work.
So glad to have discovered it myself
I went to an arcade recently and they had tempest and I LOVE IT. Like the video said the controls were smooth and yet weighted, making it easy to learn and play. Definitely going back to that arcade just for tempest.
Too funny, I was just looking to see if Tempest was on your Channel yesterday and was surprised not to see it. Thanks!
How many times can I hit the thumbs up button. I put a LOT of quarters into the arcade Tempest and we have the PS-1 version. Watching this video makes me want to go hook up our PS-2 and play this thing all over again.
Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it
glad you surged from 7k to 21k in less than a month, your quality deserves it
Thank you very much, I appreciate the nice words :-)
I'm not really a gamer but back in 1981 this game hooked me as well as my college roommates and many quarters were dropped. I was never very good but still love it. And I had no idea there were updated versions, they look great to and I may have to track one down. Thank you so much for doing this video.
Absolutely, thanks for watching
Summer of 1982, I came across the Tempest machine in my local arcade and noticed there were 40 credits on it. I assumed a service tech had left them there after doing some work on the machine. I wish I could remember how long I stood there playing those credits. I wound up selling two credits to a fellow game for a single arcade token. Both parties made out!
I got the Atari Collection 1up with the better spinner, Tempest cabinet, light up marquee, and 12 games!!! Absolutely love it!!! Just rewatching some of your vids!!! Probably have them all watched by monday!!! Born in '71, I feel like ive seen almost all the games you post about!!! Keep up the great work!!!
We are the same age, it's no wonder we like the same type of games. Thanks for watching
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries You keep putting them up, I'll keep knocking them down!!!
Great job. Currently addicted to your videos!!!
Thank you so much appreciate the nice words
Excellent video! Seeing an actual vector arcade in person is an experience that you can't reproduce in a LCD monitor, it was soo cool... and it was our 3D, back in the days... great memories.
It absolutely was,I'm really surprised the never made it for the VECTREX system. It would've been perfect for it
An arcade I went to back in the day had 4 or 5 Tempest machines side by side they were so popular.
I was in Naval Nuclear Power School when this game came out. Myself and two buddies played for hours on a few quarters after months of training on the thing. We were a ble to get to the invisible levels occasionally. I miss the early 80's.
Excellent playing my friend much better than I could do
The tracers you got from tempest and LSD were amazing back in the day.
LOL
You're so thorough with your research that it's so hard ( that's what she said 😃) to find any holes in your presentation. Thanks again, Man!
LOL, that's nice of you to say. Thanks :-)
Tempest 2000 was the reason I bought a Jaguar back in the day. Loved that game! going to have to check out the 4k on the xboxone I had no idea there was a new version available.
It's a really good version
I can't get enough of your content. You deserve so many more subscribers then you currently have.
I've never been much of a fan of Tempest. Although that said I've only ever played it a few times so not really enough to actually gauge an opinion on it to be fair.
Thank you very much, I appreciate the nice words
"Mr. Minter's drugs were also updated." Hah! That gave me a real good laugh. Thank you sir!
LOL, glad you enjoyed it :-)
4000 is on Switch and it's phenomenal, it's basically a updated Jag version and as far as I can tell it's the exact same music. Great video as always
Excellent, thanks for the info. Thank you
When this game arrived it was so cool! I spend a lot of time with this game!
So did I, it was fantastic
Oh yeah!!!! My favorite all time arcade game ! Thank You for putting this video together!
Thank you for watching
I just found your channel and have been watching all the videos. Being born in the 80s and growing up in the 90s, arcades were a huge part of my childhood. I really miss arcades being around, luckily for me I only live about an hour and a half away from the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois.
I live about three hours from there but never have gone. It would be an awesome trip that's for sure. Glad you enjoy my channel so much
I just started playing this game, recently, on my Raspberry Pi, and I love it.
I was part of the Atari Jaguar exhibition booth in Malmö Sweden when the Jag was released. I don't recall the name of the exhibition, but I do remember the booth being next to Nintendo. We turned up the massive sound equipment to 11 and blasted Tempest 2000 nonstop. It was fantastic.
(We also found out which remotes worked on Nintendo's TVs and turned them off every now and then - but don't tell anyone!)
LOL, that is hilarious. That would have been sweet to see Tempest 2000 cranked up to 11 :-)
I remember when I was a kid, the warp to the next level was cool and a little scary because I wasn’t all that confident that I got all the spike things
LOL, I think I felt the same way back then
You can shoot your way thru the spikes, as long as the spikes are not that long. :)
TEMPEST was The Game when I was a kid, I clearly remember it in my hometown arcade, and when 1Up released it, I had to have that in my home, the memories it brings back are wonderful. I have never seen TEMPEST 2 - I'll have to see if I have it in my Batocera build!
As another resident of the QC, always loved this game. Great work
Thank you fellow Quad citizen
That "Space Invade 3d" game looked fun and playable to me
Wow. I didn't know Tempest was still alive. The one version I played was Tempest 2000 for the Playstation.
One of my dad's favorite games. It was really fun to see in the arcade.
Absolutely, a lot of fun
Man, I miss the sound of all those different games going on in a full arcade, with the black lites, and the "cosmos" carpet, and the smell of ozone. I'd do anything to be able to experience that again!
Good news, there are arcades popping up everywhere. See if there any near you. Check out Ghostlord, the official channel of Galloping Ghost arcade in Brookfield, IL. They are the biggest arcade in the world. Over 750 games and counting.
The Golden age of arcades :-)
There's just so much appealing about Tempest. Like Zaxxon, it's a clever use of the technology of the time to create a beautiful sense of depth. But it's also a great game with wonderful control.
I agree 100%. It's got everything :-)
Thank you for doing this video, I loved this game back in the day. It was one of the few games I was actually good at.
Thank you for watching
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries Keep uploading 'em and I'll keep watching! I love this series.
Thanks for posting this. One of my favorite games period!
Thank you for watching
What a classic, still remember playing Tempest at the Arcade.
Very nice ports too, thanks for showing all those visual+sound trips on several platforms.
The spinner was fundamental for the speedy and precise gameplay.
In another genre, Pong, Breakout and Arkanoid were made for the spinner.
Cheers from 🇵🇹
Absolutely, thanks for watching
Holy cow! Thankyou! Thankyou! Thanks so very much!
Thanks for watching
Just subscribed. Love your videos sir. Thanks for these amazing job!
Thanks for the nice words, welcome aboard :-)
You've done some fantastic work, but I got it met. This is your best one. Keep up the great job.
Thank you very much for the nice words
I was just watching another video of yours and it mentioned Bubble Bobble. Can't wait until you do a documentary on it and its sequels.
I'm sure I will get to it eventually
The Michael Scott "That's what she said" never gets old. I am simple and immature though. 😉
Tempest 2000... a classic with, probably, the best soundtrack ever.
I agree, it was fantastic
If the adjective visceral needs a game, Jeff Minter defined it in Tempest for the Jag, and again on Tempest 4000. Very fun game - play loud!
I really like your voice. It has a Disneyland ride recording for example Haunted mansion that explains the ride. Thanks for the video
Thanks for the nice words, glad you enjoyed it
Working on a psychedelic blaster myself, I find myself looking up videos of Tempest. A truly influential game.
Great game. Liked the nes port " Gyruss " . Great video as always.
Thank you, gyrus is one of my all-time favorite shooters
Indy 500 was a game from 1977, the year the Atari VCS came out and came with 2 steering controllers, and was probably more expensive due to that. I think I got it in 1981 without realizing it. Unfortunately, no other games used the controllers. They could have updated it to put out Tempest in 1982 with either a 2-for-1 with the controllers and Indy 500, or by mail order through the club like they did for Crazy Climber.
I’m REALLY enjoying your videos! Such a good style of of documentaries
Thank you so much, I appreciate the nice words
Great retrospective and wow, that 2600 version! :)
TheBigPayback - Slot Machine Videos That Atari VCS version has a recent history of being included in a bonus in most Atari anthologies, if you’d like to give it a try.
@@RonnieBarzel Very cool, thanks for passing along!
Although it is not an official game, there is a version of Tempest for the Tandy CoCo / Dragon 32 called Storm. It wasn't great but it was one of the only games I owned when I first got the machine so I played it a lot.
Thanks for the tip
the Vectrex system had a prototype version of this called Abyss
Yes, but I don't usually put clothes my videos otherwise it would've included
I own the original arcade Tempest cab, which I bought in 1983. I had no idea that there were so many versions of Tempest until watching this video. I was aware of a few of them. What I can say, no spinner, no play, for me. The design of the game requires a spinner, thus any attempts to play with other types of controls is, at best, playing with a 50% disability. Like playing Donkey Kong without a joystick, who would joy that? IMO, Tempest is the best arcade ever designed from the era of the late 1970s through the 1980s.
Congrats on the continued channel success, Pat. And thank you for another great video. Since I'm now an official Patreon supporter I do, hereby, re-open my Bezerk request for a future video. :)
Tempest! I learned of this game thanks to the video for "Subdivisions" by Rush. They had it at my local arcade, so I checked it out. It became one of my favorite childhood games. Those stupid red bowties, though.
LOL, I hear you:-)
It was a sad day when you dropped a quarter in a Tempest coin slot and discovered the bearings of the spinner were shot and you couldn’t smooth-spin your way out of a bind. The knob would just shudder and stop quickly.
LOL, that's happened to me a few times
I was probably the cause of that in a few cabinets lol
I still have my Jaguar version of Tempest. It really is one of the best games for that system and now I want to play the PlayStation version
It's really good
I loved the music in the Jaguar game.
JW Durbin.... I hear that cuz : )
Tempest 2000 has also been ported to Android although the touchscreen controls aren't very good and so you really need a controller to play it...
@arbereshe ha .. will do : ).....
Never played it, remember seeing it back in the day. Need to check out this classic. Great video.
Yes you do. But check to see if you have any arcades near you. They're popping up again. One is likely to have Tempest.
Thank you very much, but you enjoyed
Great job on the video, and amusing, but insightful, commentary throughout. As I mentioned on Patreon, I swear I played a "blocky" port of this on the Amiga 500 back in the day, but now I can't find any mention of it anywhere. Maybe the developer wasn't the only one overdoing the drugs back then? Haha. Cheers, and thanks!
Spectrum looks okay except for the lack of color; but the spectrum was marketed as a color machine! Fun Fact: The arcade version of Tempest was coded in 6502 Assembly language and run on a 6502A 8-bit processor, running at 1.5KHZ. Additionally, the mainboard has a section called the "Mathbox" which is a cluster of transistor arrays (made by AMD and others) which helps perform the calculations for the 3D perspective view on the display.
I wish you had shown the bonus "Warp" zone on Tempest 2000 for Jaguar. That would have really shown how good his drugs were!
I remember or malls Aladdin's castle had six to ten of these new and shortly after some were replaced by SPACE DUEL had to research that name as 1982 is a distant memory.
Trick to game was having 3 players play as one. One person just to smash the fire keys, one to just rotate constantly and one to hit the nuke as soon as all the aliens were on the grid...
I have never tried that
I play it on the AtGames Arcade Legends stand up machine - plays brilliantly! the machine comes with spinners and a trackerball too!
Wow, This brings back memories of80's arcades, I once got this game to spit out about 20 free credits, I wasn't the best at this game but I could play for long periods cycling through blue, yellow, red, and white and get my three initials on the boards.
Great video! I'm 52 now and got my personal record on Tempest a few weeks ago at a retro arcade. Gotta have a spinner control for this one! Would like to learn more about Jeff Minter and Llamasoft - maybe a good topic for another video? Brute force hack Tempest 2 was new info for me!
Glad you enjoyed it, if there is enough demand for its I would do a video on Jeff Minter
Can you do a video on Major Havoc? It was an arcade conversation of Tempest and had various levels and mini games with it.
I was about 12 when this came out. It was so awesome at the time.
It's definitely a classicStill holds up today
another great video and one of my favorite games, obviously 😁
Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed it
Tempest is one of the best vector games ever produced and definitely in Atari's Top Five games, period.
The original game still plays well even today but I think the sequel Tempest 2000 and the homebrew PC remake, Typhoon, also advance the graphics and make it contemporary again. There's also a Tempest 3000 exclusive to PS1 that's bundled on the PS1 game disc for Tempest 2000. This is one of the few PS1 game discs I wish I had kept.
I highly recommend looking for Typhoon, btw. Typhoon 2001_r3992 is the latest revision but it still plays in Windows 10. I imagine you can set it up with a dial controller (IF you can make it work with a USB adapter) or just use a joystick like I do. You can also play Typhoon with your keyboard if you don't want to bother installing a digital controller. I still prefer a digital controller over the keyboard...
You really have to play Tempest on a modern LCD monitor or old high-definition CRT screen made for PC. It just does not display well on the old standard definition CRT screens. Vector games look better on modern display screens than CRT. They used to make specific vector monitors for these games and the old Vectrex Game System (one of a very few game systems I wish I'd had the chance to own; I love vector games!). The vector screen monitors are kind of unnecessary and the modern LCD hi-def screens do a decent job with vector graphics now.
Yes I talk about all the other official versions of tempest in my video. I will check out TyphoonThanks for the tip
Tempest is also seen in Rush’s music video for Subdivisions.
Thank you
Great video, One that's definitely at the top of my wish list.
Thank you very much, I agree you gotta feel that spinner in your hands to get the full experience
One thing true of these vector games (like Tempest, Asteroids, Star Wars, Star Castle, etc), is that they were way, way higher "resolution" than the traditional raster based games of the era. The resolution was essentially as high as the CRT could display, and was naturally anti-aliased by the slight fuzziness of CRTs. That is one of the reasons Tempest versions look so bad on the older console systems, because they were natively limited to some maximum resolution of the console itself. IMO the Playstation version is the first that can match the apparent resolution of the original arcade game, which was practically an eternity (around 15 years) after the arcade game was released.
Thanks for the info, I was not aware of that
Nice video. I was hoping you'd share a little bit something about the Tempest appearance on the classic Rush video for the song "Subdivisions".