ArcadePerfect
Tempest
Dave Theurer's geometric nightmare
Atari1981Shooter, Arcade
Emulator
MAME
Quality
Perfect
💿
Bring Your Own ROM
The Story
Dave Theurer designed Tempest to capture a recurring nightmare: monsters crawling up out of a hole toward him. The game uses a rotary spinner controller, vector graphics, and abstract geometric enemies that claw their way up the playfield toward your claw at the rim. No other arcade game from 1981 looks or feels anything like Tempest. The color vector display, the spinner's physical feedback, the geometric abstraction — it arrived fully formed from a specific fever dream.
Tags
shootervectorclassicspinner-controller