Tempest

So just what is Tempest?
At 25 years old, Tempest is an exercise in pure abstract gaming that dates way back to 1981. It was, for me at least, the first "hardcore" game that I had ever played and marked a real turning point in the arcade experience. Other arcade games before then were very primitive in design terms, and lacked what I would call "pure" gameplay. And this is where Tempest stands out ... simple, elegant and hugely addictive - it made you feel like a real bad-ass gamer. In short, in 1981, Tempest rocked the arcade scene.

Nowadays, I'm lucky enough to actually own a genuine Tempest arcade machine here at home. God has truly been kind to me.

Trivia quoted from MAME history
Tempest was an awesome arcade game that transported the player into abstract realms of space. Soaring into its third decade of life, Tempest is still the favorite of devotees who seek to become one with this adventure through hyperspace. Approximately 29,900 units were produced. Tempest sold approximately 20,000 units to distributors before it was even released.

Tempest was the first game to use 'Color-Quadrascan' and 'Skill-Step', both features unique to Atari vector games. Tempest was originally a 3-D "Space Invaders" clone called 'Vortex', but was changed when the other engineers didn't come back to play the game. This was kind of a test for an Atari game; if the engineers kept coming back to play a new game, it was considered a hit.

The first prototype of the game had the shape wireframe spinning and the gunner remaining stationary, but that caused motion sickness after a period of time so it was changed around.

The Creation of Tempest: Dave Theurer, who designed the game and wrote the software, said his original intention was to make a first-person perspective of the "Space Invaders" game, but he ended up doing something completely new and different. Rich Adam: "Dave implemented a first-person "Space Invaders". Everybody played it but they didn't keep coming back. You could tell when you had something cool, the engineers kept coming back. This was good and bad because there were times when you wanted to work on your game and everybody would want to be playing it. But when he was doing the first-person "Space Invaders", Dave didn't run into this problem of everyone wanting to play the game... and he said to himself: 'Well, maybe this isn't working. What can I do?' Then I came in one day and all of a sudden he had this round tube with these things coming up it. I said, 'What the heck is that Dave?' He said, 'I don't know. Aliens from the center of the Earth? I don't know.' I think he said something about having had a dream about it. I said, 'How does it work?' He said, 'I don't know. They're coming up around the edge of this thing and you're trying to blow them away.' He just sort of started out with this concept and took it from there. I can see why he would say that Tempest was certainly his proudest achievement. He worked extremely hard on that. It's pure creation from his own brain"

Remembrances from the Video Game Masters: Although known for his hard work and for his ability to focus on and conquer exceedingly tough software problems, Dave Theurer looks back upon his days at Atari as having been fun and rewarding. Dave Theurer: "It was just so exciting working on these new games. All my life I loved explosions. When I went to college I was a chemistry major because I wanted to do something where I could make explosions. When I was a kid I had a chemistry set and I'd blow stuff up all the time. Eventually, you learn that you can't really do that in real life, so the next best thing is to do it on the screen, so here I was blowing stuff up on the screen. Simulating real life is fun too. It's almost like you can create your own universe. Well, you are creating your own universe. That's rewarding, to see something come alive"

Playing games, both video and pinball, was a constant part of life for the engineers at Atari. Dan Pliskin: "In the morning, I used to go in and I'd make up a pot of Italian roast or French roast coffee and pour myself a big mug. Then I'd go and sit it on a pinball machine and drink coffee and play pinball until scores got up to, like, a couple hundred thousand. That would be my indication that I was sharp enough to go and design something"

Popular from the Start: Tempest was a game that immediately captivated people from the very start. Lyle Rains: "Like a number of these games that were very addictive, the Tempest controls were good enough to where once you learned how to manipulate them you could almost become one with the machine. That is, a good Tempest player gets to spin that knob and do the firing in the right time and get into sync with the machine or get into a rhythm. I don't know exactly what to call it, but you were so close to the action that part of you entered the experience. You forgot about what was going on around you and you were just there. And you could get very good at it. I think what people like is the ability to accomplish amazing things"

The Great 25-Cent Escape: Not only did players often find a sense of welcome escape in the video games they played, but this was very much the intention of some of the great game designers. Dave Theurer: "I want to design it for a guy who's totally frazzled by his job and needs a way to temporarily escape. There's a certain class of games... where you just get into a trance when you're playing them. As long as you're in this trance you'll do fine"

Tempest was available in three different dedicated cabinets. An upright, a cabaret, and a cocktail. The upright machine came in a nice arrow shaped cabinet that featured one long straight angled line from the top of the cabinet to the bottom of the control panel. This design makes it very easy to spot converted Tempest cabinets. The Tempest marquee had a whole bunch of glowing purple lines along with an evil looking crawly thing that looked like it was coming right at you. The sideart had kind of a spacey look to it, with a bunch of red lines radiating out from a central point that had monsters crawling out of it! The control panel had more spacey lines and holes graphics, along with an optical spinner and a pair of fire buttons. The cocktail version was a black square table with a woodgrain top. It had red lines and instructions underneath the glass, with player control panels on either side. For some reason the monitors on these were installed butted up against one side, instead of centered. Both the cocktail and the upright used a color X-Y monitor.

The default high score screen of "Cyberball 2072" features names of many Atari arcade games, including TEMPEST.

A Tempest unit appears in the 1982 movie 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High', in the 1983 movie 'Twilight Zone - The Movie', in the 1983 movie 'Joysticks', in the 1984 movie 'Night of the Comet', in the 1986 movie 'Running Scared', in the 1986 movie 'Maximum Overdrive' (A cocktail cabinet) and in the 1987 movie 'Death Wish 4 - The Crackdown'.

A Tempest unit appears in the music video 'Subdivisions' by RUSH

Tempest Arcade Machine
Tempest (12-04-81) [Bulletin] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest (CO-190-01) [New Roms - Program] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest (DP-190 2nd Printing) [Drawing Package] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest (TM-190 1st Printing) [Op-Maint-Serv-Parts] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest (TM-190 2nd Printing) [Op-Maint-Serv-Parts] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest (TM-195 2nd Printing) [Troubleshooting] - Atari Tempest documentation
Tempest [Backdoor Sheet] - Atari Tempest documentation
Wells-Gardner 6100 XY Quadrascan (TM-183) [Serv-Schem-Part] - Atari monitor documentation
Wells-Gardner 6100 Monitor FAQ - First class FAQ for the monitor most Tempest machines use
Rocket Ranch - An excellent Tempest fan site

Tempest Derivatives
Tempest 1000 - Free Java version of Tempest
Tempest 2000 - Free version of the original Tempest 2000 released in 1995
Tsunami 2010 - Free version of a new Tempest derivative released in 2003