Tempest 2000: Переиздание культовой аркады

Tempest 2000 (テンペスト 2000, Tenpesuto 2000) is a tube shooter video game originally developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in North America on 13 April 1994. It was released in Europe on 27 June and in Japan on 15 December of the same year, with the Japanese release being published by Mumin Corporation. Part of Atari Corp.'s 2000 series, it is a remake by Jeff Minter of Dave Theurer's 1981 arcade game Tempest, which used Atari's QuadraScan vector color display technology. Taking control of the claw shaped Blaster spacecraft from the original game, the player has to survive and travel across multiple levels until the end of an intergalactic war, battling against a variety of enemies that appear on the playfield. Originally an exclusive for the Jaguar, Tempest 2000 was ported to MS DOS, Macintosh, Sega Saturn, PlayStation and Windows, each with several changes and additions from the original version. Tempest 2000 was critically acclaimed when it was released on the Jaguar, with critics praising the graphics, gameplay and soundtrack. It has often been called one of the best games released for the Jaguar and as of 1 April 1995, the Jaguar version has sold more than 30,000 copies during its lifetime, making it one of the best selling games for the system. Critical reception to the various ports, though still mostly positive, was more mixed than reception for the original version, owing to the aging of the game and differing opinions of the enhancements the ports offered.

Tempest 2000 modifies the gameplay of the original Tempest by adding power ups, bonus levels, more sophisticated enemy types and wildly varying web level designs. The game features a total of 100 web levels, with new frame colors and variations after every 16 levels completed. In all versions, progress is automatically saved after completing a couple of levels and players are allowed to resume by using "Keys" to return into the last stage the game saved at. There are also three gameplay modes in addition to the main game. Completing all 100 web levels in Tempest 2000 unlocks "Beastly Mode", which is a harder difficulty setting where enemies move faster, fire more often and are more resilient to the player's shots; in addition, the player's ship fires at a lower rate than in the original difficulty. The main objective of the game is to survive and score many points as long as possible by clearing the playfield on the screen from enemies that appear at the bottom of the web. The player's ship has rapid fire capacity to shoot down enemies fast within the same segment the player is positioned at. The ship is also equipped with a Superzapper smart bomb that destroys all current enemies on the playfield, while recharging the Superzapper and using it a second time destroys a random enemy on screen. New to Tempest 2000 are power ups, which appear as capsule shaped polygon objects after destroying a number of enemies or enemy bullets. Catching the power up will activate one of a number of progressively more useful capabilities such as the Particle Laser, which enhances the ship's firepower and allows much faster destruction of enemies and spikes left by Spike Layers. Jump allows the player to jump off the web to avoid enemy fire and enemies that travel along the edge of the playfield such as the Fuseball and electrified attacks from the Pulsars. The A. I. Droid is an autonomous vectorial ship that appears floating above the web and shoots at the enemies; in addition, grabbing a power up while warping into a new level will play an increasingly high pitched sound of a woman screaming "Yes! Yes! Yes!" and after arriving into the next level, the first power up that the player will receive is the A. I. Droid. Also new to the game are Warp Bonus tokens, which allow the player access into any of the three types of bonus stages after collecting three tokens and completing the level. Completing the bonus level grants 25,000 points and the player skips five levels ahead, but failing will warp the player to just one level. Outta Here! is a power up that appears randomly and collecting it will destroy all enemies on screen and warps the player into the next level, however, spikes left by Spike Layers will not be eliminated, so it is possible to lose a life by hitting one as the ship warps down the web. Between certain power ups, players can also gain 2000 point bonuses as well. Other modes include Traditional Tempest, which is a recreation of the original arcade game; Tempest Plus, which is a mix between Traditional and Tempest 2000 modes and Tempest Duel, a two player versus mode where players compete in a series of matches against each other; in addition, this mode includes an exclusive Mirror power up, which deflects shots from the rival back at him, alongside other objects to use in the playfield and regular enemies from the main game.

At a gaming convention, Atari held a conference with prospective developers for the Atari Jaguar at which they listed off arcade games that they were considering having converted to the Jaguar, asking the developers to raise their hands at ones they wanted to work on. Jeff Minter volunteered to do Tempest as it was one of his favorite games. At the launch party for the Jaguar in New York, the creator of the Atari Jaguar took Minter aside and told him that he felt Tempest 2000 was a poor demonstration of the Jaguar's capabilities. Though discouraged, Minter continued to work on the game until it was finished and also regarded the Jaguar hardware as easy to develop for. Tempest 2000 was developed in Wales. Carrie Tahquechi, wife of ex Atari producer Ted Tahquechi did the female voice work in Tempest 2000. The most common criticism with the Jaguar version of Tempest 2000 was the lack of a rotary controller similar to the controller on the Tempest arcade machine. Such a controller was planned for development and release by Atari, but no prototypes exist. who also created the music for Jeff Minter's Defender 2000 on the Jaguar as well. The music was composed in the Commodore Amiga MOD file format, although non Jaguar releases of the game played music from a CD. At the time of its release, the music soundtrack could also be purchased on CD directly from Atari. The CD was also bundled with the short lived Atari Jaguar CD to demonstrate the system's Virtual Light Machine music visualizer. It became the basis for the audio for all conversions of the game to come including the PC, PlayStation and Saturn versions. Several tracks, however, were not used in the Jaguar version due to cartridge space constraints.

Tempest 2000 was originally released for the Atari Jaguar in 1994 in all regions including Japan, where it came with an exclusive Japanese manual for the region. The game was ported to MS DOS, Macintosh, Sega Saturn and PlayStation, the latter version with several changes to the design under the name of Tempest X3. The Jaguar version was included as part of the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One, marking the game's first re release.

The MS DOS version, programmed by Imagitec Design, contains optional AdLib and Roland MT 32 versions of the music, but lacks several of the visual effects of the console versions, such as the "Melt O Vision" transition effects. The Windows version is rendered in higher resolution, and has some unique glitches, like registering bonus level scores incorrectly. The Macintosh version was developed and published by Logicware in 1998.

The Saturn version, programmed by High Voltage Software, is close to the original Jaguar version, except for the removal of the third type of bonus level. It uses most of the audio tracks from the Tempest 2000 soundtrack CD for gameplay. The speech samples were redone.