Re: Tempest Gameplay Question

>
>My guess is that since the last color was to be the last color played
>forever, the designer wanted those levels to reflect the "truest" playing
>experience. The black levels are cool and novel, but they have a decidedly
>different feel from the rest of the game.

Or maybe they just figured that nobody would ever be able to survive at the
difficulty of the black and green figures, so they wanted to make sure
everyone could at least see how cool the black figures look:)...

>
>Sounds like fun. Playing doubles in the upper greens is always a blast (as
>Noel can attest <g>).

Anytime you're ready:)! I do go back east (to Philadelphia) about once a
year to visit relatives. What is it...about a 5-6 hour drive to where you
are in the Boston area I believe?

>
>Very good point. I have ended a lot of games at 999,998 (or 0 <g>) in my
>time. ;-) When I was in high school, I was a real bastard when it came to
>"owning" Tempest machines. I traveled around to almost every arcade in a 50
>mile radius and left my signature "999,999 ELC" in the top three places on
>every Tempest machine I could find. I can remember going to the Time Out
>arcade at the Springfield Mall in northern Virginia one time and spending
>all day playing their *four* Tempests up to green and leaving my mark.
>:-) I had no greater joy than going toe to toe with the local Tempest
>champ (every arcade had one of those, right? <g>) and wiping their scores
>off the board.

I kind of fulfilled this role on the West Coast (and a few places in the
Philadelphia area when I was visiting relatives there about once a year or
so back then). Although I wasn't quite as tenacious as you from the sound
of it, it was undeniably fun (and evil:)) to destroy the local Tempest
champs, especially when they were usually several years older than me at
the time (I was about 15-16). That thrill of playing while others watch is
largely a thing of the past:(, but I do get a small taste of it every year
at CA Extreme (which was just 2 weekends ago and a LOT of fun...even
brought a few of my "babies" along including the Tempest)!

>No kidding. If it were possible to do that, we should petition Twin
>Galaxies to use that ROM revision for any new record attempts. It used to
>really piss me off when I would see the game magazines listing high scores
>for Tempest in the 9-11 million range (which is basically impossible
>without cheating or lying). The best that I ever did was a three hour, 2.2
>million game starting from level 81 (with standard settings). I could see
>someone possibly getting 3-5 million which would take approximately 5-10
>hours of uninterrupted, flawless play. Beyond that, and I don't see how it
>would be humanly possible.

Hmm...you do have me beat there...my best game was back around 1982 or so
when I got 1.8 million under the same conditions that you describe.
<Dramatic pause> It was a cool, summer night and the moon was full...just
kidding:). Seriously, I don't remember how long it took, but I do remember
it was very draining! I just kept going and going...I even remember
getting down to my last man at one point, and then having an almost
miraculous run where I built back up to 5 extra guys!

But I do think it really helped to have people watching as now that I
usually only play at home with no one around, I just can't muster the
necessary mindset to attempt another run at a high score. Also, when I
play nowadays, I have the machine set on demo mode and I just start right
away at the black and/or green levels even though the machine doesn't keep
track of high scores in this mode. Maybe someday...

>My ultimate Tempest revision would have the following mods:
>
>1) Seven digits of scoring (or maybe eight, if some of the other mods are
>in effect)
>2) No limitation on the number of lives that you could build up (up to 255
>I suppose)
>3) Open level select (already implemented by the Tempest Code Project) so
>that you could start on green anytime you wanted.
>4) Have the high score display also record the last level played. In the
>case of level 99, count how many times it has been played.
>

While I whole-heartedly agree with numbers 1, 3 and 4, I'm not so sure I'd
want to be able to earn unlimited extra men. I have always liked that
limitation as it kept even the best possible games down to semi-reasonable
times (unlike the reports on many other games like Asteroids, Defender, and
Robotron where people took several days to get their high scores). Even
back then, I didn't have that kind of time as my parents made sure my
homework got done and my grades stayed high. As an adult (yeah, right), my
time is of course even more constrained. I suppose that alteration could
be added, but I would want the option to be able to disable it. Just my
opinion.

Jonathan

Jonathan Koolpe
Staff Research Associate
University of California, San Francisco
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
Tel: (415) 476-9371 Fax: (415) 476-8201
mail to: jkoolpe@itsa.ucsf.edu

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Received on Wed Oct 11 15:09:06 2000