Atari Tempest Views
Tempest is an arcade game by Atari Inc., originally designed and programmed by David Theurer. Released in October, 1981,[1] it was fairly popular and had several ports and sequels. The game is also notable for being the first video game with a selectable level of difficulty (determined by the initial starting level). The game is a tube shooter, a type of shoot 'em up where the environment is fixed and viewed from a three-dimensional perspective.
Tempest introduced several new features for its time. It was one of the first video games to use Atari's Color-QuadraScan vector display technology (along with Space Duel, which was released around the same time). It was also the first game to allow the player to choose their starting level (a system Atari dubbed SkillStep ). This feature would increase the maximum starting level depending on the player's performance in the previous game, essentially allowing the player to continue, a feature that became a standard in later video games. Finally, Tempest was one of the first video games to sport a progressive level design in which the levels themselves varied rather than giving the player the same level with increasing difficulty levels.
Tempest is an arcade game by Atari from the early 80s, programmed and designed by Dave Theurer. It originally was to be a 3D-Space Invaders clone called 'Vortex', but after the engineers did not come back to play the game (which was kind of a quality test at Atari back then), Dave changed it into something different and unique. The first prototype had the wireframe web spinning and the claw remaining fixed. Since that caused motion sickness after a while it was changed around.
Atari Tempest Images
