Review by: Brian Clair

The strangest thing happened today, one of the local radio stations was playing music from the 1980′s today and I’m playing a game reborn from 1981. What a flashback! I think Interplay summed it up best when they said, “The first time you did it you were excited, frustrated, and you lasted about 10 seconds. It’s back. Will you be any better?” For Tempest, that infernal, quarter eating, arcade demon has returned in the form of Tempest 2000. Are you ready to test your hand to eye coordination again on one of the classics? Let’s find out…

Perhaps the most noticeable thing you see are the new graphics the game has been equipped with (I played the Win95 version, just so you know). The next thing that’ll hit your senses is the new soundtrack but we’ll discuss this stuff later. What you get in this remake are actually 3 games: Tempest 2000 – which adds new enemies, new weapons, lots of power-ups, and over 100 different webs (the web is the name of the game map); Tempest Plus which is a combination of the original Tempest and Tempest 2000 – this version has 3 modes: single player, A.I. Droid (a helper droid who will help blast all the bad guys), and multiplayer with a friend; and lastly Tempest Duel where you play against a friend.

It’s Tempest 2000 though that is really impressive and has the most features. The 2000 version contains lots of power-ups and bonuses including special bonus modes like: Beastly Mode – you can play this after you beat all of the 100 first levels and the difference is that your shots are slower and occur in smaller bursts while the enemies speed up and are smarter; then there’s the Warp Bonus Round which occurs when you collect 3 warp power-ups – this allows you to jump ahead 5 levels. Of course, the motivation behind all of this is simple and also straight from the ’80′s – to amass lots of points! The basic objective is to shoot the enemies as they travel down the web at you (you’re on the rim). Some of the enemy will shoot back or try to capture you. What makes the game so challenging is that you have to move around the web fast enough to get all of the enemy which is very difficult.