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RE: Why Vector Graphics Once Ruled the Arcade
I remember those old vector graphics arcade games. Tempest was hypnotic, talk about getting into the zone – I remember spending hours on that thing, jacked up on 39 cent Big Gulps and handfuls of Starbursts.
good times ….
You and me both. The higher levels of that game can only properly be played by a hyperactive teenager at the peak of a sugar rush.
I played tempest remastered, aka Tempest X3 and Tempest 2000 very heavily. I never played the original arcade game, though I've played that mode on console. Tempest remastered is one of my favorite classic shooters. I also played Geometry Wars Galaxies very heavily. I have some record high scores on that game, or did last time I checked a few years back. It only sold like 100k copies, so not that big of a player base, but still a game I love. Very very fast. It's like the optimal level of stimuli for me.
We have some overlap in taste it would seem. Tempest 2000 was my favorite Jaguar game and I bought a used Nuon just for Tempest 3000. There's also Space Giraffe on Steam or Xbox 360 which is a spiritual successor by the same man (Jeff Minter) and supposedly Tempest 4000 is on the way.
Geometry Wars was great fun for the first two iterations but soon lost me after that. Geometry Wars Dimensions for Android was the last one I played and I couldn't get into it anymore for some reason. I guess for me the magic died.
I was bad at geometry wars with pad, but with the wiimote I was really, really good. Just way more accurate with my whole hand than my thumbs--which is funny, seeing as how I am usually all thumbs. I bought my friends Jaguar off of him in like 1996 just to play Tempest 2000. Lol at that joystick!
If you've still got your Jag, there are custom analogue rotary dials people make for it specifically to play Tempest 2000, which has support for such a controller coded in, as Jeff Minter anticipated people would make such controllers later on.