Tempest
March 3, 2025
Tempest is a 1981 arcade video game by Atari, Inc., designed and programmed by Dave Theurer. It occurs on a three-dimensional surface divided into lanes, sometimes as a closed tube, and viewed from one end. The player controls a claw-shaped “blaster” that sits on the edge of the surface, snapping from segment to segment as a rotary knob is turned, and can fire blaster shots to destroy enemies and obstacles by pressing a button.
It was one of the first games to use Atari’s Color-Quadra Scan vector display technology. It was also the first to let players choose their starting level (a system Atari called “SkillStep”). This feature increases the preferred starting level, which could also be used to let the player continue the previous game if they wished. The first video games that had a progressive level design were the levels that varied rather than gave the player the same layout with increasing difficulty.
