One of the most famous games to arrive from Atari during their era of gaming dominance in the late 1970s and early 80s was Tempest. Available first in arcades, and later for the Atari 2600, the concept of Tempest was to control a claw shaped space vehicle and shoot enemies that would travel from the far distance towards the front of the screen.
The game took the the space shooting of Space Invaders and gave it a 3D feel unlike anything else available at the time.
Tempest 4000 is the forth major game in the series, and much like the Recharged series of games also out on the Atari VCS and other platforms like the Nintendo Switch, this game has a retro look spruced up with neon lights and particle effects.
The core gameplay of of Tempest 4000 very much matches that of the previous games in the series, with lots of power ups and the ability to jump to avoid enemies returning from Tempest 2000 which debuted on the Atari Jaguar.
As a strange backstory note for the game, the game comes from Jeff Minter and Llamasoft who previously made Tempest 2000 and the Nuon exclusive Tempest 3000, but a few years ago made a spiritual successor TxK which lead to legal rumblings between himself and Atari.
Those concerns were resolved, and this game is actually an update of TxK which came out for the PlayStation Vita.
The soundtrack is fast and makes you feel like you’re at a rave and the graphics are psychedelic and have a fireworks display quality. Fans of the Tetris Effect or any of the Atari Recharged series will feel right at home with the presentation.
The level of effects and other things happening on screen can feel overwhelming and this isn’t always a good thing. It can make it harder to keep track of your avatar and the enemies alike.
The game has 100 levels and luckily if you die you can choose to restart at the level you died at, although you will only have the same number of lives you had when you previously tackled the level. This is fine though, because if you don’t have enough lives to make it through a level this just encourages you to go back to a previous level where you had more and try to first get through that to give yourself more lives to play with next time.
Weirdly, the level select screen felt painfully slow and when I started a play session having reached later levels in the game it took a long time to scroll through them all. I played with both the classic Atari controller and an Xbox One pad and neither seems to scroll faster.
Speaking of the Atari Classic Controller, using it allows you to take advantage of the joystick doubling as a paddle and this was my preferred way to play the game.
Conclusion
Ultimately, if you’ve ever played a Tempest game before and enjoyed it, you’re bound to enjoy this. It gives a fresh lick of paint to a classic and is a must have game for the Atari VCS. On Nintendo Switch or other platforms, this is still a recommended game for anyone looking for a modern take on a classic arcade game.
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