Tempest 4000

If I hadn't played Tempest 2000 I'd probably love this. While this looks and sounds awesome - the whole thing just feels sluggish and is really not helped by the momentum placed on the controls. It just feels 'wrong' to be honest. Get Atari 50 instead and play 2k.

Controls and Music ruin it. Lack of mouse controls is not great. But on top of that the joystick controls seem to have an annoying inertia to it in order to kinda poorly emulate fighting against a trackball's inertia. But you never get the precision of a trackball or mouse, so clearly that doesn't work out. The visuals are generally pretty great and the gameplay is pretty timeless. It doesn't stray too far from the original formula, doesn't offer multiple modes of various modernity like some retro revival packages. Which would be okay if the core experience was absolutely mind-blowing. But I'm not personally a fan of where they went with the music. It sounds like generic 90s techno, alluding to neither the period of the original tempest, nor the era of this product's release, making it seem a sort of piece out-of-time. The graphics also, although pretty, could all probably have been done in 1999. If they add mouse controls and you turn off the music, it's basically a pretty (but not re-inventive) visual upgrade to the original tempest, but as-is it's a downgrade overall. Pricey too.

Visually it does the job and I want to love it, but it's basically unplayable with normal controllers. If you have some kind of paddle/spin knob that grants you precision control, it might be more fun.

Great game, Captures the feeling of the original, just beautiful work. Didn't know they sold spinners, will look into getting one if they add support. If its not in there would also dig an 'old school' mode to be able to go to pure vector look now and again, but as it is now it satisfies just like the original.

I don't get the hate. It's a perfectly adequate, and in my opinion improved port of TxK. Plays and looks great. Has that 'loud' neon Minter aesthetic and is a decent, better-looking followup to his other Tempest (and adjacent) efforts. Flaws: that it doesn't default to the new/TxK OST, instead playing the same T2K tracks we've heard millions of time since 1994, is kinda lame. The new tracks also aren't quite as good. Mouse/spinner support is SORELY lacking even though that would probably make the bonus games hard/impossible to play. They could have retooled them for spinner controls, anyway. There were clips of you playing it with a spinner, Jeff. What happened?

Plays beautifully at 90 fps on Steam Deck. Still not as good a game as TxK on the Vita.

Absolutely lousy excuse for a Tempest game. No music, terrible key mapping, and the in game button prompts don't even match up with the controls you've assigned. I bought this on sale and I still feel ripped off. Refunded.

Decent version of the classic Tempest. However, it would have been nice if Atari enabled dial spinners. Come on Atari. Regardless, still a decent version of the game.

Amazing Game, amazing heritage I still play the original but this follows it's DNA perfectly. Jeff Minter is the man and Atari also need credit for allowing TxK to become T4k. Can't recommend enough. A+++

If the OG Tempest's the dad everyone respects, T2K's the popular older sister everyone loves, T3K's the middle child everyone forgets... Tempest 4000 is definitely the obnoxious younger brother no one really cares about. It's still a decent game and all, but get it on sale. This is REALLY a game that you've gotta work with to enjoy it, but I still had fun. A controller is an absolute must, though, and it's still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that there's no spinner support despite Minter's devs playing with one.