It’s an old link but, I was looking around for a browser game to while away the time and I found Norbert’s Emulators again. Had a blast. You should check it out. I reccommend Tempest… kill an hour or so.
When I play these games, either real or emulated, I imagine that I am 14 again, back at the 7-11 on Dort Hwy. Playing the Tempest upright there. I always used to try and beat the scores so that I could leave my signature “DDP” on the top. Having a little time on my hands helped. I left that “DDP,” I’m proud to say on that game a lot, as well as a few others in that 2-3 mile radius of my house. God I was as pathetic then as I am now.
Programmed by Dave Theurer, Tempest is one of the most innovative video games of all time. Atari had done several black-and-white vector graphics based games such as Lunar Lander and Asteroids. Tempest was the first color game that utilized the vector graphics technology. In Tempest, you control a Blaster that patrols many corridors. Enemy targets move through the corridors towards your position. Your Blaster is limited to rotating around the outside of the corridors. Move your Blaster around to destroy the enemy targets before they find you. Destroy all of the enemy targets, and move on to a harder level. Tempest has 96 levels. A ROM “hack” called Tempest Tubes was released several years later that added to the difficulty of this challenging game.