PlayStation Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Tempest X3 (Interplay, PlayStation, 1996)

Melt-O-Vision supreme.

Rediscovering how fun Tempest was in The Atari Collection last week got me motivated to dig out this little PS1 obscurity I've had since I was a lad. If you're unfamiliar with Tempest (what are you, normal?), you're a claw on the end of a 3D web with monsters of various types crawling through it up at you, and you have to get rid of them before they touch you or fry you out of existence. Atari Jaguar fans will of course know of Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter's 90s breakbeat rave-soundtracked psychedelic recreation of such (it was one of the few good games the Jaguar actually got). Tempest X3 is the PlayStation equivalent, and it's also damn good. Sounds good, looks good, plays good. Mostly.

Caby sometimes likes to tease me by saying the games I play look like fake video games, but Tempest X3 really does. The blasting is constant, the screen gets filled with explosions and rainbow textures, squidgy electronic noises and sample-filled rave music fill your ears, and disembodied voices recharge your Superzapper smart bomb and commend you on how much destruction you cause. 2000 and X3 wrinkle the formula up further by introducing weapon and jump powerups, an AI droid to blast along with you, and the ability to warp levels through even trippier minigames in smoky voids and vector tunnels. This game does a stellar job of recreating those sharp arcade vectors, and while the lack of spinner controls may bother some, I never had an issue playing this with a D-pad on either the PS1 or Jaguar.

Tempest X3 is actually slightly fuller featured than 2000, featuring an unlockable 2000 mode inside of it, some gameplay tweaks, and nearly 30 additional levels. (According to Jeff himself, these were mostly so High Voltage Software would owe him fewer royalties.) The unlockable modes are quite cool—the extra webs less so. By level 50, this game gets kinda hard, but past 100, it's death all around as the blink-and-you're-dead pulsars and UFOs get dropped on your head constantly. Quite irritating. If ever a game justified save state scumming, it's this one. If you're not devoted to beating it and seeing the single-screen tongue-in-cheek win message, though (what are you, normal?), Tempest X3 is merely an excellent time.

(2000 mode is unlocked by way of getting the top score and putting a special message into the comment field. I mean, it is literally called "X3".)