Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context VideoGame / Sinistar

Go To

1%%
2%%
3%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16851911250.20196400
4%% Please don't change or remove without starting a new thread.
5%%
6[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sinistar_cover.png]]
7[[caption-width-right:350:[[AC:I hunger!]]]]
8
9->''[[AC:"Beware -- I live!"]]''
10
11''Sinistar'' is an arcade game released by Creator/WilliamsElectronics in 1982, belonging to a genre of the day known as "twitch games" (along with ''VideoGame/{{Tempest}}'', ''VideoGame/{{Defender}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Robotron 2084}}''). The game was developed by RJ Mical, Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger and Noah Falstein, with sound direction by Creator/PythonAnghelo, and the title character's voice was supplied by radio personality [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doremus John Doremus.]]
12
13The player pilots a lone fighter ship through a quadrant of the galaxy, attempting to mine crystals called Sinisite from nearby planetoids by shooting them. Enemy ships are also attempting to mine crystals (worker ships) or shoot the player (warrior ships). The enemy ships use the crystals to create the skull-like boss Sinistar, while the player uses them to create Sinibombs, the only weapon they can use to damage and eventually destroy the Sinistar.
14
15Destroying the Sinistar is necessary to advance to the next level, but is by no means easy. The Sinistar is surrounded by twelve segments of armor, and the player must destroy all of them before delivering the final blow. At the same time, the enemy ships are gunning for the player, throwing themselves in the Sinibombs' path, and/or still mining and collecting crystals in order to repair damage to the Sinistar. And the Sinistar itself is hunting down the player's ship, [[TheComputerShallTauntYou taunting the player]] with such one-liners as "Run, coward!" (which, due to the crude sound chip, sometimes sounded like "Creator/RonHoward!", earning the game a FanNickname of ''[[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Opiestar]]'').
16
17''Sinistar'' has a reputation of being [[NintendoHard really difficult]] in the later levels, partly due to its development being rushed at the cost of gameplay adjustments that would have made the difficulty curve a bit easier.
18
19In 1999, a PC remake was released called ''Sinistar Unleashed'', which retained the difficulty of the original game, but since it was in full 3D, the player's range of vision was limited, making the game [[SNKBoss even harder]].
20
21Sinistar is referenced heavily (to the point of the Sinistar voice being used as the voice and name of a main character) in the 2007 animated film ''WesternAnimation/WeAreTheStrange''.
22
23----
24!!''Sinistar'' has examples of:
25
26* AdvancingBossOfDoom: ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
27* AntagonistTitle: Named after the villain.
28* AttractMode: It was one of the first games in the market to sport a voice synthesizer chip (actually, CVSD-based sample playback chip, a HC-55516 according to MAME. As noted above, the samples were recordings of John Doremus), and uses it to full effect by ''taunting'' any passer by!
29* BossBattle: Sooner or later, those workers are going to build Sinistar, who will make a bee line for your vessel.
30* BossWarningSiren: "Beware, I live!" or his iconic scream.
31* {{Cap}}: Scores roll over upon hitting the 10,000,000 scoring threshold.
32* CollisionDamage: Averted. Excluding the Sinistar, running into any planetoid or enemy craft will simply see the player's ship just bounce off it.
33* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: No matter how many warriors you destroy, you will get no reprieve. Not unless you go crazy with sinibombs in addition to regular shots but you need those for Sinistar.
34** When Sinistar chases you and appears on the screen, the angle he swings in on may be ''incredibly'' fast and nearly impossible to dodge.
35* TheDeterminator: Sinistar will not stop no matter how damaged he gets.
36* DroughtLevelOfDoom: The recurring "void" levels, which have very few planetoids.
37* TheEighties: In case you missed it in the above description, this was about as advanced as video game sound got in the era.
38* EldritchAbomination: Almost nothing is known about Sinistar itself (other than that it ''hungers''), but its existence is definitely outside of any of our notions of life. Since it's built, it may also be a MechanicalAbomination.
39* EndlessGame: PlayedForHorror. As explained in [[http://www.snackbar-games.com/features/flashback-the-arcade-horror-of-sinistar this article,]] ''Sinistar'' uses this convention seen in [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfVideoGames contemporary games]] to construct a CosmicHorrorStory that instills hopelessness in the player: no matter how many times the player character destroys Sinistar, his followers will quickly resume in rebuilding him elsewhere in the galaxy, and so the player character is thus [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption always doomed to fall]] at the hands of Sinistar.
40* EveryTenThousandPoints: Played with. On the game's default settings, the first extra ship is awarded at the 30,000 threshold, but the gap between each subsequent ship increases by 30,000.[[labelnote:explained]]Upon reaching 30,000, the second extra ship requires coms at a total of 90,000, the third ship comes at 180,000, the fourth at 300,000, etc.[[/labelnote]]
41* EvilSoundsDeep: Sinistar has a deep, menacing voice to match his monstrous appearance and nature. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XEINagmaU Just listen to Sinistar's voice.]]
42* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: The only way to proceed to the next level is to kill the Sinistar, which in turn requires the Workers to completely finish building it so it can awaken and come after the player.
43* IncomingHam: BEWARE, I LIVE!
44* JumpScare: If the player goes into this game having no idea that Sinistar talks, the sudden shouting of his voice has the potential to be this. To say nothing of that [[HellIsThatNoise roar...]]
45%%* LightningBruiser: Sinistar. Holy shit, Sinistar.
46* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: ''Sinis''tar is enough to tell you that this spaceship must be destroyed.
47* NintendoHard: Check the work description up at the top where it says "Destroying the Sinistar." In fact, some players didn't even know there was a ''second'' level.
48** The player has to "milk" planetoids to make sinibombs. Too many shots too fast blows them up and you get nothing. (Players sometimes let the enemy ships mine the asteroids then killed them to claim the booty.)
49** The 1999 reimagining ''Sinistar Unleashed'' remade the game in total 3D, putting the game into SNKBoss difficulty.
50** Sinistar moves ''extremely fast'', and if you're unlucky, he'll one-shot you as soon as he appears.
51** The widening score gap between each extra ship doesn't help matters.
52* OhCrap: Basically the response a player had the second Sinistar announces "Beware, I live!"
53* OverflowError: If you get hit by a projectile and touch an enemy simultaneously while on your extra life, the game will subtract two lives, rolling backwards over 0 and reading it as 255 lives remaining.
54* PopCultureOsmosis: ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' has [[http://hrwiki.org/wiki/Vector_Strong_Bad Vector Strong Bad,]] who resembles Sinistar and speaks in short phrases too ("YourHeadAsplode").
55* PreAsskickingOneLiner: "Beware, I live!"
56* PunnyName: [[DontExplainTheJoke Just change one letter in "Sinister".]]
57* RegeneratingHealth: The workers ''will'' mine the asteroids for crystals, and they ''will'' repair any damages you have already incurred on the Sinistar.
58* ShootEmUp: [[DeadlyWalls Unlike most]], you can fly into most objects to no ill effects - and you likely will, in your quest to mine for [=SiniBombs=]. You will still likely die a lot at first thanks to the relentless warriors, if not Sinistar later.
59* SyntheticVoiceActor: Actually averted. It was one of the first games to have speech, but it was also one of the first few games to use digital recordings instead of a synthesizer chip.
60
61----

Top