Trivia / Tempest

• Based on a Dream: The game was inspired by a recurring nightmare Dave Theurer had of monsters crawling up out of a hole.
• Development Hell: More like publisher hell, since Llamasoft finished Tempest 4000 for PC and Playstation 4. It was released for Playstation 4 on March 28, 2018 before getting pulled a few hours later, with a new release date marked to June 12, 2018 according to Amazon. That date has come and gone, and changed to June 26, 2018 before finally settling on July 17, 2018. According to Llamasoft, they were having trouble with Xbox One certification.
• Killer App: Tempest 2000 became this for the Atari Jaguar, along with Alien vs. Predator.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Jeff Minter received a cease-and-desist order from the lawyers of what used to be and is now "Atari", preventing ports of TxK from the PlayStation Vita over to other platforms. This was left unresolved, despite attempts of negotiation from Minter. What's even more disturbing is that the Tempest franchise hasn't seen a new release since Tempest 3000, the negative feedback on any new "Atari" release, and the shift over to other areas outside of gaming make it much less of a video game company than it was previously. Atari eventually called off the lawyers in 2017, and August of that year saw the announcement of Tempest 4000, with a deal finally formed between Minter and Atari.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original game: Tempest was originally a game called Vortex. Instead of the player moving, the playfield moved and the gameplay was modeled on Space Invaders. This was scrapped due to motion sickness; in turn, this fact might have inspired the Polybius legend.
  • Tempest 2000: Jeff Minter's plan was to have this game's soundtrack in Space Giraffe. This did not happen because, in his words, trying to get the rights back from Atari was hell.

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