Just a note, this footage was recorded in 2017, before I even had a channel! But I've never shared it here, so figured I'd narrate and share it!

For those who have never played Tempest (or other vector display games) in person, the glow of vector graphic is so bright and beautiful, unlike anything I've ever seen. It's as if I'm looking at color laser being drawn on screen.

I had my first paid job the summer I was 13 at a tomato packing plant. It was hot dusty work. Every Friday the owner wrote 1one check and gave it to the foreman with a list of how much went to each one of us. We rode in the truck to the Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen cashed the check and we all got paid. I was 13 years old with a parfait in one hand and a pile of quarters for Tempest in the other. Every time I see or think of that game, I smile. Good times.

It was a great time in the 80s, when there was still some optimism about the future, malls followed a modern architecture trend, and arcades were dark and mysterious. I want my A.C. Clarke future back.

I'll never forget the inertia of that control, really made a difference.

"I set the world record on the classic game Tempest. For my book on Autism..." The sequitur may not be as non as it first seems...

Oh boy...it's been a while sinced I have watched you Dave. Today is the last day of school here in Oregon and my wife and I are waiting for 25 fourth graders to show up, our grandson being one of those. This should prepare my mind!

Wow, Tempest! I loved that game. I really miss the vector scanning graphics. To all you younger gamers, you have to see this directly with your eyes to really appreciate it, as the full effect of it doesn't come through video. It's magical, requires special hardware, and only existed for a few years.

I could never get into Tempest, but I have nothing but respect for your taste in arcade games. That's an amazing run! I was a huge Galaga guy myself, getting to stages in the mid 100's a couple times.

Epic Run. Getting a world record in anything is already an accomplishment. But Tempest? My hat's off to you sir.

Impressive! I could never work out how to play it as a kid, but always loved the vivid graphics.

Congratulations Dave! ❤

Tempest is my all time favorite video game. It's been decades since I played it. Congrats on the world record!

My favorite arcade game of all time.

Had a friend in the '80's who spent a lot of his time programming his Sharp 1450 and reading science fiction, but the _only_ time I saw him really having fun, was once playing Tempest on a neglected machine. I always wondered which game it was, but I recognized it immediately seeing Dave here playing it. Great!

I saw a very good Tempest player, in a Flushing, Queens arcade (decades ago). I was also very good, and we played a couple of two-player games. Perhaps that was Dave? I also played in Nathans, on Central Avenue, in Westchester, NY (if I am remembering the location correctly). I routinely put up high scores when I traveled. One place where my brother played, was in Penn Station (NYC -- Manhattan). As best I can remember from his stories, those games (whether Tempest or any other game) had the highest high scores we had ever seen. I did not play those Penn Station games. It was not in my daily travels. Not mentioned by our host, is that there were different versions of Tempest (three of them, I believe). Version 1, if I am not mistaken, had a bug or a hidden feature, that allowed you to get 40 free credits. That helped me practice, without spending all of my part-time, after school, minimum wage earnings. That "feature" also allowed you to start on any of the levels that you would normally be able to start on, if you had played your way all the way up, level by level by level. So you were able to start on the green circle (which might have been level 81). I liked to start on the invisible circle, because those levels were very challenging. I also liked to start on the green circle -- extremely challenging. Although the game sped up as you climbed the levels, two colors got noticeably faster: When you got to the invisible circle, the game went to a dramatically faster speed. The next serious speed increase was on the green circle. Things were so fast, that if you blinked, you had a good chance of getting killed. I never got to the green circle, without the "feature". I could not conquer the invisible infinity level. It was super fast, with very smart enemies, and made my brain hurt. The green circle (directly after the invisible infinity level), although faster, was easier -- or to be more precise, less difficult. As best that I can remember, when I started a game on the green circle, my best score was after completing 9 or 10 of the green levels. Supposedly, when you complete all of the green levels, you keep getting more green levels at random. One issue with the arcade games is that sometimes the fire button was flaky, and the arcade staff did not take my word for it. They pressed it, and it worked. That was hardly a proper test. When you get to fast levels, you are not just standing there, holding down the fire button. You are often making single presses (or double presses), for precision shots. When one of those shots did not register, you got killed. It was not a matter of having all eight shots already fired. it was a contact issue with the fire button. Really frustrating, especially when you traveled to get to the arcade to play that game. Dave, have you ever played the green levels? Did you make it there through the invisibles?

Yes Tempest !!! Love it Dave.

Dave, that was amazing. Tempest was always one of my favourite arcade games, simply due to the 3D (or some pedantic people would say "pseudo-3D") presentation. (Battlezone was another favourite 3D vector game which I was a LOT better at.) I was never much good at Tempest, but I always enjoyed it. To see you make that world record and for me to get such a rush of nostalgia at the same time was so good. And to think that you also hacked into the ROMs, learned the code, and amended the code to add your own features is the icing on the cake! Thanks for sharing this! 👍

I was also a Tempest fanatic at around 12, but I didn't have the financial means to play up to expert. I was known as that Tempest kid at the arcade. If I got a $3 allowance, I was going to play 12 games of Tempest. I haven't played a game on a proper, well-functioning Tempest machine in about 35 years. I played the 1up 3/4 size stand up, but it had a notched dial and wasn't even close to proper. I looked into USB rotaries with bearings and if a hack was possible to transplant it to the 1up machine, then I calmed down and went on with my life. I have put a few hundred or a thousand hours into Jeff Minter's Tempest X³ on Playstation. It's not rotary but I'm a huge fan of that update and it's written for nuanced play with the analog controller. Any other fans of Tempest X³?

Congratulations on a fine demonstration and achievement. As someone whose grandparents had recently picked up an Atarii 2600 at a garage sale in the early 90's, I have fond memories of the games I had on there. Later I would receive an NES and other consoles over the years, but this brings me back. I think Tempest was one I played either on the Atari or in an arcade, but it never held that much appeal for me. Instead however, I really loved the game Reactor for the 2600. I could not even remember the name, only "that one game where a pulsating core grows and you fly a ship around the sides, and billiard some kind of star-looking things into the two pens on either side of the arena before the reactor gets to full size." Until looking for it online, just watching one particular youtube video actually, of over a hundred atari games. I probably have that video favorited and may still credit it if anyone is interested What I remember most was the sound effects as well as the feeling the game gave you. Being someone who enjoys a great number of modern games, I honestly cannot say why that one really calls out to me. It's funny to remember the moment when I was hearing about Zelda on the NES and how much i wanted to play that, and how much it represented bold new worlds in interactive media. Though later when I played it, I much preferred Mario, because to me Zelda was a bit too hard and confusing, the levels were too well hidden for my taste, and it meant that I just scoured the entire map endlessly and dreaded the enemies that I would have to avoid along my way. But even still, it was progress, an iteration along a path of balance between challenge and immersion, or something like that. Anyway, just watching this has me wanting to find an atari emulator and play some Reactor.

Missile command was an arcade favorite of mine during my school days. That track ball always took a beating. I'm glad that I was able to have a career in software where autism was an advantage.

Wow. You have obviously made the “pinball wizard” of Tempest. I cannot even remember the highest score I ever got on that game. Thank you and congratulations. 🎊

i used to work as a technician for a vending company. reconditioning Arcade machines was the daily grind. I have enjoyed the fact that Tempest was included in MS Arcade since i first encountered it around 1996 if you tweek the Hue, Tint, Saturation, while watching the output from your camera, you can shift the crt ( and any LCD panel ) to compensate for the color. where Hue or Tint are not available, you can tweek color balance using the Red Drive, Green Drive, Blue Drive, for the crt.

Wow... brings back memories. Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings, the Rollerdrome and quads, arcade games and Paddle Pops...

man i love tempest. favorite video game of ever. the fact that you had to protect yourself as you were switching levels, was the craziest thing and i loved it. you're a boss!

Tempest and Moon Buggy were my specialities. The knob you used to move your ship was the best controller (albeit quite simple) on any arcade machine. It felt like the volume control on some expensive high-end audio equipment.

I was working at RPI in Troy NY (college focused on engineering and science) for all of 1980's, and we had a lot of students who were very good at the video games of the day. Tempest was one of the favorite games. I was pretty good at it, but there were students who were much better than me. IIRC, I could get to the "invisible" levels, and I think I managed to get through the whole set of invisible levels only to lose the game on the first screen of the next color. There were students who could get into the invisible levels without losing a single life. Very cool to see this and to hear all you've done with Tempest. The favorite game for me was Asteroids Deluxe. I wanted to mention that the look of Asteroids Deluxe was also awesome (IMO). I wish I could justify spending the money to have a full-sized pristine-quality version of Asteroids Deluxe at my house. I could go on with many stories of the heyday of these video arcade games at RPI (including some world-records), but that would get pretty long and tedious for everyone but me. 🙂 👋

I worked with Dave Theurer in late 1998 at MetaCreations. Great guy.

I never really had access to this game growing up but I did love the vector style so much mainly thanks to the Star Wars sit down cabinet I lived in as a child when visiting the arcades every Saturday. I actually complained and was very grumpy when they started adding texture maps to polygons. I thought it looked terrible but I was shown the error of my ways over the years as 3D got better and my memories of vector games faded. One thing Dave is really spot on with is how you really just can't see in video what you see in real life. There is a brilliance to the light you get from these games that might be comparable to how CRT's had this instant intensity to them that even some of the best monitors today still can't quite match. So if you're familiar with a CRT running a game just dial that up further in your mind and that's how intensely beautiful vector graphics were back then.

I also played Tempest at the Mall in 1981. Good to see fellow arcaders still alive.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Atari vector games. Red Baron, Battle Zone, Space Duel, Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Tempest. Even the obscure ones like Gravitar and Major Havoc. One of the first purchases I made when I got my first programming gig circa 1990 was to buy an aging Asteroids game from a convenience store for $200. The thing still lives in my garage and my 11 year old pesters me on a regular basis to fix the screen so we can play it. When ebay came along, and once I had replace all of my Battlestar Galactic toys, one of my first finds was a Vectrex system. Like I said. I love me some vector graphics.

My favorite classic arcade game from my youth. Brilliant job, Dave!

1:45: I always called it the Cardioid. 2:35: "Yosemite Valley." 14:38: Maybe I was imagining it, but if you look closely at the Tankers as they approach, you'll see that they do actually get slightly brighter as they get closer. It's just hard to see because everything's so bright to begin with (gamma correction? What's that?). (You have the disassembled ROM code; why not poke around and see if/where it's actually used.) This is the game that brought me (back) in to arcade games, because it was so pretty. I was very much in to computer generated imagery and animation and, compared to everything else available at the time, this thing was jaw-droppingly amazing. Somewhere in my hoard I have the owner/service manual for it, including the schematics. Poring over those schematics was actually quite educational -- the logic around the encoder wheel was brilliantly simple (although it does have a bug). Even at my best, I was never able to get past the black levels.

Remember having Tempest at our local swimming baths when I was around 13-14 yr old. Had just started programming on the Atari 800 and after seeing this game I had to do something like it. Never did but 40 years later and I'm tinkering with Unreal Engine. Still got the dream :)

If I'd invested all the quarters I dumped into Tempest back when I was a boy, I'd be retired on a Caribbean island drinking pina coladas right now. My big four were Tempest, Joust, Galaga, and Space Harrier. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

My group of friends was absolutely obsessed with the Atari Jaguar version of Tempest 2000 in around 2006, for whatever reason.

Champion effort with Tempest Dave! I was crap at Tempest back in the day. Battlezone was my favourite (that I was half decent at)

I spent a "considerable" (all I could get) amount of coins rolling around galaxies. There was only one game more addictive than Tempest: Tetris. Tetris remains the king of addiction: a friend of mine, openly and vehemently against computer games, almost turned in her thesis (which she was writing on my PC) days late. She started to "relax a bit" by playing and continued to "relax" for two days straight. Luckily she didn't get caught by Tempest at the same time.

Now you're speaking my language. 1974 model.

Wow! This brings back the memories of pumping endless quarters into Tempest at the arcade in the 80's!

I fell in love with TEMPEST on the Atari Jaguar. The thumping techno soundtrack really added to the game experience.

Whoohoo! I had a coworker who used to work at Atari. One of his jobs wad to play one particular game on the 5200 to completion, then grab the next unit and do it again, all day. You would not believe how fast he could win.

There are only two arcades that I would want to have. Cloak & Dagger that I did a video on or Tempest. But I won’t ever be as good as Dave is! Wow!!!

I grew up in an era of arcades but never got to play tempest. It was early 90's. I live in a very rural area and we were lucky to have a malt stand next-door to the junior high school. My friend's mom owned and ran it. There was a backroom area, rather large, with a pool table and quite a few arcade games. I remember many days going there to play games, get a burger, hang with friends. Arcade machines were everywhere it seemed. I remember some at the local walmart before the super walmart nearyby was built. We are lacking places like that now. Little areas were kids hung out and socialized. I don't understand why there aren't arcade style games around anymore. People would definitely still play them. I know a girl with a warehouse full of really old arcade and pinball machines. Just sitting there chilling. Probably a hundred or more that her dad left when he passed away. Haven't talked to her in years, though I been thinking about asking for a pinball machine to rebuild.

Never heard of it, will check it out. Congratulations!!!

fell in love with this when I was collecting the atari jaguar was just playing it this week on the new documentary/game released on steam about llamasoft and its founder

You NEVER cease to amaze me!

I LOVE THIS GAME.... I got addicted and spent hours dumping quarters into this arcade game. This game is worse than fly fishing and worse than a drug addiction... Love it...

Out of everything you've done, this is probably the greatest thing you've ever done. Congratulation for making the history books.

Tempest? What a blast from the past. That, Joust, Space Invaders, and Defender ate up most of my college spending money.

Awesome game play ! my favorite was Defender do you remember that one ? a Williams classic and quite a steep learning curve....cheers.

Back in the day all I could do (or knew about) was keep topping the local arcade scores whenever a friend said I was no longer top score somewhere (on a few games, pinball included) - world records were not even on my mind... surreal audio art on the other hand, almost 24/7. Nice flash-back game play, Vector graphics included. :>

Good video, I used to play this back in the day. I now play Misile Command Remastered from Steam. But it not quite the same without the big trackball ;-)

never seen this being way younger than the arcade era of gaming, this looks awesome

Dang, give this guy video gamer of the century award! Heh, seriously though I'd live to see a man vs snake or king of kongs documentary about Dave and whomever is 2nd best in the world at this game but they cheat to break Dave's record and so he goes on a year long mission to get his record back, that he never actually lost, :)

I played Tempest lots in the early 80s, as I worked in an Arrcade, and could have the keys of the game console so no quarters needed. Though not shown here, the sound was awesome, specially when moving from one stage to another. Great times indeed.

As a owner of a 1982 Tempest arcade machine, I love this.

Thanks Dave, this was my first video game addiction.

one of my favorites back in the day

I loved this game and watching you avhiebe the world record. I admit I was never all that great at the gane but love it still the same.

I was a kid growing up in Big Bear, learning computers on the Apple II and playing Tempest in the ski lodge as a kid. Good times.

I had one of these machines in 1985, but it came from an arcade. Sold it to a friend a few years later, it was starting to develop problems at that time. Don't know what happened to it after that. Another friend also had one... Tempest was certainly a super joy bringer!

Bought a clean full size upright version of Tempest back in 1984 from a local arcade. I kept it for a few years and eventually sold it and have long since regretted it. Never had any monitor issues but I did have to service the power supply and use some grease on the spinner bearings to keep it from wobbling.

I remember "BC's Quest for Tires," that actually brought back old memories. I was never good at Tempest, I don't think I understood the rules.

This was the game I played while waiting for the bus transfer after high school. Ah, memories.

Like you, my career started at Microsoft, I'm autistic, and I love Tempest! But became exceptionally good at Joust.

@DavesGarage -- Hi Dave. I doubt you remember me, after all these years, and my surname was different back then (Neumann), but I used to call Microsoft every once in awhile with ideas, many of which got used. I did that for a lot of companies actually. I remember talking with you back then, and it has been nice seeing your videos on KZfaq, but I did not know that you also had gotten a world record in Tempest. I know how hard that is, because so did I, although I don't recall what the settings were, nor do I recall what my high score was. Seems to me it was something like 672 thousand and something, but Tempest wasn't the only arcade game I got a world record on, so I might have gotten them mixed up after all these years. Anyway, I doubt you'll see this comment but I really just wanted to say thanks for posting that video, and thanks also for being as polite and kind and considerate as you were to me all those years ago. My latest KZfaq channel is named Eminent Reflection. I haven't posted on it in a while, mainly because I don't really have space right now in my small apartment to do that properly and I have been very busy now that artificial intelligence like I've been waiting for over half a century is finally evolving at a reasonable pace. Take care of Dave, and keep up the good work.

Never been a game fan, but your presentation of it was good.

BC’s Quest! I was playing that as a teen in the 80’s.

Good lord, the amount of quarters I pumped into that dang machine in the 80’s……thanks for the nostalgic flashback!

Nice! I havent seen that game in a LONG time. Great video!

Did you enjoy the book Ready Player One? We grew up in the same era, and had the same love for computers. We share a lot in common, actually -- more than just the comp sci and programming. :) I really enjoyed the Tempest scene in the book!

So glad I found Dave originally through Tempest searches, he got KZfaq famous after that :)

That was my favorite game back in the day.

Tempest had the same affect on me. It was amazing. The great work Jeff Minter did on the Jaguar with Tempest 2000 was also great. Between this and Rolling Thunder (1986) I spent a ton of pocket money

Nice! I remember playing that in my local grocery store back in the 70's.

Very cool Dave. Thanks.

Tempest was too difficult for me and I lost quarters too quickly. Respect.

Tempest was released on my birthday. I went to Aladdin's Castle that day at Manassas Mall and fell in love with the game. I was never that good at it though. LOL

Never saw this in the arcades but heard lots about it. Well done, and thank-you for sharing!

I remember watching someone who was good at this back in the 80s at an arcade and being blown away.

This was my favorite game. I played in a bowling alley. My high score stood a while (around 530k) but that was a standard setup.

If I had all the quarters that I spent on that game in the 80's, I would be rich! My all time favorite arcade game.

LOVE TEMPEST! Congratz! ❤👍🏻🎅👍🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Congrats. It always is nice to see that an 'old' guy still can compete. 😉I wholeheartedly believe that somebody who is in his 40's could still be the best StarCraft2 player, for example. We just don't see them because they already were a bit older when the game was published and they just didn't have time to get good at it. Professional players don't quit because of their age but because they want to follow an education or get a regular job. Of course for physical sport it is a different issue, then in between 40 and 45 it becomes impossible to compete on the highest level in many cases, but not in all cases. The man with the strongest grip in the world (lifting a heavy object with 1 hand) is above 70 years old. 😆

ooh vector graphics! ive always wanted to see them in person

original astroids, tempest, and starwars... amazing visuals... and starwars sound,.... "use the force luke".... so cool

Vector Graphics based arcade games were the best. Tempest, Star Wars, and Asteroids were my faves of all time. I used to own and Asteroids cab.

This is a beautiful abstract game. Qix was (is) also abstract.

My friends and I were equally gobsmacked when we first saw _Tempest_ back in the day. Really made an impact, visually and otherwise.

Nice! Robotron 2084 was my game of choice. It's too bad the home video game market destroyed Arcades. Most were pretty sleazy but the well maintained one's were a joy to visit with family and friends (that is while the quarters lasted ;-)

Dude. Greatest arcade game of all time.

I was also 13 when I ran into this game at my neighborhood arcade; next to Defender, it was one of my favorites. It does not look the way I remember it. lol, it hasn't aged well but then again what does.

I loved playing Tempest in the arcades back in the 80s. :D

I used to play the crap out of the Tempest machine in building 25 back when I worked at MSFT in the late 90s.

Tempest 2000 was my favourite game on the Jaguar.

The Slow Mo Guys have a video (eJVpYL44jUQ) of a Tempest machine in extreme slow motion. It's very interesting to see how the electron gun draws each vector by just burning a path DIRECTLY between points and you can clearly see the difference vs. raster scan drawing. That gun is SO quick and SO precise! I got into video games in the early '90s, skipped over the earliest era this machine belongs and never seen vector drawn gaming IRL. Very cool.

I never really got into playing Tempest much, but I spent quite a bit of time working on one. When the horizontal or vertical deflection amplifiers go out the entire section has a cascade failure. You have to completely rebuild that amplifier because the whole thing is toast.

I loved this game when I was a kid!

My dad introduced me to this game when he bought home an decommissioned office machine from work with windows 3.1 on.... It was an IBM 2133 series PS/1 machine. I think it was running one of the lower end Intel chips without a math co-possessor. I found this out later on in life when i dug the machine out of the shed and tried to install Win98 on it for fun and it wouldnt let me. My dad also stole a lot of ram from the IT dept at work so we pimped out this old machine with 8mb of ram. The machine was still super slow though.