Tempest

The goal in Tempest is to survive and score as many points as possible, by clearing the screen of enemies that appear on the playing field. The player controls an articulating, claw-shaped ship at the near end of the field (referred to as a "blaster", or in some sources as the "Live Wire"), moving it left and right using a rotary knob. The player can rapid-fire shots down individual lanes of the field, destroying any enemies or projectiles within the same lane. The blaster is also equipped with a "Superzapper" which, once per level, destroys all enemies currently on the field.

A second use of the Superzapper in the same level destroys one random enemy. The Superzapper is recharged between each level.

The game was initially meant to be a first-person remake of Space Invaders, but early versions had many problems, so a new design was used. Theurer says the design came from a nightmare where monsters crawled out of a hole in the ground. This led to him coming up with the design concept, stating he "basically just took Space Invaders and wrapped the surface into a circle," while monsters "come down the tunnel at you, out of the hole, and you [try] to kill them before they [get] out." In opposition to games like Space Invaders, Space Wars and Asteroids, which used buttons for all commands, Theurer used a dial similar to Pong.

This reduced the number of inputs and enabled the players to move in a more intuitive way in clockwise or counterclockwise direction around the game space. During the prototype stages the game was called Aliens, then Vortex, and finally Tempest.

Chris Crawford wrote in 1982 that unlike Pac-Man, Tempest "intimidates many beginners because it appears to be unwinnable"; its smoothly increasing difficulty, however, encourages players to continue playing. In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the game 6th on their Top 100 Video Games. They lauded the game saying: "The best vector coin-up machine for white knuckle intensity, bar none, was Tempest." In 1996, Next Generation listed the arcade version as number 74 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting "it's very fast, it has abstract, color vector graphics that remain unequaled to this day, and its novel 'paddle' controller makes playing Tempest effortless.

The game's difficulty advances smoothly, and the play is extremely well balanced". Tempest is #10 on the KLOV's list of most popular games, tied with Centipede.

Shortly after the original game was released, an arcade owner named Duncan Brown hacked the level data and made an altered, harder version: Tempest Tubes. It was eventually included with Tempest in the Hasbro compilation Atari Arcade Hits: Volume 1 for Microsoft Windows in 1999.

Jeff Minter created two authorized games, released long after the original: Tempest 2000 (1994) for the Atari Jaguar (renamed Tempest X3 for the PlayStation port), and Tempest 3000 (2000) for Nuon enhanced DVD players. In July 2018, Tempest 4000 was released for multiple platforms. Minter also wrote two games inspired by Tempest: Space Giraffe (2007) and TxK (2014). After TxK was released for the PlayStation Vita, the current incarnation of Atari blocked release of the game for additional platforms until it was reworked as Tempest 4000 some years later.