By Zach Meston
Jeff Minter's one-man company, Llamasoft, has been pumping out damn fine games for the past decade. Minter's latest gem is Tempest 2000, the fifth title released for the spiffy Atari Jaguar, and the first title for the machine that's actually worth playing.
Tempest 2000 (aka T2K) is an update of Tempest, a vector-graphic arcade game originally released by Atari in 1981. You control a yellow object with a disturbing resemblance to a staple remover, placed on the periphery of a strangely shaped web. As enemies fly out of the center of the web, you spin around the periphery and blast them before they reach you.
Seems like a yawner of a concept, but like the original hit, T2K plays like a dream. But T2K's dominant feature is the techno soundtrack, which is – for fear of sounding like a hypemeister supreme – the best music ever heard from a cartridge game. Atari even plans to release a CD with 70 minutes of tracks composed for T2K.
Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar: US$59.99. Atari Corp.: +1 (408) 745 2000.
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