▲
3
▼
When developer Dave Theurer began to design Tempest, he sought to make a first-person game in the style of Space Invaders. However, after performing a marketing review and playtesting the prototype with his colleagues, they found it to be "okay, but it wasn't a lot of fun". At the same meeting, the team struggled with other concepts and considered cancelling the project, until Theurer suggested a similar idea. As a child, he was not allowed to watch movies at home, but while he was in the fifth grade and away at patrol camp, he ended up seeing an unspecified movie about monsters from the center of the Earth crawling up through a tunnel in the ground and attacking humans. That imagery stuck with him throughout his life as a recurring nightmare, where he struggled to defend against the monsters. The team liked that idea better, and the project was saved. Theurer ended up modelling the first-person Space Invaders setting after his nightmare by wrapping it into a cylinder, having enemies climb up the inside of the cylinder, and having the player shoot at them by orbiting around the top of the cylinder in a circle, forming the basis for Tempest.
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue #103 (February 1998) (page 86 in the magazine):
https://retrocdn.net/images/d/df/EGM_US_103.pdf
Interview with Ed Rotberg, Ed Logg and Dave Theurer from the PlayStation compilation Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKdeTLtEeGI#t=117s
Polygon interview with Dave Theurer:
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/15/4528228/missile-command-dave-theurer
https://retrocdn.net/images/d/df/EGM_US_103.pdf
Interview with Ed Rotberg, Ed Logg and Dave Theurer from the PlayStation compilation Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKdeTLtEeGI#t=117s
Polygon interview with Dave Theurer:
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/15/4528228/missile-command-dave-theurer
Related Games
Missile Command
Save Mary
Stryker's Run
Crossbow
Gauntlet: The Third Encounter
Chip's Challenge
Atari Video Cube
Tank
Warbirds
SwordQuest: AirWorld
Shark Jaws
Millipede
Rygar
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure
Karateka
Breakout
Pong
Swordquest: Earthworld
Asteroids
Enterprise
Midnight Mutants
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Swordquest: Waterworld
Earthworm Jim PSP
Dig Dug
Asteroids
RealSports Basketball
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Commando
Yars' Revenge
Centipede
Adventure
Cloak & Dagger
Xevious
Donkey Kong
Pac-Man
NBA Jam Tournament Edition
Swordquest: Fireworld
Checkered Flag
Doom
Gran Trak 10
Cops 'N Robbers
Back to the Future
Midnight Magic
Pengo
Robotron: 2084
Mario Bros.
Asteroids Deluxe
Taz
Centipede