Sinistar

''Sinistar'' is a 1983 multidirectional shooter arcade game developed and manufactured by Williams Electronics. It was created by Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger, Noah Falstein, RJ Mical, Python Anghelo, and Richard Witt. Players control a spacecraft pilot who battles the eponymous Sinistar. In addition to the game's use of digitized speech for its antagonist, ''Sinistar'' is known for its high difficulty level.

Gameplay

The player pilots a lone spacecraft, mining drifting planetoids and catching the crystals which are released. Shooting a planetoid too rapidly destroys it without releasing any crystals. Each collected crystal turns into a "Sinibomb", which is needed to defeat the game boss, Sinistar, an animated spacecraft with a demonic skull face.

Sinistar does not exist at the start of the game, but is constructed by enemy worker ships. Enemy worker ships collect crystals which they use to construct the Sinistar. Enemy warrior ships can directly attack the player's ship, shoot planetoids to mine crystals, and guard the Sinistar while it is being built. It takes 20 crystals to create the 20 pieces of a completely built Sinistar.

Once the Sinistar is constructed, a digitized voice makes threatening pronouncements while chasing the player's ship: "Beware, I live!", "I hunger, coward!", "I am Sinistar!", "Run! Run! Run!", "Beware, coward!", "I hunger!", "Run, coward!", and a loud roar. The ''Sinistar'' has no weapons, but it destroys the player's ship on contact. A total of 13 Sinibombs are required to destroy Sinistar. Each Sinibomb automatically targets the ''Sinistar'' when fired, but can be intercepted by Workers, Warriors, and planetoids.

The player warps to a new zone each time ''Sinistar'' is defeated. The unnamed first zone is followed by the Worker Zone, Warrior Zone, Planetoid Zone, and Void Zone, then it cycles back to the Worker Zone. Each zone emphasizes a particular game feature, with the Void Zone having fewer planetoids. In all but the first zone, a completed but damaged ''Sinistar'' can be repaired by enemy Workers, extending its lifespan if the player is unable to kill it quickly.

Development

''Sinistar'' was the first game to use stereo sound (in the sit-down version), with two independent front and back sound boards for this purpose. It also used a 49-way optical joystick that Williams produced specifically for this game.

The voice of Sinistar was recorded by radio personality John Doremus and played through an HC-55516 CVSD decoder.

''Sinistar'' contains a bug that grants the player many lives (ships). It happens only if the player is down to one life and the ''Sinistar'' is about to eat the player's ship. If a warrior ship shoots and destroys the ship at this moment, it immediately takes the player to zero lives, and the ''Sinistar'' eating the player subtracts another life. Since the number of lives is stored in the game as an 8-bit unsigned integer, the subtraction from zero will cause the integer to wrap around to the largest value representable with 8 bits, which is 255 in decimal.

The 6809 source code for ''Sinistar'' is available at https://github.com/historicalsource/sinistar .

Reception

In 1995, Flux magazine ranked Sinistar 72nd on their Top 100 Video Games. They praised the game calling it: "A truly harrowing arcade classic."

Legacy

There were no contemporary ports of ''Sinistar''. Versions for the Atari 2600 and the Atari 8-bit family were in progress, but not completed. ''Sinistar'' was commercially available in the mid-1990s as part of ''Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits'' for the Super NES, Sega Genesis and Saturn, Dreamcast, PlayStation, and Microsoft Windows. It is also available as part of ''Midway Arcade Treasures'', which was released for the Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, and PlayStation 2 in 2003, and for Windows in 2004; part of '' Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play'' for the PlayStation Portable in late 2005; and part of ''Midway Arcade Origins'' for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. ''Sinistar'' is part of '' Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits'' on the Game Boy Advance.

A 3D sequel was released for Windows in 1999, '' Sinistar: Unleashed''.

Clones

'' Deathstar'' is a ''Sinistar'' clone for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, published by Superior Software in 1984. It was originally developed as an official port to be released by Atarisoft, but they decided to abandon the BBC platform while a number of games were still in development. ''Sinistaar'' (1989) is a clone for the Tandy Color Computer 3. ''Xenostar'' (1994) is a public domain clone for the Amiga. ''Devileader'' (2021) is a ''Sinistar'' clone for PC platforms and is developed by Hijong Park.

In popular culture

Sinistar was featured on numerous episodes of the TV game show ''Starcade'' in 1983-1984. Host Geoff Edwards said it was one of his personal favorite video games and in one episode, played and beat the game himself, providing tips and tricks to home viewers while playing. The original ''Escape Velocity'' game also had rare guest appearances of the Sinistar, including some of its catchphrases.

Sinistar is also referred to in various non-video-game media. The Cage song "Grand Ol' Party Crash" samples Sinistar. The film ''We Are the Strange'' uses "Beware, I live", "I hunger", "Run, coward", and Sinistar's roar. Sinistar makes several appearances in the webcomic ''Bob the Angry Flower'', and also appears as the title of one of the print editions of the comic. Sinistar appears in the DVD version of the ''South Park'' episode trilogy " Imaginationland". The sound bite "Beware, coward" was used in the theme tune to the British Channel 4 video-game TV show '' Bits''. The audio version of podcast ''IGN Game Scoop'' uses the sound bite "Beware, I live" in its theme tune. The game was featured prominently in the music video for the Sheena Easton song " Almost Over You".

Sinistar receives a large reference in chapters 30 and 31 of the Dresden Files book ''Ghost Story'', a 2011 novel in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, during a recollection of a demonic battle from the protagonist's youth.

See also

*''Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits''

Notes

References

External links

* {{KLOV game, id=9553

The ''SiniStar'' information page at sinistar.com


another ''Sinistar'' site

R.J. Mical talks about the easter egg in ''Sinistar''

1983 video games
Arcade video games
Williams video games
Cancelled Atari 2600 games
Cancelled Atari 8-bit family games
Cancelled BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games
Fictional doomsday devices
Multidirectional shooters
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in outer space
Spaceflight in fiction
Commercial video games with freely available source code