Sinistar
Developer(s)	Williams Electronics
Publisher(s)	Williams Electronics
Designer(s)	Noah Falstein and John Newcomer
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Multi-directional shooter
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	Joystick
Arcade cabinet	Standard and sit-down
Arcade display	Raster, standard resolution (used 240 × 292) (Vertical)

Sinistar is an arcade game released by Williams in 1982. It belongs to a class of video games from the 1980s called "twitch games". Other "twitch games" include Tempest, Defender, and Robotron: 2084. Sinistar's voice was supplied by John Doremus. Image File history File links Screenshot of the arcade game Sinistar by Williams, 1982. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. ... Williams is a long-standing electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Williams is a long-standing electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... Noah Falstein is a freelance game designer and producer who has been in the video game industry since 1980. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Galaga, a famous shoot-em-up from 1981. ... Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ... Joystick elements: 1. ... This arcade cabinet, containing Centipede, is an upright. ... A computer display is an interface between the computer and the operator. ... Suppose the smiley face in the top left corner is an RGB bitmap image. ... Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ... Williams is a long-standing electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about computer and video games. ... The 1980s refers to the years of 1980 to 1989. ... Twitch games are computer and video games in which the user must react quickly to circumstances, to continue playing and win the game. ... Tempest is an arcade game by Atari, originally designed and programmed by David Theurer. ... This page is about the arcade game Defender. ... Robotron: 2084 (often simply called Robotron) is an arcade game created in 1982 by the company Vid Kidz (Eugene Jarvis and Larry Demar) for Williams Electronics. ...

Description

The player pilots a lone fighter ship through a quadrant of the galaxy, initially blasting away at drifting planetoids to "mine" Sinisite Crystals from them, which when harvested, create Sinibombs. Sinibombs are the only weapon capable of damaging Sinistar. The fighter's bomb bay can hold 20 Sinibombs.

The player creates Sinibombs by shooting at the drifting planetoids (which resemble clouds) and catching the crystals released. Each shot makes a planetoid shake, and if too many shots are fired at a planetoid at too fast of a firing rate, it will cause the planetoid to explode and no crystals will be released. At the same time, a planetoid must shake a certain amount to actually release any crystals. It usually takes between 3 to 6 shots (depending on the size of the planetoid) to release between 1 and 10 crystals. Additional crystals also be obtained from the same planetoid, as long as the number of shots and firing rate does not cause it to explode. This article is about clouds in meteorology. ...

At the same time that the player is trying to get crystals, the "worker" ships are also trying to take the crystals. They use these crystals to create Sinistar, the skeletal-looking bad guy who is trying to destroy you. At the same time that all of this is going on, other ships (called "warrior ships") are trying to shoot the player's ship, and the warriors can also been seen shooting at planetoids to mine crystals when they aren't trying to attack the player or guard the Sinistar.

If the player's ship is destroyed before the Sinistar is formed, the game shows how far along the worker ships are in building the Sinistar. The workers must harvest 20 crystals before the Sinistar is completely formed. Once it is completely formed, a digitized voice says "Beware, I live". While he is trying to collide with the player's ship in order to eat it, he says further things. His seven sayings are "Roar!", "Beware, I live!", "I am Sinistar!", "Run! Run! Run!", "Beware Coward!", "I hunger!" and "Run, coward!" (which sounds a lot like Ron Howard, leading the developers to dub the game "Opie-star"). If the Sinistar succeeds in colliding with the player's ship, the ship spins out of control and then the Sinistar eats the ship, which also causes the ship to explode. Ron Howard on the set of Ransom Ronald William Howard (born March 1, 1954, in Duncan, Oklahoma) is an American actor, film director and producer of Dutch, Scottish, English, Irish, German and Cherokee Indian descent. ...

A total of 13 Sinibombs are required to destroy a fully built Sinistar (12 Sinibombs for each piece plus one additional Sinibomb for the entire face). Each Sinibomb attempts to target and hit the Sinistar, but each Sinibomb can also be intercepted by a collision with a worker, warrior, warrior shot, or a planetoid. If the player's ship is shot by a warrior or eaten by the Sinistar, the status screen will show the number of Sinibombs remaining and the number of Sinistar pieces remaining.

There are four zones that repeat over and over again. You move from one zone to the next after you have defeated the Sinistar. These zones are Worker Zone, Warrior Zone, Planetoid Zone, and Void Zone. The first three zones have more workers, warriors and planetoids, respectively. The Void Zone is especially difficult because it has almost no planetoids. A partially destoyed Sinistar can also be rebuilt, starting with the Worker Zone and continuing for all subsequent zones.

Difficulty

There are many, many things that make Sinistar difficult. First of all, there is the challenge of getting the Sinibombs. What often happened is that either the player would be killed before Sinistar was even formed, or conversely, Sinistar would become live and you would only have 10 Sinibombs when 13 were needed to kill Sinistar. Once Sinistar became active, it became almost impossible to get more Sinibombs since Sinistar moved much faster than the player could.

255 Lives Bug

Sinistar contains a well-known bug that grants the player many lives. It happens only if you are down to 1 ship left. If when the Sinistar is about to eat you, a warrior ship shoots you and kills you, something strange happens. When it happens, the warrior shot takes you down to 0 lives and then Sinistar eating you takes you down to -1 lives. -1 in 8 bit two's complement notation is 11111111, or 255 if interpreted as an unsigned value. So when you go down to -1 lives, the game resets you to 255 lives. 255 is the largest number allowed in the 8 bit system. When the Sinistar goes to eat you, the warriors stop shooting, so your only chance for this bug to occur is if one of their previous shots hits you. A computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working as intended, or produces an incorrect result. ... In computer architecture, 8-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 8 bits (1 octet) wide. ... Twos complement is the most popular method of representing signed integers in computer science. ... Signedness is a property of an integer number used by a compiler to indicate if variables of a numeric type are capable of storing both positive and negative numbers, or just positive. ... In computer architecture, 8-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 8 bits (1 octet) wide. ...

Legacy

Because the game came out relatively close to the video game crash of 1983, it became a somewhat hard game to find. It was really only the Internet that raised the game above cult status, so a sequel was not released until 1999. It was called Sinistar: Unleashed and it was released for the PC. For similar reasons, Sinistar also was not widely ported. It is available as part of Midway Arcade Treasures, which was released for the PC, Xbox, GameCube and PS2 in 2003, and part of Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play For the PlayStation Portable, in late 2005. E.T. for the Atari 2600. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Apple Macintoshes like the iMac Core Duo are personal computers. ... Midway Arcade Treasures is a collection of 24 old arcade games that was developed by Digital Eclipse and released by Midway for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. A second collection, Midway Arcade Treasures 2, was released for the same consoles in October 2004 and a third console compilation... Apple Macintoshes like the iMac Core Duo are personal computers. ... Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. ... The Nintendo GameCube (Japanese: ゲームキューブ; originally code-named Dolphin during development; abbreviated as GCN) is Nintendos fourth home video game console, belonging to the 128-bit era; the same generation as Segas Dreamcast, Sonys PlayStation 2, and Microsofts Xbox. ... The PlayStation 2 (PS2) ) is Sonys second video game console, the successor to the PlayStation and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Sinistar represented a number of firsts in game design. It was the first game to use stereo sound (in the sitdown version), with two independent front and back sound boards for this purpose. In addition, Sinistar was the first game to use digitized speech as successfully as it did. It was also the first to use the 49-way, custom-designed optical joystick that Williams had produced specifically for this game. Label for 2. ... Joystick elements: 1. ...

In July 2000, Midway licensed Sinistar, along with other Williams Electronics games, to Macromedia Shockwave for use in an online applet to demonstrate the power of the shockwave web content platform, entitled Shockwave Arcade Collection. The conversion was created by Digital Eclipse. It is currently freely available to be played within the shockwave web applet. This article is about the year 2000. ... Midway Games (NYSE: MWY) (formerly Midway Manufacturing) is an American video game publisher. ... Williams is a long-standing electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. ... Macromedia Shockwave is frequently confused with Macromedia Flash. ... Backbone Entertainment is an independent video game development company with offices in Emeryville, California, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. ...

Like most arcade games of the era, unofficial clones were made for home computers. One of the best was Peter Johnson's Deathstar for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron which was published by Superior Software in 1984. The BBC Micro, affectionately known as the Beeb, was an early home computer. ... The Acorn Electron Acorn Electron BASIC - the first thing displayed when an unexpanded Electron is switched on The Acorn Electron was a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. ... Superior Software is a software publisher whose titles are mainly computer and video games. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Xenostar, a public domain tribute to Sinistar, was created and released for the Amiga computer in 1994. 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...

The theme music to the game was sampled in 2005 on 'Grand Ol' Party Crash' by Cage feat. Jello Biafra and Dj Shadow.

The game is featured in the the music video for Sheena Easton's "Almost Over You", where a Defender arcade game is thrown out of a second story window. Sheena Easton on the cover of her 2000 CD, Fabulous. ... This page is about the arcade game Defender. ...

The sound bites "Beware, I live" and the roaring sound are used in the trailer of the movie We Are The Strange

The line "Run, coward!" was named the fourth best game line ever in the January 2002 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Electronic Gaming Monthly (often abbreviated to EGM) is an American video game magazine. ...

In the animated Television series "South Park", the towns video arcade is called the "Sinistarcade".

External links

• Tyler's Sinistar Page, another Sinistar site
• KLOV, the KLOV entry on Sinistar
• The Philosophical Revelations of Sinistar
• The Sinistar Shockwave Applet