In 1994, programmer Jeff Minter had a bright idea: Atari, then still in business under its own steam, and still looking for hot games to thrust its troubled Jaguar video game console into the limelight, should revive one of its arcade classics, Tempest, with some modern game play elements and a new look. Minter handed Atari Tempest 2000 (later ported to the Playstation as Tempest X3), which is about as close to a “killer app” game as the Jaguar got. Among the many changes made to the original Tempest format was the addition of a thumping techno soundtrack (the original 1981 arcade game had no music at all). Before long, Atari had received enough praise for the music that an audio CD version of it was prepared as a premium item.
As with quite a bit of techno (and, for the zillionth time, I ask: why does it seem like 95% of all video games are set to techno music these days?), some of the tracks are so interchangeable that one can be forgiven for not realizing that one track’s ended and another has begun. That said, the Tempest 2000 soundtrack doesn’t continually lumber around the “thundering” end of the spectrum, giving us a few lighter, trance-like tracks in keeping with the game’s mind-blowingly colorful light show. There is actually some welcome contrast among the tracks.
Now out of print, Tempest 2000 (the soundtrack, not the game) is a bit of a collector’s item, but don’t hock the car to get it – in their attempt to try to generate crossover appeal to the music market (and admittedly, this was being done at a time when this genre of music wasn’t really mainstream yet), Atari pressed a lot of these suckers. It isn’t too hard to find one.
- Thermal Resolution (3:59)
- Mind’s Eye (4:52)
- T2K (5:23)
- Ease Yourself (7:52)
- Tracking Depth (5:04)
- Constructive Demolition (4:05)
- Future Tense (5:54)
- Digital Terror (5:07)
- Hyper Prism (4:26)
- Glide Control (5:12)
- Ultra Yak (4:00)
- 2000 Dub (7:31)
Released by: Atari / Interplay
Release date: 1994
Total running time: 63:25
