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Tempest on the Vectrex
Playablev1.1

Tempest

Atari · 1980

by Daniel Ferrer

Its two POKEYs through the jack, its controls read as the cabinet wires them, and the picture fitted upright, as its monitor stood, at 50 Hz.

Play in the browser Download
Runs on
  • UVMC2✓
  • Debug Cart✓
  • Simulator✓
  • Tested on hardware✓
Audio
  • Music (PSG)–
  • PCM–
  • Jack✓
  • Speech–

Details

Original hardware
Atari 6502, AVG + mathbox
Romset
roms/tempest.zip
Controls
The stick turns the knob (the further, the faster). Button 1 fires, button 2 is the superzapper, button 3 starts, button 4 inserts a coin. On the web: Z, X, C, V and the arrow keys.
Analog controls
✓
Orientation
Horizontal game: drawn rotated 90°
Last update
2026-11-08

Changelog

  1. v1.12026-11-08
    • The romset can live in any folder of the card. The game looks in .roms/, then roms/, then searches the whole card, and remembers where it found it (.conf/<romset>.loc), so the next start goes straight there; if it is moved, it is searched for again.
    • Settings go in .conf/ and romsets in .roms/: the UVMC2's menu hides folders whose name starts with a dot, so the card shows only the games. A card set up before keeps everything: the old config/ and roms/ are still read, and nothing is written to them any more.
    • Without the romset on the card the screen says ROM FILE NOT FOUND and the name of the zip it wants.
  2. v1.02026-11-05
    • First release.
    • Sound through the jack: its two POKEYs emulated, at the level measured against MAME on Gravitar's board.
    • The controls as the cabinet wires them: the game reads the knob and the buttons through the POKEYs' pot lines, which turn every bit over. Read without that, the game held fire and the superzapper down by itself and turned the knob backwards.
    • The knob turns once a frame, the further the stick is pushed the faster, at most 4 steps a frame: it turned several times a frame, far too quick.
    • An upright cabinet, not a cocktail one: the knob's port carries that bit.
    • One picture a frame: a second picture inside one frame is skipped, as on Gravitar's board.
    • The picture is MAME's visible area, measured on a MAME snapshot, upright like the cabinet's monitor.
    • An options screen at start, after the Vectrex Studio intro: screen vertical or horizontal, refresh, brightness, controls (the buttons can be remapped, and the choice is saved) and calibration.