Sinistar (Arcade)

“Beware, I live!” A digitized roar cuts through the din of the arcade. “I hunger!” it calls out, and while you may not be the one standing at the cabinet, you know someone is contending with something sinister. This is no horror game they’re playing though, but Sinistar, and while this space shooter isn’t going to terrify you with monsters or pop scares, you’ll soon learn to fear that voice that heralds your approaching doom.

Sinistar is the name of a large spacecraft whose facade is dominated by a fanged skull, its somewhat pleased look matching a character who seems quite pleased to see you running in terror from its deadly touch. The most impressive and memorable part of Sinistar is certainly its main antagonist and only boss, this 1983 arcade game creating a foe who is wonderfully evil and constantly calling out to you as it tries to tear you down. On top of its deathly roar, the digitized voice of John Doremus has cemented itself in minds of arcade gamers as it calls out for the cowardly player to run. A few of its voice lines will mix in different ways to prevent it from just being the same taunts and warnings, and if there is one thing Williams Electronics should be commended for, it’s creating one of the most effective villains of the early arcade. Unfortunately, the game he headlines isn’t as finely crafted as its villain.

Playing Sinistar is all about taking down that evil space station, but the process of doing so feels sloppy. Your spacecraft is a capable enough ship, firing at a quick rate and able to zip around space at a decent speed, but it can’t even touch Sinistar with what it has to start. Instead, the player must explore the current zone of space for planetoids. By firing upon these or bumping into them you can shake out crystals that are converted into Sinibombs, the only items able to deal damage to Sinistar. Collecting these Sinibombs isn’t the most exciting process on its own, so some enemies were introduced to contest you while you’re gathering your ammo. The first type is actually the one that feels the most damaging to Sinistar as a whole. Little worker ships are flying around the zone in great numbers, the little red vessels chucking themselves through space recklessly as they scramble to grab the crystals themselves. Sinistar actually does not appear at the start of a level, these workers instead needing to take crystals to a special area to build him up, the player able to use Sinibombs to undo their work but the level not ending until a fully completed Sinistar is destroyed. The problem is, no matter the level, these worker ships are moving around so frantically and constantly bumping into rocks and player alike that the game always feels a little out of control. I actually wondered if some speed setting on the cabinet was messed up to make these enemies act in such a skittery fashion, but they seem designed to fling themselves around wildly and make navigation of space involve tons of pointless pinballing about. They can’t hurt you at least, but they are constant nuisances that make your vital Sinibomb collection phase more annoying than tense.

Before Sinistar can take the stage as a lethal threat, the game will also throw warrior ships at you that can deal some actual damage. Packing little laser cannons they will fire at you periodically, these would be something besides planetoids and pesky warriors to shoot at during the collection phase but they too are caught in the wild game of space bumper cars the workers have everyone playing. Rather than feeling like a legitimate threat to you, their shots feel like they might just slip through the chaos and land a lucky shot. The game features five level types though, an introductory level and four repeating zones that each focus on a different idea for what is featured most prominently. The Worker Zone ups the chaos as expected as the flighty foe appears in higher numbers, but the warrior gets its day in the Warrior Zone where their numbers are cranked up instead and it feels more like a proper fight when it comes to repelling them. Planetoid Zone makes the asteroids you collect crystals from more abundant so that the worker chaos won’t impact your Sinibomb collection as much, and the Void Zone strips things down a tiny bit, there still being a good amount of enemies and planetoids but not the crazy amount the game begins with. There is a radar at the top of the screen next to the marks that track your Sinibombs, points, and lives, but with so many little dots from all the enemy ships and planetoids flying around space, it doesn’t help too often. It does, however, show you the most important character when he is near, Sinistar’s big yellow dot a stark contrast to the red, blue, and grey ones that otherwise break up the black.

Once Sinistar hits the scene, the game does experience a marked improvement, mainly because your focus has shifted away from trying to bully rocks into spitting out crystals amidst the worker ships going wild. With Sinistar flying about your safety sends you flying off and away from where most workers would fly, and Sinistar is no push over in chasing you. Surprisingly fast, moving in strange ways, and relentless when he wants to be, the giant space craft is appropriately fearsome, and with an instant death touch, you really have to be careful as you fly away that you don’t bump into something that gives him a chance to swoop in and destroy your ship. If you mined enough Sinibombs before he was built, the fight still isn’t a sure thing, the Sinibombs still needing to make contact with him to start breaking off pieces of his body. 13 will take him down so long as a worker doesn’t swoop in and repair him, although that’s only likely to happen if you delay too long in destroying him. Firing your Sinibombs will reveal a helpful feature where they home in on the eponymous antagonist, but if something like a different enemy is in the path of the bomb, it will end up wasted on obliterating the less dangerous villain. Evading him, firing at the right times, and trying to be quick about taking him out before something goes wrong makes Sinistar’s deadly chase much more tolerable than the Sinibomb collection process, but the fact the fight hinges so much on coming in well-stocked or scrambling to somehow do it while the big boss is gunning for you undermines these otherwise appropriately challenging confrontations. Making it to the end of the Void Zone will reward you with a proclamation that Sinistar has been well and truly defeated… right before you’re back in Worker Zone doing the same thing over again, but even disregarding the level loop, the take down that should have been satisfying is sadly held back by the constant awkwardness of preparing for it.

THE VERDICT: The villain of Sinistar feels like he belongs in a better game. The gleeful monstrous space skull makes the game with his menacing taunts and backs them up with being an appropriately threatening foe, but the path to fighting him involves playing bumper cars in space with a bunch of rocks and worker ships. The chaos of everything bouncing off each other at high speeds during the Sinibomb collection phase isn’t really difficult so much as bothersome, so rather than being a tense preparation phase, Sinistar’s zones begin poorly and are too crowded for their own good. Sinistar didn’t have to be easier to be fun, it simply had to provide a better sense of control to allow the already challenging antagonist to shine on his own merits.

And so, I give Sinistar for arcade machines…

A BAD rating. The menace that is the worker ships bouncing around and making the early part of a level too hectic for their own good definitely weighs down Sinistar, but it does have a few things that could have worked if the red ships were toned down. Sinistar’s personality is one-dimensional but wonderful for his role, this relentless evil force pursuing you the moment he’s built up and able to do so. The warrior ships make sense as a way of pressuring you before the big guy is ready to go, and the need to collect the Sinibombs in time is an effective way of building up some tension before Sinistar enters the scene and tests if you were quick enough to collect what you need to survive. Unfortunately, the warriors can’t put up a good fight in the chaos and feel more like they’ll land a hit at random, the Sinibomb collection is hampered by the ping-ponging with any nearby workers, and Sinistar’s rampage can feel more like a test of if you got lucky with how many worker ships tried to crowd around you during planetoid mining. There are some aspects that prevent things from becoming more frustrating like keeping your Sinibombs between lives and the difficulty between levels not really climbing much, the zones emphasizing one variable more than others instead helping to alleviate the bumper car aspect slightly. It’s never enough to let you focus on the task at hand, and having the game be more about surviving weaker enemies during Sinibomb collection before the boss arrives would probably be more enjoyable than what we got.

If Sinistar took it easy on the speed of the game or the enemy count, then it might be able to focus on its strengths a bit more. The monstrous space craft Sinistar demands attention with his devilish voice and it’s a good fit for a foe whose means of defeat shapes the entire experience, but he’s been plopped into a part of space that’s not the best fit for him. The threat he poses almost packs enough punch to make this game scary despite not being true horror, but the build-up to him involves a bit too much meddlesome ping-ponging to truly deliver on a terrifying tone for this interesting twist on the arcade space shooter.