Sinistar (Arcade)

Some intergalactic menaces tends to "visit" other planet (e.g. Earth, our planet) like these aliens. And some of them stay in outer space, like space pirates or The Infamous Sinistar!  

I'm sure most of you know what game is Sinistar (1982). If you don't play/know much retro video games or you have been brainwashed by secret syndicate lately, so you don't know what is Sinistar. I'll tell you about it. Sinistar is old video game about battle between a small spacefighter (the player) against the aforementioned Sinistar and his cohorts. It's pretty well known to be difficult game. First time i play it: back when i was middle-schooler and on PC. It's on bundle with Bubble, Robotron 2084, Defender, Defender II, and Joust. My favorite: Joust because i always have funny interest with jousting. So once again, i will confront the despicable ones....till i get very annoyed. Or very bored.

It's sensible procedure to read the instruction in attract mode first before jumping into the action. Word "Bombbay" sounds like Bombay, former name for Mumbai (A big city in India). You should use space back there, Williams! What else do i need to know?

"...you had better run". Run? How can i 'run' with my spaceship? It should be 'fly away'. Yes, i know. The point is: fight Sinistar or escape. Anything else, Williams?

 

Right, the scoring list. Okay, i get the basic. Let's get started!

 

Here. i'm mining the crystal out of a planetoid. By mining, i mean: continue bumping and shooting. My spaceship has great momentum tendency like a tennis ball thrown against wall of trampolines. Unless i keep accelerating toward the asteroid, my spaceship will bounces in quite distance. There's no death by collision here. So it's safe to bump into asteroid or the enemies.

 

Unless you bump into warrior enemy so you're exposed to their pot shot. Yeah, i should keep distance toward these shooting gits. The thing is: my spaceship accelerates really fast and i only have directional button to accelerate (also turn) toward pressed button without 'break' button. Meaning it's difficult to make sharp maneuver movement for proper spacecraft fighting against them.

 

Here's the "star" of the game: Sinistar himself. Yes, that flying hideous face is him. My standard shoot flies harmlessly through him. I blame that dolt mechanic who keep insists not to fix the aiming shoot system on my ship. So i use the sinibombs to chip parts of Sinistar. He only got ample amount of outer layer on his head. So you can tell i'm doing pretty great. By the way, you get one button for standard shoot that can be hold for rapid firing and another button to dispatch sinibombs. They are obtained whenever you get the planetoid crystal. I'll be honest, even though rapid fire sounds great for destruction, sinibombs do the job pretty well. Once unleashed, they are strongly homing to Sinistar, skinning him alive and finally bringing big explosions right in his frontal sinus. But sinibomb has flaws: 1) It's in limited number and involves rigorous asteroid-farming to obtain sufficient amount to obliterate the Sinistar; 2) It can hit other target than Sinistar, such as: his vassals and the planetoid.

 

Once i have defeated that Sinistar. I got warped to Worker zone. According to the instruction from before, worker is that red-thing enemy type. Its shape and its status as 'worker' reminds me of Zerg's drone in Starcraft. But unlike that drone, worker doing nothing but: either headbutting everything (e.g. planetoid, player's ship) or stealing freshly mined crystals then tribute them to Sinistar to heal him. In this stage, there's more workers and (most importantly) much less planetoid than previous stage. The game sounds getting obnoxious, right?  

 

But the warrior-type enemies are more annoying then workers. And there goes my last live.

 

Okay, i try again. The max. capacity for sinibombs are 20. Any crystal gathered when the sinibombs bay full, will be saved for warp engine. Which means: i don't know what the hell is that. Bigger extra points, perhaps? 

 

Remember when i say it's safe to bump into the enemies? The Sinistar is the exception case. He will devour your ship (with you inside it). Still it's death by forced digestion, not by collision. He's excel at chasing you (his speed can outrun your ship) and eat you immediately (besides cowardly sending you his minions).

 

To be honest, i imitate a part on Scout play Sinistar video. Replacing Sinistar's speech with Heavy's will make the game's experience from annoying into funny entertaining. Trust me! The original speech are something like: "I am Sinistar" or "Beware! I live" with *ehm* sinister voice. The last one is like corny quote from Anime's antagonist or sort like that. Another thing that Sinistar will say: "Run, coward!". Pretty much sensible reason behind the adequacy of correlation between Sinistar and Heavy. Another thing that i want you to know: there's indicator of how many sinibombs that you have and how many pieces (which act as hitpoints or sort like that) that Sinistar has. Which is neat feature.

 

So, the key to succeed the game is: 1) Flies ASAP to nearest planetoid (the more, the better) and harvest crystal from it as much as you can. 2) Once you get full of sinibombs (or at least bit less from full), confront Sinistar in wide space so sinibomb's homing more accurately toward him and start spamming them. 3) If you're out of sinibombs, Escape from him! And repeat from step #1. The mini-map can help you well, provided you have opportunity to take glance at it. White dot in center represents player's ship. Green dot represents planetoid. Red dot represents a worker. Purple dot represents a warrior. Blue dot represents launched sinibomb. Yellow dot represents the Sinistar himself. Other part of HUD that's important: dots or word 'empty' on top of score for sinibomb supply indicator; and warning/notification indicator. It consists: "You've entered swarm of planetoid", "Sinistar is within map", "Sinibomb attack damaged target", or "Sinibomb got intercepted".

 

I wasn't safe for long from previous moment. I got today's hi-score in #1 but still below Scout in all-time's hi-score. The lucky git. He barged into my boarding house room, playing this game for awhile and drinking my soft-drink tea. And then he left with stupid grin on his face....not really. It was me being iseng, making name on his stead, in past these months. To make things worse, Scout is the my most hated class in TF 2. So, i have been fooled by myself twice. But middle-schooler me manage to reach warrior zone and i believe he got much more score than me. I call that win and i quit playing, letting Capt. Picard and his crew deal with this coward bastard. In case you're curious, WVI is stands for 'Werdito Von Izenger'. There's petty trivia for you.  

 

Sinistar is most likely Williams's adaption of Asteroids (1979). Both games have same thing in common: player assuming control of triangular shaped spaceship that able to shoot rapidly space rocks. Main objective in Asteroids: blast every meteor into pieces and avoid getting collided by it. While in Sinistar: harvest crystal from asteroid to get sinibombs, and destroy Sinistar with said homing bomb while have to deal with his cohorts. Which is certainly more complex and engaging than Asteroid's. But as i have hinted before, Sinistar is infuriatingly hard like: getting shot by warriors, the crystals got stolen by workers, get eaten by Sinistar, getting shot by warriors (again). Even with well functioning HUD. As this game is 'net as many score as you can' type of game. That kind of difficulty is okay in my assessment. 
If you're totally brave (or iseng) to challenge this 'most annoying jerk in whole galaxy', give it a go and do yourself a simple favor. Mute the sounds and pretend that Sinistar is voiced by Heavy. That way you can more enjoy the game a bit. Also playing this game may make you feel 'sinis' ('cynical' in Indonesian) toward the irritating & smug bastard, he is Sinistar afterall. That's the only pun that i can come up with. If it's unpleasant, please ignore it!