Exodus

The Good
Tempest, Atari's tube shooter, was a quite popular and had several ports, including the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and BBC Micro. Missing from the list is the Commodore 64 version, probably due to hardware limitations. Firebird thought that this wasn't very fair and asked one of its programmers to create a game that mimicked the look and feel of Atari's game.

In my opinion, Exodus is a much better port, even though it doesn't carry the Tempest name. The game plays much like the original in that you maneuver your ship around a series of vortexes (?) while you fire at anything that comes out of it. Well, anything except your friend Spud. You must also shoot at the mutant llamas that also comes out. Failure to shoot the llamas, or save Spud, will result in loss of life. I could not see any level number in the game, so I assumed that this is another score-attack game. However, it appears you will eventually end the level if you survive long enough, but I don't know what triggers this.

Both you and the ship is animated nicely, and it was interesting to see how each vortex looks like. I quite enjoyed watching the ship go around the rim of the vortex. There is a nice time-warp animation where your ship looks like it remains stationary among a spectrum of colors. The game can either be played either with the joystick or keyboard, and I believe that both methods are easy to control your ship with. The background music that allows you to select your controls is quite amazing. There is no background music while you play the game, but the sound effects are good.

The Bad
The major thing that I don't like about the game is the timer that counts down while you play. There are several time bonuses that you must collect to increase time, and you have to wait a while before the time bonuses appear. And if there is no time left, the game is over no matter how many lives you have remaining. Furthermore, the timer doesn't reset after you have completed a level. This makes it very difficult to get to the next level if you miss the bonuses in the last level that you were on.

The Bottom Line
This should appease C-64 fans that were disappointed in not getting their own copy of Tempest. Anyone who manages to get a copy should be lucky that Exodus expands upon Atari's game by adding a few new elements, such as a timer that doesn't reset after each level. If you play Tempest so much in the arcades, then you would love this game in your collection.