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Sinistar

Sinistar is an arcade game released by Williams in 1982. It belongs to a class of video games from the 1980s called \"twitch games\". Other \"twitch games\" include Tempest, Defender, and Robotron: 2084. Sinistar's voice was supplied by John Doremus. more...

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Description

The player pilots a lone fighter ship through a quadrant of the galaxy, initially blasting away at drifting planetoids to \"mine\" Sinisite Crystals from them, which when harvested, create Sinibombs. Sinibombs are the weapons capable of damaging Sinistar. The fighter's bomb bay can hold 20 Sinibombs.

The player creates Sinibombs by shooting at the drifting planetoids (which resemble clouds) and catching the crystals released. It typically takes 5 or more shots to destroy one planetoid, which yields between 1 and 10 Sinisites. At the same time that the player is trying to get Sinisites, the \"worker\" ships are also trying to take the crystals. They use these Sinisites to create Sinistar, the skeletal-looking bad guy who is trying to destroy you. At the same time that all of this is going on, other ships (called \"warrior ships\") are trying to shoot you and kill you.

If you are killed before the Sinistar is formed, you are shown how far along the worker ships are in building the Sinistar. The workers must harvest 15 Sinisite crystals before the Sinistar is completely formed. Once it is completely formed, a digitized voice says \"Beware, I live\". While he is chasing you, he says further things, such as \"I hunger\" and \"Run, coward!\" (which sounds a lot like Ron Howard, leading the developers to dub the game \"Opie-star\").

There are four zones that repeat over and over again. You move from one zone to the next after you have defeated the Sinistar. These zones are Worker Zone, Warrior Zone, Planetoid Zone, and Void Zone. The first three zones have more workers, warriors and planetoids, respectively. The Void Zone is especially difficult because it has almost no planetoids.

Difficulty

There are many, many things that make Sinistar difficult. First of all, there is the challenge of getting the Sinibombs. What often happened is that either the player would be killed before Sinistar was even formed, or conversely, Sinistar would become live and you would only have 10 Sinibombs when 15 were needed to kill Sinistar. Once Sinistar became active, it became almost impossible to get more Sinibombs since Sinistar moved much faster than the player could.

255 Lives Bug

Sinistar contains a well-known bug that grants the player many lives. It happens only if you are down to 1 ship left. If when the Sinistar is about to eat you, a warrior ship shoots you and kills you, something strange happens. When it happens, the warrior shot takes you down to 0 lives and then Sinistar eating you takes you down to -1 lives. -1 in 8 bit two's complement notation is 11111111, or 255 if interpreted as an unsigned value. So when you go down to -1 lives, the game resets you to 255 lives. 255 is the largest number allowed in the 8 bit system. When the Sinistar goes to eat you, the warriors stop shooting, so your only chance for this bug to occur is if one of their previous shots hits you.