I will never forget the first time I heard that in an arcade. I was playing some unknown game, but I could hear the voices across the room from where I was. I followed the voices until I came across a game I had never heard of before -- Sinistar.

Sinistar was a very unique game. It was one of the earliest games to support digitized speech. Not only did it have the digitized speech, but the voices were very frightening. Playing the game and hearing the voices would definitely give you the willies.

The original game was developed by Williams -- the same people behind Joust, Defender, etc. Williams had more than their fair share of fantastic arcade games. Sinistar, however, wasn't as big of a hit. Despite the fancy sounds and voices, it just didn't catch on. Many people thought that the game was too hard. I can certainly be counted as one of the people who could never get very far. Generally, my quarter would last me all of a minute before the "Game Over" words would pop up on the screen.

Just to refresh the memories of the classic gamers out there, Sinistar was a 2D "top-down" game that placed you, the lone space warrior, in a well armed ship. The object of the game was to defeat the evil Sinistar. You would spend a fair amount of time flying around space mining crystals, which are used to make Sinibombs. You also need to defend yourself as Sinistar sends his evil minions off to destroy you. Once Sinistar gains enough strength, he comes after you full force. You must launch your Sinibombs at Sinistar to destroy him, and move on to the next level.

Well, many years passed, and Williams never did a follow-up on the game as they had for many of their other titles. With the advent of arcade emulators, however, the game was brought back for the masses to play on their computers. Digital Eclipse released a commercial arcade emulator with Sinistar included. After all of those years, I got to play Sinistar again -- without losing all of those quarters. Two things were the same between the original coin-op, and the Digital Eclipse emulation -- the voices still were haunting, and I still couldn't play the game.

Then, a few more years had passed, and I heard about a development studio not too far away from my home (less than 20 miles to be exact) that was working on a modern version of Sinistar boasting 3D graphics, new sounds, and new music. Needless to say, I was intrigued, so when the playable demos poped up on the Internet a few weeks before the formal release of the new game, I checked it out.

What I found at that time was a beautiful looking game....that clearly wasn't done yet. Oh, and I still sucked at it.

Now, I finally bought a copy of Sinistar: Unleashed several months after its release. Let's take a look at the game.

Before I get started here, let me say up front that what you are looking at is an actual in-game screen capture for Sinistar: Unleashed. This is not from full motion video, or any other artwork from the game....this is the real thing! Sinistar: Unleashed has to be the best looking game I have ever seen. There are rotating asteroids & debris floating through space, and Outer Space itself isn't just a black background with some stars painted in. There are planets and nebulas floating around, and it really dresses up the game. If you have ever seen an episode of Babylon 5, then you should have a pretty good idea of what Outer Space looks like in this game.

The Distilled Evil, a race of space-dwelling creatures, and their slaves, the Sporg, are creating the ultimate bio-rnechanical weapon: the Sinistar. It they succeed, they'll unleash the Sinistar against our universe, in a cosmic rampage of conquest, plunder, and destruction. You must stop them, fighting your way to the center of the Sinistar universe and destroying the ultimate Sinistar there.

On most levels, you pilot your ship through an asteroid field that contains Sinisite crystals. The enemy is feverishly working to energize a jumpgate for the arrival of a Sinistar, which is already traveling through hyperspace. Workers mine the asteroids for crystals, which they carry to the gate. Warriors and turrets of various kinds and sizes protect the workers, guard the gate, and patrol for intruders. When the gate is filled with energy, the Sinistar erupts from: hyperspace and battles you in a duel to the death.

Your ship requires Sinisite crystals for health energy and to power most of its weapons. You can use your mining laser to blast asteroids, releasing the crystals they contain. Fly over a crystal, and your ship will grab it. Some asteroids contain power-ups (look for visually different asteroids); blast them apart and fly over the power-ups to pick them up. Enemy cargo transports also carry power-ups. Destroy them to release the power-ups that they carry.

The game can be played from a 3rd person or 1st person point of view. The screen capture above is from the 3rd person view. The lower right hand corner is your radar, that shows the area of space around you, and any ships that are within range. The bottom-center of the screen shows the weapons that you have at your disposal. The lower right shows your health, and how many crystals that you have mined. The upper right corner shows the health of the Sinistar. Finally, the upper left indicator shows your score, and the amount of lives you have left.

Like the original coin-op game, you must mine crystals to make Sinibombs. The way that you mine crystals is by blasting away at the asteroids that are floating around everywhere. When an asteroid is destroyed, crystals will appear, and you must fly over them to pick them up. Your ship is equipped with a crystal "magnet" that pulls in crystals that are within a certain proximity to your ship.

Also like the arcade game, Sinistar has a bunch of friends that are out to destroy you. These enemy ships will chase you down and do their best to kill you while you are mining crystals. One cool thing about this aspect of the game are the types of ships that Sinistar sends after you. Each one of them looks very unique, but they all look like "space bugs." Using another Babylon 5 reference -- if you have seen a Shadow ship, you have a pretty good idea of what you will go up against in Sinistar: Unleashed.

While you are mining crystals, so are Sinistar's friends. They take the crystals that they are mining, and move them around the jumpgate. Once the jumpgate has been powered, the Sinistar appears.

So, what kind of weapons do you have available to destroy the threat? Well, you have a mining laser, and a weak one at that. Your mining laser is the basic weapon in the game. You also have the opportunity to pick up some additional weapons along the way. These weapons can be hidden in asteroids, and will appear when you blow one up. They can also be found in the debris of destroyed enemy ships. However, there is one thing to remember: these additional weapons have a cost. Specifically, they require a portion of your crystals to work. Each weapon requires a different amount of crystals in order to fire -- some more than others.

Cutting Laser: The Cutting Laser fires continuously as long as you hold down your fire button. It is nothing more than an upgraded version of your basic laser weapon. As you make your way through space, use this laser to destroy enemy ships, asteroids, and anything else that get in your way. A continuous stream fired from this weapon will destroy enemy ships & asteroids much faster than your basic laser.

Lightning Gun: The Lightning Gun is a cool weapon, but is severely limited. When fired, it shoots a bolt of lightning at the target that is in front of you, up to a 30 meter range of your ship.

Lightning Storm: The Lightning Storm is a lightning weapon much like the Lightning Gun. The difference is that the Lightning Storm can strike all targets in a 360 degree arc around your ship. This is a fantastic weapon for later stages of the game when the enemy ships try to surround you.

Mind Control: When a Mind Control weapon hits a target, the enemy vessel changes side and fights alongside for against its former friends. Mind Control affects only the smaller ships -- the worker and warrior vessels. The Sinistar ships not affected by it.

Short-Range Missiles: Short-Range Missiles consist of a salvo of 3 missiles that travel together for a short distance. They cannot fly very far, but they are highly maneuverable and are great for heavily armored ships that are in close proximity. If there are several targets in range, each missile in the salvo is capable of locking on to a different target.

Long-Range Missiles: Long-Range Missiles are different from the Short-Range Missiles in several ways. They are designed to fly long distances, and are great for attacking enemy ships that are far away. They are much less maneuverable, so despite the fact that they can be fired at short distances, they probably won't lock on to a target. The third difference is that they are not fired in salvos. You can only fire one of these at a time.

Concussion: The explosion from the Concussion weapon damages all objects in its blast zone. The Concussion weapon explodes when it hits a target, or reaches its maximum range.

Charging Photon: The Charging Photon weapon is similar to the Concussion weapon. It fires a ball of energy that explodes when it comes within range of an enemy ship. The shock wave from the explosion strikes everything within the blast zone. Firing this weapon is different too, as it must be charged before it can be fired. You must hold down the firing button, and its damage ability increases the longer that it is charged. When the weapon is fully charged, or if you must release the firing button early, the weapon launches. The Charging Photon is your most powerful weapon.

The level design within Sinistar: Unleashed is pretty good. Each of the levels have been filled with many different enemy ships. Many of the ships have an "insect" look to them, which adds to the overall "creepy feel of the game. Each level has its own unique Sinistar. Each of the Sinistar ships have a different strategy for attacking you, and each will require a different tactic for you to destroy them.

Sound effects are appropriate. The Sinistar ships still have comments from you like "Run coward" and "I hunger." In fact, when I installed the game, Sinistar: Unleashed says "Beware, I live" during the installation routine. I had been listening to some .MP3's before I installed the game, and I had the volume on the computer turned up. Needless to say, I about fell out of my chair when the voice came on.

Another nice touch is force-feedback support. If you are fortunate enough to own a force-feedback joystick, Sinistar: Unleashed will make use of it.

Music has been added to this game, and I wasn't too thrilled with it. Like many recent games, it the music in Sinistar: Unleashed has a "techno" feel to it. It just doesn't fit into the game at all. Sinistar, and Sinistar: Unleashed are both games that have a "creepy" environment to them...mainly due to the speech throughout the games. I have no objection to having music in the game, but I would have liked to hear something creepy & scary. I think that type of music would have been a better fit.

The manual is nothing more than a jewel case insert. This is an annoying trend, as more and more software publishers have been providing minimal playing instructions. The content is OK, but it could be much better.

As I mentioned above, the graphics in this game are phenomenal. Sinistar: Unleashed has broken new ground in realism. Everything looks real. I could see GameFX/THQ making a fantastic multi-player space battle game (Like Descent: Freespace) using the technology that they developed in this title.

OK, so what was wrong with the game? I'm not at all happy with the way that "save games" have been set up. You can only save games at the end of a level. This is frustrating, as later stages in the game will require you to spend 30 minutes (or more) to defeat the Sinistar for that level. To make matters worse, if you do drop out of the game before the end of a level, you get this message telling you that you will lose a life if you quit the game. This just seems like a silly way of handling it.

What else? BUGS!!! I can't believe how many bugs I ran into during the time I spent playing Sinistar: Unleashed. The first one that I noticed had to do with my controller. I played the game using a Microsoft Sidewinder, and I had a difficult time getting it to save the custom controller settings. The game allows you to program your controller, and I couldn't get the game to properly save my settings....until after I applied the 5mb patch.

I also had a problem with graphical glitches. Take a look at the screen captures below.

This happened far too many times while playing the game. This generally occurred at the start of a new level. At first, the only way that I could get these graphics to go away was to exit the game and start over.....which means that I lose a life. Annoying. After some experimentation, I determined that I could do an ALT-ESC back to the desktop, and then go back to the game. This would refresh the screen, and the problem would go away.

I investigated the graphics bugs quite a bit. My Canopus Pure 3D card is listed by GameFX/THQ as a compatible card for the game, and my drivers meet the requirements set by the GameFX/THQ. All other aspects of my system meet or exceed the system requirements. I have no other games that cause graphic effects like the ones shown above, so I am convinced that the problem is with the game, and not my system.

I also noticed one other major bug. On occasion, the game would crash after launching it. According to the list of bugs that are corrected with the patch, there is a problem with the game crashing, and the patch did fix the problem. However, the bug list said that the game would crash at launch if you keep hitting the "Enter" key. The game would crash for me, and I never hit the "Enter" key. Strange......

I also was unhappy with the movement of your ship. This game screams for an Analog controller, as conventional joysticks and joypads just aren't sensitive enough. This makes it difficult to aim at an enemy ship. You can play with the Ship Maneuverability setting within the game, and that does help the problem. Unfortunately, it makes your ship fly like a wounded duck. If you get into a tight dogfight late in the game with the Ship Maneuverability settings turned down, you can consider yourself dead.

Sinistar: Unleashed, like the original coin-op, is a single player game. I would have liked to have seen some kind of multi-player aspect to the game. A team-oriented mode for LAN or Internet would have been nice, and I think that a multi-player cooperative mode would have added additional value (and fun) to this title.

Finally, Sinistar: Unleashed is meant to update an arcade classic. So, I ask this question -- Where is the history, and information on the original coin-op game? Well, it is no where to be found...in the manual or on the CD. This is extremely upsetting. Even more upsetting is that the original coin-op game has not been included in the package, as many companies like Activision and Atari/Hasbro Interactive have done with their "classic" titles. I really would have liked to have seen the original Sinistar included in this game. Luckily, I own the Arcade Classics Pack which does emulate Sinistar, so at least I can still play the original if I want to.

All in all, Sinistar: Unleashed is a good title -- that isn't finished yet -- despite the fact that it is on the store shelves. I felt that there were too many things left out of the game that should be there, and the graphical glitches that I had were just plain annoying. I'm not saying that I did not enjoy the game, because I had a lot of fun with it. However, I walked away expecting more. I hope that GameFX and THQ will keep pumping out patches to correct the problems. Hardcore classic gamers will probably enjoy the game regardless, but the mainstream gaming crowd will probably skip this title.

Operating System:
Windows� 95/98

Processor:
Pentium� II 233 MHz or higher

CD-ROM Drive:
4x Speed

Video:
3D Video Accelerator

Memory:
32 MB RAM

Hard Disk Space:
40 MB Free

Sound:
Sound Blaster 16

DirectX:
DirectX version 6.1 or higher