Sinistar

I hunger!

"Beware -- I live!"

Sinistar is an arcade game released by Williams in 1982, belonging to a genre of the day known as "twitch games" (along with Tempest, Defender and Robotron: 2084). The game was developed by RJ Mical, Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger and Noah Falstein, and the title character's voice was supplied by John Doremus.

The player pilots a lone fighter ship through a quadrant of the galaxy, attempting to mine crystals called Sinisite from nearby planetoids by shooting them. Enemy ships are also attempting to mine crystals (worker ships) or shoot the player (warrior ships). The enemy ships use the crystals to create the skull-like boss Sinistar, while the player uses them to create Sinibombs, the only weapon they can use to damage and eventually destroy the Sinistar.

Destroying the Sinistar is necessary to advance to the next level, but is by no means easy: The Sinistar is surrounded by twelve segments of armor, and the player must destroy all of them before delivering the final blow. At the same time, enemy ships are still mining and collecting crystals in order to repair damage to the Sinistar, while the Sinistar itself is hunting down the player's ship, taunting the player with such one-liners as "Run, coward!" (which, due to the crude sound chip, sometimes sounded like "Ron Howard!", earning the game a Fan Nickname of Opiestar).

Sinistar has a reputation of being really difficult in the later levels, partly due to its development being rushed at the cost of gameplay adjustments that would have made the difficulty curve a bit easier.

In 1999, a PC remake would be released called Sinistar Unleashed, which retained the difficulty of the original game, but since it was in full 3D, the player's range of vision was limited, making the game even harder.

Sinistar is referenced heavily (to the point of the Sinistar voice being used as the voice of a main character) in the 2007 animated (and surprisingly non-drug-influenced) film We Are the Strange.

Tropes used in Sinistar include:

• Attract Mode - It was one of the first games in the market to sport a voice synthesizer chip (a HC-55516 according to MAME), and uses it to full effect by taunting any passer by!
• Boss Battle
• Incoming Ham: BEWARE, I LIVE!
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard
• The Determinator: Sinistar
• The Eighties
• Failure Is the Only Option: It seems the only way to get to the next level is to let his drones build him.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Sinistar
• Nintendo Hard - Check the work description up at the top where it says "Destroying the Sinistar."
  • The player has to "milk" asteroids for sinisite. Too many shots too fast blows them up and you get nothing.
  • The 1999 reimagining Sinistar Unleashed remade the game in total 3D, putting the game into SNK Boss difficulty.
• Oh Crap: Basically the response a player had the second Sinistar announces "Beware, I live!"
• Shoot'Em Up

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"Run, coward!"