Post #1763517

2026-04-27 07:50 UTC

I urge anyone with a heartbeat to buy this (as I just have) at this criminally low price. T2K has a special place in my heart. Not just for all the usual reasons, but it reminds me of a special time in my life. I&#39;d just given up a well paid, secure, sensible s/w eng job. The product was quite high profile - it was due to ship with MS Office, the boss was having meetings with Bill Gates, everyone was lovely and there was no pressure. But it wasn&#39;t games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/688140/Tempest_4000/

Replies (5)

@MarkRipley@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-27 07:56

April 8th, 1994 was my first day at a proper games studio. Someone was playing T2K on a Jaguar dev kit. The studio's musician - Ian Howe ("Howie") had written the music for it, which was thumping away from his cupboard of an office behind me. The guys in the office next to me were embarking on the PC port. I had a floppy disk with @llamasoft_ox@toot.wales 's source code on it. I fired up Brief (the text editor of choice back then), and dived in. That floppy disk is sat in a pile next to me :)

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@MarkRipley@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-27 08:00

It was such an exciting time. Jag, PSX, Saturn, even 32X - 3D was upon us and everything was about to change. Of course, the grim reality of the games biz soon set in - working through the night, weekends, bonuses that never appeared - but then I moved to Ocean, and the wonderment continued....

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@WiteWulf@cyberplace.social 2026-04-27 13:49

@MarkRipley@mastodon.gamedev.place it’s no TxK (still the peak of Jeff’s Tempest iterations, imho), but it’s the best way to play it on a big screen.

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@imalcolm@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 13:50

@MarkRipley@mastodon.gamedev.place T4K is one of the all-time great games (I have it on PS4 and Switch) and that's a frankly insane (in a good way) price. 😎

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@Setok@attractive.space 2026-04-27 13:53

@MarkRipley@mastodon.gamedev.place and no Mac version, as with so many interesting little games :(

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