Quarter Suckers - Sinistar & Robotron 2084 (Double Feature)

Named after it's infamous antagonist, Sinistar is a Williams Electronics arcade classics known for its intense, quarter-sucking difficulty and sound work, being the first stereo arcade machine ever released, as well as featuring Sinistar's never-seen before digitized voice, terrorizing players with its nerve-wracking voice lines - "Beware -  I live!"

Williams Entertainment Inc. made Sinistar with its signature erratic, turbulent gameplay also found in Defender and Robotron 1984. It's main antagonist - Sinistar seems seems to be a sentient spacecraft bent on destruction and consumption, easily recognizable by his demonic cat face and demonic voice.

 

A Sinistar control panel, featuring 3 buttons for each player - and 1 joystick.

 

A sprite list of the enemies and items

Sinistar is absent at the start of the game until it is constructed by the enemy worker ships using 20 crystal pieces. These workers collect, steal crystals to construct their eldritch master - "Sinistar".  Worker ships also repair the Sinistar, often after a player has been defeated by it.
Once Sinistar is built, he will chase the player across the map, accompanied with his swarm of warrior ships - reminiscent of Star Wars' Tie-Fighter in design, they shoot and intercept your spacecraft.
The Player is on a time limit to mine "planetoids" before the "workers", extracting crystals to build his signature weapon, the "Sinibomb", the only weapon able to destroy his nemesis. A total of 13 Sinibombs are required, while they can be intercepted by workers and warriors, each Sinibombs will home at "Sinistar", chipping parts of his spacecraft until he is ultimately defeated. The player is then taken to a new zone - Worker, Warrior, Planetoid, and Void - while Sinistar slowly repairs at the center of the map.
As their name implies, each zone emphasizes a game feature, presented on the left.
Note that firing does not affect Sinistar.

Sinistar remains another frenetic classic by Williams Electronics, probably as good if not better than Robotron 1984. The depth and technical prowess of this 1982 game are rivaled only by Atari's Star Wars cockpit cabinet, released in 1983.
Never before has sci-fi horror been so masterfully executed, Sinistar is a terrifying villain that causes even a simple Asteroids clone to ruin your fresh pair of pants. His guttural scream, forever immortalized in gaming history.

A reboot was released in 1999 by the late THQ,
featuring the same elements in a 3D environment

 Sinistar Unleashed

Nearly 20 years past the release of the game, a small developer called "GameFX" was commissioned with rebooting the famous "Sinistar" franchise for a modern audience - on Windows 98. "GameFX" initially called the game "Out of the Void",  a hint at the final "Void" level of the original.
At the time, space shooters were the craze with the many flight-stick gameport peripherals being sold to play the excellent Wings Commander, Tie-Fighter, and the many Star Trek games.  It was the age of space flight simulation, as well as flight simulators.
People often used flight-stick to play DOOM, of all things...

Example of a "bioship"

Featuring 26 more levels than its predecessors, The game features "bioship" as its main theme,  sentient bio-mechanical space ship were a short-lived trend of the late 90s and early 2000s, with Half-Life, Warhammer 40k, Quake, Starcraft and many others following the popular Organic Technology trope of Biopunk.

This artistic direction is ultimately reminding us of the Eldritch nature of the Sinistar. We prefer the fully mechanical demon of the 80s:
Sinistars in this iteration is a disgrace; he is slow and miserable, his design and voice line botched by members the development team, rather than re-using the iconic voice of radio personality "John Doremus". Sinistar comes back in every 26 levels, in multiple bio-horrific incarnations. Only in the final stage can you face the iconic form on Sinistar.

Only... disappointing.

Graphics were, however, praised at the time, with 3dfx, a 3D technology pioneer - responsible for the famous "Voodoo Graphics PCI" cards - directly supporting development. AllGame's reviewer was satisfied with the game's graphics but criticized how its bosses were designed, elaborating that "the Sinistars ... simply don't instill the same sense of sheer panic as in the previous game." 

As part of our Quarter Suckers Reviews, we give "Sinistar" a 90% score, and "Sinistar Unleashed" a 55% score.