Tempest Cheat Codes & Secrets

Starting Level Select and Skill Step (Arcade, 1980)

The most valuable technique in the original Atari arcade cabinet is the Skill Step system — Tempest’s built-in method for letting experienced players bypass the early, easy tubes and jump directly into the action. This was not a hidden cheat in the traditional sense but a deliberate design feature by programmer Dave Theurer, who recognized that veterans would be bored grinding through Level 1 every session.

To use Skill Step on the original arcade cabinet, insert your credits and then rotate the spinner (the game’s dedicated rotary encoder controller) before pressing the Fire button to start. Each click of the spinner advances your starting level by one. The game highlights your chosen starting tube on the level map display, and the point value shown reflects the bonus points you forego by skipping earlier levels. Starting at a higher level also means a higher score multiplier from the outset, which skilled players exploited to post monster scores on the leaderboard.

Starting Level Range	Spinner Clicks Required	Difficulty Note
Level 1 (default)	0	Easiest tubes, flat geometry
Level 3	2	Slightly more enemies
Level 7	6	Curved tubes begin appearing
Level 11	10	Spikers become aggressive
Level 17+	16+	Tankers split at high frequency
Level 81+	80+	Looped difficulty, pure endurance

The highest starting point most players aim for competitively is around Level 9 or 11, where the tube geometry becomes genuinely interesting without the enemy density becoming instantly lethal before you have time to orient yourself.

Atari 2600 Game Variations (1983 Port)

The Atari 2600 port of Tempest, released in 1983, differs significantly from the arcade original due to hardware constraints, but it retains a robust variation system accessed through the Game Select switch on the console itself. Cycling through variations changes both the starting difficulty and the tube selection, effectively functioning as Tempest’s version of a level select code.

Game Variation	Starting Tube Type	Enemy Speed	Platform
1	Flat (easiest)	Slow	Atari 2600
2	Flat	Medium	Atari 2600
3	Angled tube	Slow	Atari 2600
4	Angled tube	Medium	Atari 2600
5	Star shape	Normal	Atari 2600
6	Star shape	Fast	Atari 2600
7	V-shape	Normal	Atari 2600
8	V-shape	Fast (hardest)	Atari 2600

The Difficulty switches on the Atari 2600 console add another layer. Setting the Left Difficulty switch to A (up position) increases the fire rate restriction — your blaster has a shorter burst cap before it overheats, forcing more disciplined shooting. Setting it to B (down position) allows nearly unlimited rapid fire, which is the mode most players prefer for raw survival. The Right Difficulty switch in Position A causes Flippers to move faster when they reach the rim, making the game significantly more punishing in the final moments before a tube clears.

Superzapper Recharge Exploit (Arcade)

The Superzapper is Tempest’s signature screen-clearing bomb, and managing it correctly is the closest thing the arcade game has to an infinite-lives trick. Each tube grants you one full-power Superzapper use and one partial use. The full use destroys every enemy on the tube instantly. The partial (recharge) use destroys only one random enemy — still valuable, but not the guaranteed save the first use provides.

The exploit: when you enter a new tube, your Superzapper fully recharges. Players who discovered they were about to die on a particularly brutal tube would deliberately sacrifice themselves to advance to the next tube, where a fresh full Superzapper awaited. On the surface this costs a life, but against tubes where enemies have clustered at the rim and a death is near-inevitable anyway, burning the life to reset with a full Superzapper on a new tube was the mathematically correct play. Tournament players codified this as “tube trading” and it became standard high-score strategy throughout the early 1980s.

The recharge also resets on the Atari 2600 port per level, making it equally important to conserve your first Superzapper use for a genuine emergency rather than panic-firing it the moment enemies appear.

Extra Lives and Score Milestones

The original arcade Tempest awards extra lives at score thresholds set by the operator via the cabinet’s DIP switches. The default factory configuration awards a bonus life at 10,000 points, with a second possible award at 30,000 points depending on switch configuration. Arcade operators in competitive venues sometimes disabled bonus lives entirely to increase quarter turnover, so the exact thresholds varied by location.

Score Threshold	Bonus	Configuration
10,000 pts	+1 Life	Default factory setting
20,000 pts	+1 Life	Alternate DIP config
30,000 pts	+1 Life	Optional second award
Operator disabled	No bonus lives	High-traffic locations

On the Atari 2600 port, bonus lives are awarded at fixed intervals regardless of operator settings, giving home players a more predictable progression. Reaching approximately 8,000 points earns the first extra life on the 2600 version, with subsequent awards spaced further apart to balance the shorter session lengths typical of home play.

Tempest 2000 Cheat Codes (Atari Jaguar, 1994)

Jeff Minter’s Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar is the definitive enhanced version of the game and contains the richest set of actual cheat codes in the franchise. These were entered on the Jaguar’s numerical keypad controller during the title screen or pause menu.

Code	Input Sequence	Effect	Platform
All Weapons	Pause, then 1, 3, 5, 7	Activates AI Droid, Jump, all powerups	Jaguar
Level Warp	Title screen: 1, 2, 3, A	Opens level select screen	Jaguar
Invincibility	Pause, 9, 7, 5, 3	Temporary shield permanence	Jaguar
99 Lives	Title screen: 5, 5, 5, B	Maximum life count	Jaguar
Bonus Soundtrack	Options menu: *, #, *, #	Unlocks additional music tracks	Jaguar

The Level Warp code for Tempest 2000 was discovered by players in 1994 by systematically testing keypad combinations — the Jaguar controller’s numerical pad made brute-forcing title screen codes much easier than on standard gamepads, and the Tempest community documented nearly a dozen working inputs within the first few months of the game’s release. The 99 Lives code in particular became notorious because Tempest 2000’s later levels are so chaotic that even with a full stock of lives, survival past the Web levels requires genuine skill.

Tempest X3 Codes (PlayStation, 1996)

The PlayStation port Tempest X3 brought the series to a new audience and introduced its own set of codes, entered at the main menu using the standard PlayStation controller.

Code	Button Sequence	Effect	Platform
Level Select	Hold L1 + R1 at title, then press Square, X, Circle	Stage select unlocked	PlayStation
Wireframe Mode	Triangle, Triangle, Square, Circle at options	Classic vector wireframe visuals	PlayStation
Extra Credits	At game over: Up, Down, Left, Right, X, X	+5 credits added	PlayStation
Debug Menu	L2, R2, L2, R2, Start at title screen	Developer test options	PlayStation

The Wireframe Mode in Tempest X3 is particularly notable — it strips away the rendered polygons and returns the game to something resembling the original vector display aesthetic, which longtime fans considered the “true” Tempest experience. This mode was intended as a tribute to Dave Theurer’s original and was added after early preview feedback from arcade veterans who found the rendered version visually busy.

Developer Easter Eggs and Hidden Messages

The original 1980 arcade cabinet contains a hidden credit buried in the game’s code. Dave Theurer, under pressure from Atari’s legal team who were nervous about acknowledging individual developers (for fear of competitors poaching staff), embedded his name in the program ROM in a format not displayed during normal play. Early EPROM dumpers in the late 1990s discovered the string “DAVE THEURER” along with a brief timestamp corresponding to the final development build date. This was a common practice among Atari developers of the era — Howard Scott Warshaw did the same in Yars’ Revenge, and the tradition predated the now-famous Adventure Easter egg by Warren Robinett.

The Atari 2600 port’s ROM also contains vestigial strings from the porting team, readable only through ROM examination tools. The port was handled by a small internal team who compressed the arcade experience substantially to fit within the 2600’s 4KB cartridge limit, and the ROM comments reflect some of the frustration that compression process entailed.

Tempest 2000 contains the most elaborate Easter egg in the franchise: Jeff Minter included a hidden mode called “T2K Psychedelic” that activates when the player achieves a perfect run on the first five levels without using any weapons except the blaster. The background visuals shift into an intensified color cycling mode that Minter described in interviews as his homage to the light-show aesthetics of 1970s progressive rock concerts. This mode does not affect scoring or enemies and was never documented in official materials — it was discovered by a player in a UK gaming magazine reader submission in early 1995.

Beneficial Glitches and Exploits

Rim Freeze Glitch (Arcade): On certain tube geometries in the original arcade, enemies that reach the rim of the tube can be caught in a brief collision-detection delay if the player moves the spinner extremely rapidly back and forth across their position. This “rim freeze” lasts only a fraction of a second but was enough for skilled players to line up a clean shot on a Flipper that would otherwise be lethal. The glitch stems from the vector hardware’s scanline refresh rate interacting with the enemy position update routine.

Spike Clip (Arcade and 2600): Spikes that Spikers build up along the tube walls can be destroyed by your blaster, but the hit detection on their tips is slightly larger than their visual representation. Players can “clip” a spike from a slightly wider angle than appears possible, allowing shots that visually miss to still register as hits. On the 2600 port this is even more pronounced due to simplified collision boxes.

Credit Feed Pause (Arcade): Inserting a coin into a Tempest cabinet during the exact frame the game transitions from the “Game Over” screen back to the attract mode occasionally caused the credit counter to register two credits instead of one on older cabinet revisions. This was a hardware timing issue with the coin mech interrupt handler and was patched in later board revisions, but early-production cabinets from 1980 and early 1981 could be exploited this way. Arcade operators were generally unaware of this until the boards began receiving service updates.

2600 Difficulty Switch Mid-Game: Flipping the Left Difficulty switch from A to B mid-game on the Atari 2600 version takes effect immediately, resetting your fire rate restriction without losing your current score or lives. Players who found themselves in a panic situation with an overheating blaster discovered that toggling the switch mid-tube provided an instant reprieve, essentially granting unlimited fire for the remainder of that tube without any penalty.