Sinistar review: the boss you watched being built

You fly a small ship through a field of drifting rocks. You shoot them and little crystals spill out. You grab them. So do the red enemy ships, and they are not saving them for later. Somewhere off screen, piece by piece, they are building something. Then a voice fills the room: "Beware, I live."

A boss made of your mistakes

The design is beautifully cruel. Crystals from the planetoids are the only way to make Sinibombs, the one weapon that can hurt the Sinistar. Enemy worker ships gather the same crystals to build it. So every second you spend not mining is a second the monster gets closer to finished. You are racing the thing you are about to fight, and it is using your resource to win.

Even when you do have bombs, nothing is simple. A Sinibomb can be intercepted by workers, warriors and planetoids, and later a damaged Sinistar can be repaired by the workers if you do not finish it off fast.

Sinistar is the only boss you can watch being built and still not stop.

The voice

When it is complete, the Sinistar chases you and talks. "I hunger!" "Run, coward!" The voice belonged to radio personality John Doremus, and the roar came from a stock recording of a gorilla. In a dark arcade it was genuinely frightening. Sinistar is known for its digitized speech and high difficulty, and those two things feed each other. The voice makes you panic, and panic gets you eaten.

A stick built for one game

Williams produced a 49-way optical joystick specifically for Sinistar, and you felt the difference immediately. Steering around rocks while a monster screamed behind you needed that precision, and the cabinet gave it to you.

What it meant back then

Sinistar was the machine you could hear from the other end of the mall. Parents walking past Spencer Gifts would turn their heads at "Run, coward!" and kids would drift toward the sound. There were no home versions at the time, so if you wanted that voice, you had to go find the cabinet and feed it quarters, at the arcade, at the bowling alley, wherever a Williams machine had landed.

Playing it today

It is still hard, and it is still thrilling. The loop of mine, bomb, flee never gets old, because every round the Sinistar comes together at a slightly different moment and catches you at a different weakness. Play it once with the volume up. You will understand why people still quote it.