A new book-length analysis dives deep into the technical architecture of two legendary arcade games: Dave Theurer's Tempest (1981) and Jeff Minter's Tempest 2000 (1994). The work examines how each game functions down to the machine code level.

The author breaks down implementation details in 6502 assembler for the original Tempest and 68K Motorola assembler for Tempest 2000. Rather than a dense tome, the book consists of short, digestible chapters—each presenting a focused morsel of technical insight into the games' inner workings.

The book can be downloaded for free (9MB, with a 27MB high-resolution version available). Dual-page viewing in a PDF reader is recommended to see code and commentary side by side. Readers can gift what they want if they find it valuable.

This project joins similar technical deep-dives on Iridis Alpha and Psychedelia, offering rare assembly-level analysis of classic arcade games that was rarely documented during the era.