My friend Anna Hegedus recently bought an Atari Jaguar. Don’t worry, she already apologized. It was one of the few remaining holes in her classic console collection, which already included legendary duds like the 3D0 and the Phillips CDi. So she was pretty hardcore about tracking one down. She was so hardcore that she paid…well I’m not going to say what she paid, it was a lot…for a Jaguar-themed bundle on eBay.

The box of suck included an Atari Jaguar (still in box) and an Atari CD add-on (very hard to find). It also included several games, including copies of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace that were signed by Don Bluth.

With baited breath Anna and I hooked up the Jaguar today for a test drive (sorry, bad pun) and we quickly plowed through the batch of horrendous suckfests that were the Atari Jaguar software library. We bore witness to a horrendous port of Doom, the shitty space shooter Cybermorph, and the Jaguar CD’s horrendous port of Blue Lightening, an Afterburner rip-off that was actually a sweet Lynx title. We even booted up the pinnacle of shit, the movie-based White Men Can’t Jump, which played and looked like NBA Jam covered in about 50 tons of raw sewage.

However, there was one diamond in the shit-stained rough; Tempest 2000.

Tempest 2000 is a remake of the original Tempest, an arcade classic from 1981 and it kicks eight different kinds of ass. It’s the most frantic and fast-paced shooter you’ll ever play and it’s crazy psychedelic explosions made the game an acid trip in cart form. There were other versions of the game released on other systems but the Atari Jaguar version remains the best.

And not only did Anna’s box of Atari ass contain the original Tempest 2000 (in the box, complete with instructions to boot) but it also included one more bit of Tempest-related goodness…

Tempest 2000: The Soundtrack
The Tempest 2000 soundtrack KICKS ASS, and it’s one of the reasons why the Jaguar version remains the definitive release. It’s an amazing collection of acid house inspired techno and entirely original. It’s a bit derivative and definitely silly as hell, but so was most “legit” electronic music at the time. If you like old-school Moby, The KLF or FSOL then you need to listen to this soundtrack, it’s the best techno album you never heard.

Now if you visit Amazon you can buy this soundtrack, and many of you probably know that I try not to post music that’s in print and easily available. However, I’m making an exception this time around, and for various reasons:

1. This technically isn’t available at Amazon, it’s being sold by an independent retailer through Amazon’s site.

2. The retailer himself says that the soundtrack is out of print.

3. This soundtrack was released by Atari, and they no longer exist

Does that make me a hypocrite who’s over-rationalizing? Maybe. But I don’t care. The fact remains that this album is out of print, it kicks ass and you should listen to it right now!

Also go visit Anna Hegedus’ amazing site, where she’ll show you how to fix your NES, make your 360 full of pretty lights and much more!

Also, if you like Tempest 2000 then check out this excellent lecture by Jeff Minter, the crazy motherfucker behind it all.

No llamas were harmed the in making of this post.