Sinistar
1982 · Shooter · Arcade
Overview
Williams Electronics' notoriously hard space shooter, famous for its giant talking skull-faced enemy and its digitised threats — "Beware, I live!"
Deep Dive
Sinistar was developed and manufactured by Williams Electronics, and its arcade release came in 1983. It was made by a team of Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger, Noah Falstein, RJ Mical, Python Anghelo and Richard Witt. The player pilots a small ship through open space, mining planetoids for crystals that can be turned into "Sinibombs" — the only weapon able to harm the Sinistar, a huge spacecraft with a menacing face that worker ships are steadily assembling. Once complete, it hunts the player while shouting digitised speech. That use of speech and its punishing difficulty are what the game is best remembered for.
Developer Story
Sinistar was designed by Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger, Noah Falstein, and RJ Mical at Williams Electronics in 1982. The game featured an enormous boss character — Sinistar — that players had to defeat using bombs collected by mining asteroids, while the boss was simultaneously being constructed by worker ships. The booming synthesised voice of Sinistar ("BEWARE, I LIVE!") became one of gaming's most memorable audio moments.
Did You Know?
- "BEWARE, I LIVE!" — Sinistar's taunting speech was delivered in a deep, synthesised voice that players found genuinely intimidating.
- Sinistar was built by worker ships in real time — if players didn't destroy workers fast enough, the boss completed construction sooner.
- Players had to mine asteroids for crystals, then craft sinibombs — a resource-gathering loop inside an action game.
- The game featured a zoom effect as Sinistar approached — the closer the boss, the more screen space it occupied.
- "RUN, COWARD!" was another Sinistar voice line, equally memorable and panic-inducing.
Sources & further reading
- Sinistar — Wikipedia
