Talk:Sinistar

2005 review
Does anyone have a clue what this article is on about? I know what Sinistar is, I've played it. But let's see... 'twitch games'? Never heard of them. Gyruss claims to be the first arcade game with stereo sound. And just what is a 49-way joystick? Spottedowl 17:11, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reference number [4] is a little suspect. Anybody could register the domain name. I didn't bother to read the claims in the single text file that resides at sinistar.com because it's lacking any credible citations or appearance that would suggest an actual company owns the rights to the name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.1.0.168 (talk) 16:53, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

A "twitch game" is one that requires fast reflexes. Admittedly, it's not used as much as it once was. I can't speak for the stereo sound, but the joystick I can explain. A joystick in, say, the Pac-Man arcade game has a 4-way joystick. It has four switches: up, down, left, and right. Any direction between these is "rounded" to the nearest direction. In some games, the in-between directions (e.g., up and left switches both on) were recognized as distinct directions. Some arcade games have 8-way joysticks with 8 switches (up, up-left, left, down-left, etc.), and it is possible to recognize in-between directions for a total of 16 directions. Sinistar, by contrast, has a joystick with 49 switches to allow finer control of direction. (To my knowledge, it doesn't use directions between these.) That's also why it's virtually impossible to play using a standard keyboard or videogame controller. (Though an analog joystick works well.) Babomb 20:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Standard joysticks had essentially a 3x3 matrix of possible states, like a tic-tac-toe board where the center square is the neutral position. The Sinistar joystick, invented by Kenneth Lantz, had a 7x7 matrix. It was all done with optical switches since physical ones couldn't stand up to the rigors of the arcade for very long. The earlier game Tailgunner used potentiometers which gave finer control, but broke down very frequently. Noah Falstein 00:07, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Ron Howard
While he is chasing you, he says further things, such as "Run coward!", which sounds a lot like Ron Howard, which is what led the developers to dub the game "Opie-star". Wow, really? Wow. Wait-- really? Max22 04:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It seems to be a proven fact. I quote from the "Midway Arcade Treasures" videogame:

"They could have done more accurate voice synthesis, but elected to go for an eerie low quality with more sentences instead. The office joke was that when the Sinistar said, 'Run Coward!' it actually sounded more like 'Ron Howard,' which is where the game received its codename: 'Opie-Star'."

Several "Sinistar" fansites mention it and, to me, it really does sounds like "Ron Howard" in the game!

I hoped this helps! --Mr. Sinistar 00:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

To my memory, this in-joke was coined by RJ Mical, one of the team members, shortly after the voice recording was done. RJ is the one interviewed for the quote above from the Midway Arcade Treasures, and he has been the main source of the story, but it is quite true -- Noah Falstein, project leader for Sinistar 30 Mar 2007

Shockwave Arcade Collection
"In July 2000, Midway licensed Sinistar, along with other Williams Electronics games, to Macromedia Shockwave for use in an online applet to demonstrate the power of the shockwave web content platform, entitled Shockwave Arcade Collection. The conversion was created by Digital Eclipse. It is currently freely available to be played within the shockwave web applet."

The game can no longer be found there, this deserves an edit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.48.9 (talk) 14:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The one and only.
This article refers to him as "the Sinistar". Shouldn't it be just, "Sinistar", as it clearly has a personality? Murdersaurusrex (talk) 16:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Vague References
I'm finding it hard to believe that EVERY game or EVERY movie that uses the lines "I live", "I hunger" or "Run Cowards" is paying homage to this game. Some I do believe did so, however to list every instance of one of these lines I believe is redundant and not helping the article any. Grimbear13 (talk) 16:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Sinistar also availabe for the Game Boy Advance
Sinistar was also released in 2001 for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) on "Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway%27s_Greatest_Arcade_Hits

Are those really quotes from this game?
This article states "Some of Sinistar's quotations have been included in unrelated video games". Perhaps, but most examples are for stuff like "I Hunger!" , "Beware, I live.", "I Live!" and "Run coward! I live!". Those are very generic - are we sure they didn't appear in any game or book or such until Sinistar debuted in 1983? This seems like unreferenced WP:OR, and not entirely plausible (except the last sentence which states "The original Escape Velocity game also had rare guest appearances of the Sinistar, including some of its catchphrases.", not that it has a reference either. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:52, 11 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and removed them; they would be questionable enough with a citation. Anonymous from Stack Overflow (talk) 22:20, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

There is also a Williams game collection for MS-DOS (and Windows 3.x, but the programs will run without Windows 3.x, tested!), see https://archive.org/details/williamsarcadeclassics ... inside the ISO file is also a SINISTAR.EXE, which runs also just wih MS-DOS, nothing else. So the platforms which support SINISTAR should be edited/DOS should be added. Thx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.8.171 (talk) 08:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)