Read more about Sinistar at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Midway Games

Sinistar is an arcade game released by Williams in 1982. It belongs to a class of video games from the 1980s called "twitch game". Other "twitch games" include Tempest, Defender, and Robotron: 2084. Sinistar was developed by RJ Mical, Sam Dicker, Jack Haeger, and Noah Falstein. Sinistar's voice was supplied by John Doremus.

The player pilots a lone fighter ship through a quadrant of the galaxy, initially blasting away at drifting planetoids to "mine" Sinisite Crystals from them, which, when harvested, create Sinibombs. Sinibombs are the only weapon capable of damaging Sinistar. The fighter's bomb bay can hold 20 Sinibombs.

The player creates Sinibombs by shooting at the drifting planetoids and catching the crystals released. Each shot makes a planetoid shake, and if too many shots are fired at a planetoid at too fast of a firing rate, it will cause the planetoid to explode and no crystals will be released. At the same time, a planetoid must shake a certain amount to actually release any crystals. It normally takes between 3 to 6 shots (depending on the size of the planetoid) to release between 1 and 10 crystals. Additional crystals can also be obtained from the same planetoid, as long as the number of shots and firing rate do not cause it to explode.

At the same time that the player is trying to get crystals, the "worker" ships are also trying to take the crystals. They use these crystals to create Sinistar, the skeletal-looking boss who is trying to destroy the player. At the same time that all of this is going on, other ships (called "warrior ships") are trying to shoot the player's ship, and the warriors can also be seen shooting at planetoids to mine crystals when they aren't trying to attack the player or guard the Sinistar.

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