Sinistar

The player controls a lone spaceship and must create "Sinibombs" by shooting at drifting planetoids and collecting the crystals that are released as a result. The Sinibombs are needed to defeat the game boss Sinistar, an animated spaceship with a demonic skull face. Sinistar doesn't exist at the beginning of the game and is constantly being built by enemy worker ships. Time is of the essence, but if you try to mine too quickly, a planetoid will be destroyed without releasing any crystals. Enemy worker ships also collect crystals (often stealing them from the player), which they use to build the Sinistar. Enemy warships can attack the player's ship directly. The player gets a head start before the enemy ships have enough crystals to start building. The game ends when the player's ships are all destroyed. Once the Sinistar is fully formed, a digitized voice makes various menacing announcements, including "Beware, I live!", "I starve, coward!", "I am Sinistar!", "Run! Run! Run!", "Beware, coward!", "I'm starving!", "Run, coward!" and a loud roar. The Sinistar has no weapon attacks, but if it touches the player's ship while zooming across the board, the player's ship is "eaten" and destroyed. To destroy a completed Sinistar, a total of 13 Sinibombs are required. However, an incomplete Sinistar can be damaged to slow down its construction. Any short range Sinibomb will automatically target the Sinistar when fired, but can be intercepted by a collision with an enemy ship, enemy fire, or a planetoid. Each time the player defeats the Sinistar, it moves from one zone to the next. A sequence of four zones repeats continuously after the first zone. Each is named after the most numerous feature of that zone: Worker Zone, Warrior Zone, Planetoid Zone, and Void Zone (the Void Zone is particularly difficult because there are very few planetoids there). Starting from the first worker zone, a completed but damaged Sinistar can be repaired or rebuilt by the enemy ships by collecting more crystals, which extends its "life" if the player can't kill it quickly.