Sinistar

Sinistar is a great concept but DAMN do you require patience. You control an Asteroids-style ship, that has to shoot asteroids in order to mine resources, which you can use as bombs. However, the kicker is that you have numerous, harmless drone ships that are competing with you. You can bump into them and shoot them all you like, but they are your foes for they are also collecting the resources in order to build the magnificent demon-ship, Sinistar.

Each level starts with the drones/workers mining asteroids and assembling 20 pieces of resource to complete the Sinistar. You can choose to tamper with their work if you like, but it will not benefit you much, than just fruitlessly postpone the inevitable. Once Sinistar is complete, it will chase you with his infamous boasts('I HUNGER', 'I LIVE', etc), and you have to destroy him in order to get to the next round. This is the reason you were collecting those bombs in the first place, and a hefty sum of 13 is enough to dispatch the monstrosity.

The thing is though, the little pieces of the game are so subtly tilted to go against you and be unfair. The screen is barely big enough to provide any foreshadowing of Sinistar's arrival, and the controls are a tinge too inert, hectic and nimble to really make you adjust to the directions you'll be heading. The workers, resources, and ships all fly at such a lightning fast speed, that for those who want to use a higher live count to beat the game, collecting the bombs and attacking Sinistar would just become a tedious exercise. In spite, whatever Sinistar lacks in the amount of control it gives to the player really does compensate for its awesome production values and having the first arcade boss that's truly terrifying due to its richness in detail. 80% of the man-hours dedicated to developing the game, the sprites, the sounds, the mechanics, you can tell it was all in pursuit of making Sinistar be as sinister as possible.