Finally Building "Ninestein" — My 3D Vector Arcade Game Inspired by Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks

If you grew up in the UK in the early eighties and spent your Saturday mornings parked in front of the telly, there's a good chance you remember Terrahawks. Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr's 1983 puppet series had everything: Battlehawk launches, Zeroids, Zelda chewing the scenery, and of course team leader Dr. Tiger Ninestein.

The thing that stuck in my head for over forty years wasn't just the spaceships or the explosions — it was Ninestein's obsession with his computer game. Even when Earth was on the brink of invasion, he'd be sat at his console blasting away at glowing wireframe vectors, completely refusing to be interrupted until he'd beaten his high score. As a kid in 1983, watching those glowing vector lines on his screen, I remember thinking: I wish I could actually play that.

After decades of bench work, countess late nights with a mug of mint tea in the Rainhill workshop, and plenty of tinkering with JavaScript, WebGL, and Three.js—alongside a bit of modern AI assistance to speed up the heavy lifting—I’ve finally put together my own tribute: Ninestein: Vector Runner.

From 1983 TV Prop to a Playable Browser Game

I didn't want this to feel like a modern Unity asset-flip or something bloated with gigabytes of textures. The whole point was to capture what a proper 1980s vector arcade cabinet — somewhere between Star Wars (1983), Tempest, and the screen on Ninestein's desk at Hawknest — felt like in your head when you were ten years old.

Everything in the game is drawn with pure 3D wireframe geometry and CRT scanlines right in the browser using Three.js (WebGL), and all the sound effects and the 80s arpeggio bassline are generated live using the browser's Web Audio API. There aren't any MP3 files or external image sprites loaded in — every laser zap, thruster hum, radar beep, and explosion is synthesized on the fly from oscillators and white noise, proper old-school style.

What's in the Game Right Now

You can jump straight in over on the Retro Games page (or open it in a full-window cabinet view). Here's what I've got working so far:

• The Vector Canyon Run: You're flying low between wireframe high-rises that shift colour palettes as you clear stages — starting in classic Cyan before moving through Matrix Green, Sunset Amber, and Ultraviolet sectors.
• Risk vs. Reward Skimming: If you're brave enough to skim right past a skyscraper, under a low skybridge, or beside a cargo drone without clipping your wings, you get a Near-Miss Bonus. Hold Shift to kick in the Afterburner and you'll get a 2X Score Multiplier while your capacitor holds out.
• 360° Barrel Rolls: Tap Q or E (or double-tap A / D) to pull an evasive barrel roll. If you time it right as an alien plasma bolt comes at your nose, you'll actually deflect the shot back down the trench.
• Laser Gates, Turrets & Mine Layers: From Stage 2 onwards, the canyon starts throwing flickering red laser gates at you (shoot the spinning amber power core to shut them down), along with rooftop pyramid turrets and heavy cruisers dropping proximity mines.
• Dreadnought Boss Battles: Every third stage, the centre channel clears and a massive wireframe Dreadnought Carrier drops in. You have to take out both shield generators and both wing cannons before its central reactor core opens up.
• Shared Arcade High-Score Table: Just like Dr. Ninestein's obsession with his high scores, there's a shared Top-5 Canyon Aces leaderboard stored on the server. If you make the top five, you get to punch in your three-letter arcade initials for everyone visiting the site to try and beat.

It's Still a Work in Progress — Tell Me What to Add Next!

I want to be completely upfront: Ninestein is very much a work in progress. I've already been tweaking the early-stage difficulty and flight ceiling based on my own playtesting (Stage 1 was way too brutal at first!), and I'm treating this as a living workshop project that I'll keep adding to.

Because it's built from scratch in code (with AI-assisted coding helping me iterate quickly on the 3D vector maths and Web Audio synth engine), we can take it in almost any direction. Have a go at it on smiggy.com/games, see if you can knock my score off the top of the board, and drop a comment below or send me a message with your ideas!

Whether it's new enemy ship shapes inspired by the Zeaf or Zeroids, a special weapon, different canyon layouts, joystick/gamepad support, or tweaks to how the ship handles — I'd genuinely love to hear what you think and build the best ideas into the next update.