The Yar Will Have Their Revenge in Anime Shooter Remake

[Tom Goldman]

The Yar Will Have Their Revenge in Anime Shooter Remake


Atari is reviving the classic Yars' Revenge and giving it a massive makeover.

Remaking Atari 2600 games for the current generation takes some gumption, but Atari is apparently up to the task. A remake of the Atari 2600's Star Raiders was revealed last month [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104358-Star-Raiders-Returns-in-2011], the same console's Haunted House has already been updated on various modern consoles, and now Atari has officially announced that Yars' Revenge is making a comeback.

As you can see in the trailer, this isn't your mother's Yars' Revenge. The remake of the Atari 2600 shooter has an anime-inspired art style that resembles Zone of the Enders [http://www.amazon.com/Zone-Enders-2nd-Runner-Playstation-2/dp/B00007LV7Z/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290007623&sr=8-1]. All we've been given so far is a cinematic, but the game is said to be an aerial shooter.

The original game, which you can play here [http://www.atari.com/play/atari/yars_revenge], had players taking on the role of a member of the Yar that had to destroy the evil Qotile. Flying around on a single screen, you had to avoid a really annoying missile while beating down your enemy's defenses.

The general theme is being brought back for the remake, which casts players as a nameless female Yar that was brainwashed by the Qotile, but after being rescued sets out on a mission of revenge on the Qotile's bio-technological homeworld. Atari says it has a "captivating narrative that expands upon the original story." I'm not sure "shoot the thing trying to shoot you" can be considered a story, but that's PR for you.

Yars' Revenge will feature local co-op gameplay and it'll have multiple endings. It's coming out of Killspace Entertainment, a studio made up of veterans from developers such as Obsidian and Pandemic. The Yar will finally get their revenge on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, and PC in early 2011.

Permalink

 

[icyneesan]

>"Local Co-op"

Sold. Theres a serious lack of good/fun local co-op. And even if this game turns out to be really crappy it still has co-op which is enough for me to turn out $5 - $10.

Now if only there was some way to get Touhou to run on my PS3...

 

[Ravek]

I hope the animation is going to be better than in this trailer.

 

[phoenix352]

jeez i haven't seen the Atari logo in years!

 

[Tim Latshaw]

Pirates will still be so disappointed by this...

 

[V8 Ninja]

The least I can say is that I'm very interested.

 

[Buchichu]

Yar's Revenge was my favourite Atari game as a kid.

 

[Rusty Bucket]

Pirates will still be so disappointed by this...

I think everyone's going to be disappointed by this.

 

[Loberto]

There was a mini comic book that came with the original game that detailed the complexities of the story. So I can understand how a well-written and captivating narrative could expand upon the deep foundations that have already been laid.

 

[2xDouble]

I loved this game, and it should be interesting to see where they take it.

A couple of nitpicks: The Yar are giant bugs, are they not? The Qotile were the humanoids...

meh, w/e.

 

[Formica Archonis]

I loved this game, and it should be interesting to see where they take it.

A couple of nitpicks: The Yar are giant bugs, are they not? The Qotile were the humanoids...

meh, w/e.

The Yars were human-sized flies. That's literally what they are, I remember the comic and still have it in storage somewhere. Let's see if I can recall enough to summarize:

Experimental human spacecraft flies into space, crashes into something, only the houseflies onboard survive, magic radiation from wreckage, giant intelligent flies that are capable of unassisted space travel and ingesting pretty much anything and converting it into energy blasts.

The self-christened Yars spread to planets IV, V, and VI or something of the system they crashed in, set up a nice peaceful society. Then the never-seen-'onscreen' Qotile from planet Epp somewhere in the system's outer planets take issue with this and blast planet V into radioactive cinders. The Yars hastily build a huge cannon to blast the Qotile back, but need a soldier to go out, eat or shoot through Qotile shields, then fire the cannon at himself and dodge out of the way because they spent all their cannon-design time on the blast-the-Qotile part and none on the aim-at-something-that-ain't-ours part.

And the story ends with the latest soldier (presumably the player's Yar) heading out alone to try take the Qotile down.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Yar's Revenge was easily among the best Atari games, and probably one of my most-played back when I was just a wee little turd. Such a simple concept, yet it has more gameplay value than most games even today. And yes, I hate that stupid missile... thingy.

 

[2xDouble]

I loved this game, and it should be interesting to see where they take it.

A couple of nitpicks: The Yar are giant bugs, are they not? The Qotile were the humanoids...

meh, w/e.

The Yars were human-sized flies. That's literally what they are, I remember the comic and still have it in storage somewhere. Let's see if I can recall enough to summarize:

Experimental human spacecraft flies into space, crashes into something, only the houseflies onboard survive, magic radiation from wreckage, giant intelligent flies that are capable of unassisted space travel and ingesting pretty much anything and converting it into energy blasts.

The self-christened Yars spread to planets IV, V, and VI or something of the system they crashed in, set up a nice peaceful society. Then the never-seen-'onscreen' Qotile from planet Epp somewhere in the system's outer planets take issue with this and blast planet V into radioactive cinders. The Yars hastily build a huge cannon to blast the Qotile back, but need a soldier to go out, eat or shoot through Qotile shields, then fire the cannon at himself and dodge out of the way because they spent all their cannon-design time on the blast-the-Qotile part and none on the aim-at-something-that-ain't-ours part.

And the story ends with the latest soldier (presumably the player's Yar) heading out alone to try take the Qotile down.

So, in short, yes, they are not the winged, robotic, humanoid aliens shown in this video, but instead giant houseflies.

 

[Formica Archonis]

I loved this game, and it should be interesting to see where they take it.

A couple of nitpicks: The Yar are giant bugs, are they not? The Qotile were the humanoids...

meh, w/e.

The Yars were human-sized flies. That's literally what they are, I remember the comic and still have it in storage somewhere. Let's see if I can recall enough to summarize:

Experimental human spacecraft flies into space, crashes into something, only the houseflies onboard survive, magic radiation from wreckage, giant intelligent flies that are capable of unassisted space travel and ingesting pretty much anything and converting it into energy blasts.

The self-christened Yars spread to planets IV, V, and VI or something of the system they crashed in, set up a nice peaceful society. Then the never-seen-'onscreen' Qotile from planet Epp somewhere in the system's outer planets take issue with this and blast planet V into radioactive cinders. The Yars hastily build a huge cannon to blast the Qotile back, but need a soldier to go out, eat or shoot through Qotile shields, then fire the cannon at himself and dodge out of the way because they spent all their cannon-design time on the blast-the-Qotile part and none on the aim-at-something-that-ain't-ours part.

And the story ends with the latest soldier (presumably the player's Yar) heading out alone to try take the Qotile down.

So, in short, yes, they are not the winged, robotic, humanoid aliens shown in this video, but instead giant houseflies.

tl;dr A FLY THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN!

And now that I'm not at work and can look for comics: Here it is. [http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic_thumbs.html?MagazineID=48]