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==Plot==
==Plot==
The game is about Yars, a fly-like humanoid alien race that descended from the common house fly.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=1}} {{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=3}} After a space ship containing these flies crashes into the Razak solar system, the flies combined with radioactive dust transforming them into ordinary house fly into Yars.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=1-2}} The Yars are able to fly through space and began peacefully populating planets throughout Razak.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=3}}{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=4}} They grew powers that let them devour any substance and convert energy into powerful projectiles able to vaporize solid rock.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=4}}
The game is about Yars, a fly-like humanoid alien race that descended from the common house fly.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=1}}{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=3}} After a space ship containing these flies crashes into the Razak solar system, the flies combined with radioactive dust transforming them into ordinary house fly into Yars.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=1-2}} The Yars are able to fly through space and began peacefully populating planets throughout Razak.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=3}}{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=4}} They grew powers that let them devour any substance and convert energy into powerful projectiles able to vaporize solid rock.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=4}}


To protect themselves, the Yars began creating the Zorlon Cannon but were attacked before they were able to complete it. This led them open to attack from the Qotile who dissolved one of their planets, Planet IV, leaving it to a place now known as the neutral zone.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=5}}{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=6}} To avenge their planet, the Yars developed a plan to to use the incomplete Zorlon Cannon.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=5}} The Qotile hide behind an energy shield, where they can attack with missiles and objects called "swirls".{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=6}} The Yars become outfitted as warriors where they can brake through the Qotile shield and call upon the Zorlon Cannon.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|pp=7-8}} The new task is for the Yars to call upon the cannon by devouring a cell on their energy shield or touching the Qotile to have it fire and destroy their enemy.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=8}}
To protect themselves, the Yars began creating the Zorlon Cannon but were attacked before they were able to complete it. This led them open to attack from the Qotile who dissolved one of their planets, Planet IV, leaving it to a place now known as the neutral zone.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=5}}{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=6}} To avenge their planet, the Yars developed a plan to to use the incomplete Zorlon Cannon.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=5}} The Qotile hide behind an energy shield, where they can attack with missiles and objects called "swirls".{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=6}} The Yars become outfitted as warriors where they can brake through the Qotile shield and call upon the Zorlon Cannon.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|pp=7-8}} The new task is for the Yars to call upon the cannon by devouring a cell on their energy shield or touching the Qotile to have it fire and destroy their enemy.{{sfn|Shafer|1982|p=8}}

Revision as of 01:52, 27 June 2024

Yars' Revenge
Developer(s)Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s)Atari, Inc.
Designer(s)Howard Scott Warshaw
SeriesYars
Platform(s)Atari 2600, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color
Release
May 1982
  • Atari 2600
  • May 1982
  • Game Boy Color
  • 1999
Genre(s)Fixed shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Yars' Revenge is a video game designed by Howard Scott Warshaw for the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS). [a]

Plot

The game is about Yars, a fly-like humanoid alien race that descended from the common house fly.[2][3] After a space ship containing these flies crashes into the Razak solar system, the flies combined with radioactive dust transforming them into ordinary house fly into Yars.[4] The Yars are able to fly through space and began peacefully populating planets throughout Razak.[3][5] They grew powers that let them devour any substance and convert energy into powerful projectiles able to vaporize solid rock.[5]

To protect themselves, the Yars began creating the Zorlon Cannon but were attacked before they were able to complete it. This led them open to attack from the Qotile who dissolved one of their planets, Planet IV, leaving it to a place now known as the neutral zone.[6][7] To avenge their planet, the Yars developed a plan to to use the incomplete Zorlon Cannon.[6] The Qotile hide behind an energy shield, where they can attack with missiles and objects called "swirls".[7] The Yars become outfitted as warriors where they can brake through the Qotile shield and call upon the Zorlon Cannon.[8] The new task is for the Yars to call upon the cannon by devouring a cell on their energy shield or touching the Qotile to have it fire and destroy their enemy.[9]

Gameplay

Yars' Revenge is part of the subgenre of Shooter games called either the fixed or single-screen shooter. Yars' Revenge differs from many other similar popular games from that era such as Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), or Gorf (1981) as it allows has gameplay on the main axis of conflict oriented horizontally rather than vertically.[10]


Development

Yars' Revenge was the first game designed by Howard Scott Warshaw for Atari, Inc.[11] Prior to working at Atari, Warshaw worked for Hewlett-Packard (HP) working in their networking software department. He found the work environment dull, and heard about Atari from a co-worker, understanding it as a place "where the kind of crazy stuff that [Warshaw] would do at HP would be a common occurrence."[12] Initially, Warshaw was also more interested in the company for its available technology than for developing video games as he was not that involved in gaming prior, as he was excited by the idea of Atari doing real-time control programming.[13][14]

After interviewing and receiving a job at the company, he opted to work on what he described their most primitive technology and was tasked to work on a port of the arcade game Star Castle (1980) by Cinematronics for the Atari VCS.[12][15] Warshaw told his supervisor Dennis Koble that the arcade game could not be made properly for the system, and suggested to make a game that would rearrange the basic gameplay and dynamics of Star Castle.[16][17] This led to Warshaw making Yars' Revenge which eventually was developed under the name Time Freeze.[17]

The game took nine months to develop.[18] Warshaw focused on the projects graphics and animation, wanting every object in the game to be animated.[19] The first thing he created for the game was an animated character.[20] This character had elements like arms flickering back and forth made the playable character resemble a fly. He also made several graphics symmetrical to save space on the cartridge. Warshaw had a love of film, and particularly enjoyed science fiction films and said that that led him to also focus on how sound effects could effect gameplay. He said that Most games had bleeps. The occasional event would happen and you would get some audio feedback. I wanted sound to create mood, foreshadow events and build tension." and opted to use sound to create mood and foreshadow events and build tension in Yars' Revenge.[19] The Ion Zone was initially designed as a visual effect, but then incorporated into gameplay. The visuals of the zone are generated by randomized data pulled from grabbing bytes of code and displayed on the screen creating the glittering colorful effect.[21] After achieving what he wanted from the visuals, he found it unsatisfactory as a game and began taking feedback from others leading him to make a game that he described as "suddenly, really good."[22]

Yars' Revenge went through months of playtesting. Atari's Director of Game Development, Steven Wright had it play tested alongside of Missile Command (1981) for the Atari VCS.[18][23] These play tests consisted having over a hundred people played the game and rated it aftewards.[23] According to Warshaw, Wright said the game had "long-term playability concerns" and was continuously relisted for play testing.[18] Warshaw responded that he was upset that the game was continuously retested, noting it received positive reviews, particularly from women gamers.[23]

Promotion and release

With the release of Atari's console version of Space Invaders (1980), along with their popular arcade games Asteroids, Missile Command (1980) and Battlezone (1980) would move Atari to a growth of $512.7 million for 1980. Atari would be even larger by 1981 where their total sales earned them $1.1 billion.[24]

Warshaw discussed with a project manager on naming the game, and said he would give them a name the next day. [25] He felt coming up with a name difficult. He felt an action word would be appropriate for an action game and opted for "Revenge".[26] This was followed by a character name, and he chose the CEO of Atari Ray Kassar and spelled his name backwards feeling "Yar" was an appropriate science fiction styled name.[22] He then wrote a 10-page story called The Yarian Revenge of Rassak IV.[27] A comic titled Yars' Revenge: The Qotile Ultimatum was included with the game based on Warshaw's story treatment.[28][29] Within the comic release, Warshaw was credited as the game's programmer, making him the first Atari programmer to have his name publicly credited and printed within a release.[30][29]

The game's cover art was designed by Hiro Kimura.[31] Kimura was recruited by Atari art directors James Kelly and Steve Hendricks right after graduating the ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles.[32] It was Kimura's first package illustration after having completed several manual illustrations for the company. Kimura designed the fly on the cover as a chrome-plated insect and recalled struggling with it, saying that it was the first time they used an air-brush "almost exclusively" for the first time.[31] Kimura played every game he illustrated for company, saying he tried to capture their "uniqueness and excitement."[33]

Yars' Revenge was released in May 1982 and published by Atari.[34][35] Yars' Revenge has since been re-released in various Atari-themed compilations, such as the Atari 80 in One for Windows in 2003, on the first release of the Atari Flashback series of dedicated consoles and the compilation Atari Anthology in 2004 and Atari 50 in 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One.[36][37][38][39]

Reception

Yars' Revenge was Atari's best-selling original game for the Atari 2600.[41]

Retrospective

Brett Alan Weiss praised the game for its high level of originality, and that elements like the neutral zone gave the game a graphical flare, while finding the audio to be annoying that would grate on people's nerves. and lamented a lack of a two-player option.[35]

In 1995, the editors of Flux magazine ranked Yars' Revenge as number 90 on their list of "Top 100 Video Games".[42]

Legacy

Warshaw gave a presentation designing and coding Yars' Revenge at the 2015 Game Developers Conference.[43]

Howard Scott Warshaw went on to program to other high-profile games based on films for the Atari 2600: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).[28] Warshaw left Atari in 1984. He did not return to the video game industry until 1999 for four years, working at The 3DO Company as the director on games like BattleTanx: Global Assault (1999) and WarJetz (2001) and has worked various other jobs, including as a photographer, a real estate banker, a film director since.[44]

Following the release of the comic in Yars' Revenge other Atari works received comics following its release, such as the games in the Swordquest series and the Atari 2600 version of Defender (1982).[45][46] Defender and several other comics that followed in Atari console games like Star Raiders (1982) and Phoenix (1983) which would be developed by Warner Bros subsidiary DC Comics. These comics featured an original characters called The Atari Force who were later included within the arcade game Liberator (1982).[46]

Warshaw said that the the most exciting part of the game for him later was making a significant debut, making a game that was good enough that he enjoyed playing it, and that if he had to pick favorite thing about the game, was that the game had "scored highest among adult women, the single hardest market segment to reach."[47] He suggested in 2006 that the appeal towards women was due to what he described as "the oral component [...] like Pac-Man, you nibble and you run away. The more you eat, the closer you get to danger..."[48]

Follow-ups and remakes

Warshaw said that Atari programmer Dave Theurer was interested in making an arcade conversion of the game, which never went into development.[23] Warshaw also created his own sequel to the game which remains unreleased as of 2018.[49]

Several remakes and sequels of the game have been released years after the release of the original game. A Game Boy Color version of Yars' Revenge was released in 1999.[50] This version was developed in the mid-1990s by Mike Mika. Warshaw met with Mika during the game's development and described him as a "committed and talented game maker. We became friends, and our paths have run parallel ever since."[51] Mika would later make Yars' Revenge Reimainged on the Atari 50 (2022) game, which reuses the code of Yars' Revenge.[52][53]

Other sequels and remakes include Yars' Return, which was developed as part of the Atari Flashback series in 2005 on the Atari Flashback 2.[50][49] Atari announced a new game developed by Killspace Entertainment titled Yar's Revenge in 2010.[54] The game was in the rail shooter genre and borrows elements from the original such as the neutral zone and a drone that automatically locks onto and fires at enemies.[55] It was the company's only game and released in 2011 for the Xbox Live Arcade following the studio formally closing in 2012.[55][56] Warshaw commented on the game in 2016, saying that its genre gave the game a predetermined course which made it lack the freedom of movement of the original, stating that he was "very disappointed in [Yar's Revenge]"[23]

In the 2020s, Yars: Recharged (2022) was released. The game was part of Atari's partnership between the developers Adamvision and Sneakybox which created new versions of popular Atari games under the Atari Recharged banner.[57] Yars Rising was announced at an Indie World Nintendo Direct for release on September 10, 2024. The game is developed by WayForward and features different game play being a side-scrolling action-adventure game and features mini-games that resemble the original game.[58][59]

See also

References

  1. ^ Montfort 2006.
  2. ^ Shafer 1982, p. 1.
  3. ^ a b Shafer 1982, p. 3.
  4. ^ Shafer 1982, p. 1-2.
  5. ^ a b Shafer 1982, p. 4.
  6. ^ a b Shafer 1982, p. 5.
  7. ^ a b Shafer 1982, p. 6.
  8. ^ Shafer 1982, pp. 7–8.
  9. ^ Shafer 1982, p. 8.
  10. ^ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 96.
  11. ^ AllGame.
  12. ^ a b Milne 2016, p. 30.
  13. ^ Hickey, Jr. 2018, p. 109.
  14. ^ Milne 2017, p. 75.
  15. ^ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 82.
  16. ^ Warshaw 2022, 00:00:20.
  17. ^ a b Milne 2016, pp. 30–31.
  18. ^ a b c Hickey, Jr. 2018, p. 110.
  19. ^ a b Milne 2016, p. 31.
  20. ^ Warshaw 2022, 00:00:41.
  21. ^ Milne 2016, p. 32.
  22. ^ a b Warshaw 2022, 00:01:12. Cite error: The named reference "FOOTNOTEWarshaw202200:01:12" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  23. ^ a b c d e Milne 2016, p. 33.
  24. ^ Fulton 2008.
  25. ^ Warshaw 2022, 00:00:07.
  26. ^ Warshaw 2022, 00:00:30.
  27. ^ Warshaw 2022, 00:01:39.
  28. ^ a b Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 94.
  29. ^ a b Atari 50 2022.
  30. ^ Machkovech 2015.
  31. ^ a b Lapetino 2016, p. 207.
  32. ^ Lapetino 2016, p. 214.
  33. ^ Lapetino 2016, p. 215.
  34. ^ Atari Age 1982, p. 17.
  35. ^ a b c Weiss.
  36. ^ Harris 2004.
  37. ^ Harris 2004a.
  38. ^ Falcone 2017.
  39. ^ Machkovech 2022.
  40. ^ "Cassettes" [Cartridges]. Tilt (in French) (2): 15–16. Nov–Dec 1982. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
  41. ^ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 16.
  42. ^ Amrich et al. 1995, p. 32.
  43. ^ Game Developer 2014.
  44. ^ Cifaldi 2005.
  45. ^ The Video Game Update 1982.
  46. ^ a b Goldberg & Vendel 2012, p. 588.
  47. ^ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 95.
  48. ^ Retro Gamer 2006, p. 77.
  49. ^ a b Hickey, Jr. 2018, p. 112.
  50. ^ a b Montfort & Bogost 2009, pp. 94–95.
  51. ^ Warshaw 2020, p. 47.
  52. ^ Thorpe 2022, p. 37.
  53. ^ Orland 2022.
  54. ^ Sinclair 2010.
  55. ^ a b Hunt 2011, p. 98.
  56. ^ Robertson 2017.
  57. ^ Yarwood 2022.
  58. ^ Reynolds 2024.
  59. ^ Nintendo 2024.

Notes

  1. ^ The system became known as the Atari 2600 only after the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982.[1]

Sources

External links

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