Randomly Rolled: Yars' Revenge

On 03/19/2022 at 09:25 PM by KnightDriver

I randomly chose on Gamesradar's top 25 Atari 2600 games Yars' Revenge (this was before I created my own list). I played three versions: on Xbox 360 within the Game Room app, the reimagined game titled Yar's Revenge that's still available for Xbox 360, and the port within Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 1 on Xbox Series S.

Game Room version: Game Room still exists although the servers are long since disconnected - so no ranked play or leaderboards. I discovered game variant 6 wherein you have to eat the enemy's shield five times and return to the left of the screen to activate the cannon that can destroy the Qotile. Normally, you only have to eat one shield piece and the cannon appears right away. Also in this mode, the cannon's shot bounces if it misses. If you can catch it, you can immediately reuse it, otherwise, you have to go collect 5 shield pieces again. I really enjoyed this more complex variant.

Reimagined Yar's Revenge: This is an on-rails shooter similar to Panzer Dragoon. I beat the game on normal difficulty. It's not very long: 2 hours says Howlongtobeat.com. Harder difficulty levels or the challenge modes were really tough. The game looks good though and plays just fine.

As an extra, you can read the comic that came with the original Atari game. It explains the origin of the Yars, the attack by the Qotile, and the way you must fight them. It's a neat way to explain the mechanics of the game and give it a little back story. They should've made this into a movie instead of Battleship.

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 1 port: There is nothing especially different here than the Game Room version except that you can view the original manual and box art and get achievements. I discovered one achievement by accident by shooting the Qotile's spiral blast with my cannon. It destroys the Qotile no matter where you hit the spiral. Neato!

I tried to go after the 300k point achievement but only got to 50K. That tiny wandering attack ship, or whatever it is, that pursues you gets faster and faster after each destroyed Qotile until eventually you can barely keep ahead of it. The game becomes not fun at that point.

I really liked Yars' Revenge, the original Atari game, and will keep it on my list for future replays.

daftman

03/20/2022 at 04:36 PM

You're in danger of whiplash from these random pulls lol. What a bizarre little game. The rail shooter looked cool, though.

KnightDriver

03/20/2022 at 09:41 PM

It was supposed to be a port of the arcade game Star Castle but the 2600 couldn't really do it and so a new game was conceived.

I wonder if I used the phrase "on-rails" correctly. The game advances automatically but you can move around the screen as it does so. Seems kind of on-rails to me but it's not like Pokemon Snap where you are literally fixed to the ground and can only go forward.

Cary Woodham

03/20/2022 at 08:20 PM

I know a lot of people praise Yars Revenge, but I just could never get into it. My favorite Atari 2600 game is Pressure Cooker. You can play it on some of the Activision Anthology games. Might be on Game Room, too. It's surprisingly complex for a 2600 game.

03/20/2022 at 09:43 PM

Pressure Cooker is pretty cool. Activision did a great job back then as a 3rd party dev for the 2600. I've considered going for a complete 2600 Activision collection. Maybe one day.

SanAndreas

03/20/2022 at 11:31 PM

Yars' Revenge was my second favorite 2600 game of all time. The shape of Qotile was one of the more memorable video game icons of the time. I kind of want to play the Reimagined Yars' Revenge.

I have Atari Flashback Classics on Switch, which combines all three volumes on one cartridge. The best Atari collection I saw was the PS2 collection, which had all kinds of scanned documentation and memorabilia, plus it had more games. Atari sold off Battlezone and a few of its other IPs in the late 2000s to stay solvent.

One game that seems to always be missing from Atari collections is my favorite Atari 2600 game, Solaris. The guy that wrote it, Doug Neubauer (who created Star Raiders as well), managed to keep control of the rights to the game, so Atari never actually owned Solaris. That game was deep enough and pretty enough to be a NES game rather than a 2600 game.

03/21/2022 at 07:08 PM

I used to have that PS2 version on Xbox.

I'd love to play Solaris. I'm going to have to get another Atari deck to play it though unless it's on MAME or something like that.

03/23/2022 at 05:56 AM

www.atarimania.com

You can play almost every Atari 2600 game ever made in your browser, and download ROMs for emulation. There are also ROMs for the 5200, 7800, 8-bit, and ST, but those don't have browser emulation.

03/25/2022 at 08:42 PM

Neato! I'll have to check that out.

PixlBit