WayForward is reviving Atari game Yars’ Revenge in an unexpected way

For more than 40 years, Atari 2600 game Yars’ Revenge has endured. Atari has rereleased the 1982 action game multiple times, both in cartridge form and built into retro consoles. Multiple developers have attempted to remake it, reimagine it, or create an official sequel to the simplistic shooter.

In September, developer WayForward Technologies will take another shot at Yars’ Revenge, but it’s zigging where others have zagged. WayForward’s Yars Rising is an action-adventure exploration game in the style of Super Metroid and Shadow Complex, and instead of starring a vengeful chrome alien fly, its protagonist is a young hacker — named Emi “Yar” Kimura — who is trying to take down a shadowy corporation from the inside.

Yars Rising is definitely a swerve, but it’s being created “with as much reverence as possible” for the original Yars’ Revenge, game director James Montagna tells Polygon.

“I did about the deepest of dives you could possibly do on the entire history of Yars’ Revenge,” Montagna told me during a video call. “I mean even stuff like the 1982 vinyl record release of Yars’ Revenge — really obscure stuff that maybe two people in the world care about. We were just trying to absorb as much knowledge as we can, because if we’re going to do this thing, we want to make sure to do right by it. We want to know the legacy of where it came from. And I think that’s really important when you’re handed something like this, because it has history, and we want to honor it.”

Still, Yars Rising is thematically, aesthetically, and mechanically very different from the original Yars’ Revenge, but that’s by design, Montagna said. Some of that’s in service to the new game’s story, but some of it, Montagna admitted, is playing to WayForward’s strengths as a developer of platformers and Metroidvanias.

“It’s also a little bit of [us] surprising players with something they maybe didn’t even know that they wanted,” he said. “No one was expecting or asking for an exploration action-platforming Yars’ Revenge reimagining, right? But I think part of our job as designers is to show people why and how something like that can make sense.”

The story of Yars Rising is about a black hat hacker ring that gets approached by a “mysterious figure with deep pockets to hack this mega conglomerate called QoTech.” Emi takes the gig because the price is right, Montagna explained. “She’s got this antagonistic streak; she’s doing something immediately a little bit nefarious and dishonest,” he said. “She gets a job at QoTech to win their trust over the course of several weeks, and the game kicks off the night where she’s going to pull off her heist. As the game progresses, you’ll learn more and more about her backstory.

“Why is a Yars’ Revenge reimagining having this kind of character and this style of gameplay? It starts to make sense the more you play it. And I can only explain so much without just completely giving certain things away, but it really comes down to, well, this is how we communicate the story. It’s a genre we’re good at, and a little bit [that] we want to surprise and delight.”

Yars Rising does honor the original Yars’ Revenge in one major way: The game is filled with hacking minigames built around the original game’s concept. To hack things in Rising, you play as the pixelated fly (Yar) and attack the enemy (Qotile), which is guarded by a shield. The hacking games are remixed versions of the original’s playfield, mashed up with other classic Atari 2600 games like Space Invaders and Missile Command.

“It’s almost just as much a WarioWare microgame experience in a certain light,” Montagna said. “It’s also a stealth game. So I think there’s, like, so many elements of different [game genres] […] probably why I personally hesitate to put certain labels on it, but I can’t really correct anyone that calls it a Metroidvania.”

While WayForward is trying to do something new and different with its take on the Yars series, Rising is also an Atari love letter, Montagna said. In Yars Rising’s gameplay trailer, you can see Computer Space cabinets and references to Atari creator Nolan Bushnell. But these shoutouts to Atari’s history will be more than just set decoration, Montagna explained.

“In so many ways, we wanted to make it so that every detail is something that could potentially matter to somebody,” he said. “There’s a way to do that that doesn’t feel invasive or [exclusionary]. There should be some emotional reaction — like, Oh, they get me. I grew up with this. Or I know what this is. So throughout the game, it has varying degrees of Atari references — even entire boss battles in this game are references to something to do with Atari in some way, shape, or form. I hope players look forward to seeing what those are.”

Even the game’s hacker hero is built around Atari iconography. Emi’s aqua blue hair is a combination of the Atari “Fuji” logo and the silhouette of the original Yar sprite.

But Montagna said that Yars Rising can’t simply rely on nostalgia or a familiar game name to succeed. It has to play great, and be a good action-adventure exploration game in a crowded market of Metroid-inspired retro games.

“I’m happy to say I think we did a pretty darn good job of making sure that flow is right,” Montagna said of Yars Rising’s focus on precision and gameplay variety. “You might be gunning down enemies, jumping from platform to platform, mowing through a series of enemies, then in the next room, it’s going to change up on you. It’s going to be a little bit of stealth gameplay where we’re slowing things down. I think that that ebb and flow is good, because if it’s just pure adrenaline, it can be exhausting. We’re also incorporating those hacking challenges, which also break up the moment-to-moment a bit.”

Yars Rising is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on Sept. 10.