Yars' Revenge
1982 · Shooter · Atari 2600
Overview
Yars' Revenge (1982) is Howard Scott Warshaw's Atari 2600 shooter, in which an insect-like Yar chews through a shield to expose the Qotile and blast it with the Zorlon Cannon.
Deep Dive
The player flies Yar, a fly-like creature, against the Qotile, which hides behind an energy shield on the right of the screen. Yar eats away at the shield, then summons the Zorlon Cannon and fires it across the screen at the exposed Qotile. A shimmering Neutral Zone down the middle hides Yar from the Qotile's homing destroyer missile, but nothing can be fired from inside it. The Qotile can also turn into a Swirl and launch itself at the player. Yar starts with four lives, and the Swirl attacks more often as the score climbs.
Developer Story
Warshaw was assigned a 2600 port of the arcade game Star Castle. He told his supervisor it could not be done properly on the hardware and proposed a new game that rearranged its ideas instead. First developed as Time Freeze, it took nine months and was released in May 1982 as Warshaw's first game for Atari.
Did You Know?
- Yars' Revenge came with a comic book, Yars' Revenge: The Qotile Ultimatum, and credited Warshaw as programmer, making him the first Atari programmer publicly credited on a release.
- Warshaw hid Yars aliens as a secret in his next two games, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Sources & further reading
- Yars' Revenge — Wikipedia
