Wayforward and Atari’s new take on Yars was a pleasant Summer Game Fest surprise

Over the past few years, Atari has been completely revamping its portfolio by releasing new takes on classic games like Missile Command, Centipede, and Asteroids. The latest project in this endeavor is Yars Rising, a new take on a name that – despite its success in 1982 – likely won’t engender many nostalgic feelings nowadays.

The team at WayForward seems to have understood this from the jump, however, as Yars Rising isn’t a new take on the original game; it’s a full-fledged Metroidvania that happens to involve the old Yars gameplay once in a while. It’s a bold and risky choice, but based on the hands-on time we got at Summer Game Fest, it’s one that may have paid off.

The demo begins with a neat-looking motion comic cutscene, which lays the groundwork for who the main character Yars is and what she’s about. The comic format isn’t just a style choice; game director James Montagna tells us as we watch that the original game came packed with a comic as a means to tell its expanded lore, and the team wanted to honor that here.

We take control of a black hat hacker named Emi Kimura – codename “Yar” – to her hacker buddies – who stays late at her job in the offices of QoTech in order to complete a heist. We’ll help her hack her way through the building via terminals scattered on different floors.

Hacking is done through minigames where we must time an energy shot perfectly in order to defeat a large bug enemy. These minigames, according to Montagna, are a direct reference to the original Yars’ Revenge game from the ’80s.

“The hacking experience is a throwback to the original [Atari] 2600 game, but they’re also a deconstruction of it,” Montagna says, “and we gradually rebuild it and build on top of it in order to create something huge.” The further we progress in the game, Montagna continues, the “more complex” these challenges become.

Our heroine, Yar, botches the job and gets caught, which means she must escape from the corporation’s prison. This is where the game becomes a full-on Metroidvania that sees us platforming, shooting enemies with a Mega-Man-style energy weapon, and traveling from room to room to explore the high-rise.

Mechanically, it feels great, as the controls are responsive and the platforming is fun, if a little basic – considering this is a brief demo, though, we’re willing to bet there are plenty of surprises in the full game.

“The hacking experience is a throwback to the original [Atari] 2600 game, but they’re also a deconstruction of it, and we gradually rebuild it and build on top of it in order to create something huge.”

Eventually, we come to an Augment Terminal, a hackable device that gives us an upgrade if we complete the minigame. This is the first example of WayForward tweaking the original game’s format, as we can now shoot freely to take down a shield protecting the bug before we go back to the classic timed shot from before. This adds a fun little wrinkle to the minigames, and it creates a sense of “you’ll never know what you’re going to get” as we find more terminals throughout the game.

The love letter to classic Atari games isn’t limited to the hacking minigames, however, as there are references to the history of the company littered throughout the demo. Save points, for example, are modelled after the original Computer Space arcade consoles of the early 1970s, in a neat reference to one of Atari’s first-ever projects.

Our favorite nod in the demo, however, comes from one of the bosses: Missile Commander is a giant mech whose first phase sees it fire missiles from the top of the screen to the bottom. Jumping to avoid them is easy enough, but when we do so, the floor square we were standing on disappears, much like how, in the original game, our missile launcher would disappear if it were shot.

It’s a novel way to make an Atari reference – one that carries more weight than, say, an Easter-egg-style poster on a wall – and it keeps us looking for the next big nod to gaming history.

Yars Rising was an impressive part of the Summer Game Fest lineup, thanks to the combination of solid Metroidvania mechanics and delightful references to gaming’s past. The core idea behind still doesn’t compute in our minds, but the end result absolutely warrants our attention now that we’ve seen it in action for ourselves.

Now that we think about it, we wonder if we’ll fight a giant centipede at some point… guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Yars Rising is set to launch later this year on all consoles, as well as PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.