An exciting day for fans of retro video games as Atari announces plans to return to an old IP. The 1982 game Yars’ Revenge had players play as an insectoid creature in an on the rails type shooter. Yars Rising, a new game from Atari and WayForward, is returning players to the series in a new way.
Instead of an on-the-rail shooter, Yars Rising seems to be a platformer. Given that WayForward is responsible for the platforming game series Shantae, the change makes sense. Also instead of playing as a small insectoid creature, players will be playing as Emi Kimura, a young hacker hired under mysterious circumstances to infiltrate the QoTech corporation. In addition to the traditional running and jumping of a platformer, Emi’s adventure will require her to hack and sneak her way through the world. Players should also be aware that there’s more to Emi than meets the eye, and will be revealed as players explore the mysteries of the story. There will also apparently be a racing feature with customizable car options.
If fans of Yars’ Revenge are seeing all these new directions and worrying that they might not see much of the original in this sequel, worry not. The game has a series of retro mini games for when the player needs to hack something. These minigames will apparently pay homage to the original’s gameplay style, and seem to adopt a top down gameplay style as opposed to the 2D the rest of the game seems to utilize.
Ultimately it’s exciting to see a studio return to a franchise that was much beloved. Maybe the new entry will bring new players to a series that they hadn’t heard much about. Yars Rising seems to be coming out some time in 2024 and will be available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, XBox, Epic Games, and Atari.