In recent years, Atari has made a bit of a comeback with retro releases like Yars Rising from it hit games from their original Atari systems, along with remakes and, yes, new retro consoles of their iconic and still stylish Atari home machines. Now, developer WayForward has taken on the monumental task of remaking and reimagining the classic top-down shooter, Yars’ Revenge with Yars Rising.
WayForward aims high with this reimagining of Yar’s Revenge, creating an unexpected take on the original game that still manages to be faithful to the original. Instead of going down the obvious route of creating a shooter of the iconic original, WayForward has, instead, transplanted Yars’ Revenges gameplay and mythology into a stylish and fun Metroidvania.
Yars Rising plops you into the shoes of Emi ‘Yar’ Kimura, a hacker whose been hired to infiltrate the Qotech Corporation headquarters and hack their servers. Someone feels that dastardly deeds are afoot in the megacorporation and it isn’t long before Emi finds herself on the receiving end of the corps silencing tactics.
The game’s characters and story are brought to life with comic panel cut-scenes and some great voice acting, making Yars Rising a very story focused Metroidvania. Emi and her friends keep in touch throughout the game, sending you on new quests while adding some fun characterisation to the game. Emi is far from a silent protagonist and she has plenty of quips and comments as you chart a course through the environment. You can turn this off in the menu if you want, but I found I rather enjoyed the dimensionality it lent to her.
As far as gameplay is concerned, Yars Rising combines traditional Metroidvania staples along with light stealth and surprisingly fun hacking mini-games. The gameplay mostly takes place within Qobytes headquarters and surrounding city areas. There’s a relatively sprawling world here, with the usual blocked paths requiring movement or offensive upgrades to unlock and a whole bunch of platforming and vent crawling to get through. Eat your heart out John McClane!
Combat is projectile-based while the stealth sequences require you to hide from enemies by crawling through vents, beneath the floor or popping into shadowy doorways. Overall, Yars Rising is a relatively chill Metroidvania experience. There’s enough challenge to make boss fights interesting but not enough to stop you from progressing at whatever pace you choose. Seasoned Metroidvania vets may be put off by the lack of challenge, but I personally loved the game laid back, fun-first approach.
And the game certainly isn’t stingy with upgrades either. They’re liberally placed across the map, giving you even more incentive to hunt down every darkened corner. Major upgrades are placed in relevant positions to keep you moving forward, but there’s also a smaller set of upgrades that unlock additional abilities or further enhance existing ones. You can pick up multiple health upgrades that stack or enhanced damage for your Zorlon Shot that also stacks, or maybe one to increase the damage radius of your missiles. The trick is that you can’t have all of these active at once.
Yars Rising lets you stack these abilities into a Yars-shaped container, much like a bunch of Tetris blocks with each upgrade taking up a certain amount of blocks in a certain shape. So you’re left to pick and choose what to slot in and out as you progress. This gives the game a slight character build mechanic to it as you can go full health and damage offensive at the expense of, say, more powerful wall jumping.
The hacking mini-games are a revelation, and where Yars Rising is most faithful to Yars’ Revenge. The world is full of consoles to hack, either to open doors or to gain an upgrade. Each mini-game is, basically, stages from Yars’ Revenge for you to play through in which you control a Yar, a fly-like creature, to fight against the Qotile boss. You do so by chewing away through barriers to power up a cannon shot.
These mini-games are lovingly rendered in traditional Atari 2600 visuals and sounds, albeit much higher res. The further into the game you get, the more unique the mini-games become, transcending their original design to become more complicated in complexity while also lovingly homaging other Atari games, such as Missile Command. Once played, these games are unlocked to play again in Emi’s Hacklist at the main menu.
The game’s cyberpunk visual aesthetic is quite attractive, from its robotic design to the metallic surfaces and neon signs spread across the world. It’s a clean, shiny future aesthetic, one we rarely equate with the cyberpunk genre – or the future for that matter – anymore. Rain runs down windows and the city backdrop evokes the sense of a much larger world. Kudos to the gorgeous animation powering our cast of characters, from the bumper car style cleaning droids releasing bubbles in the air to the way in which Emi moves. The animations tends to be quite subtle but are all the more noticeable for it. It all contributes to the game’s sense of character.
With Yars Rising, WayForward has managed to create a fun, cyberpunk-inspired Metroidvania that remains faithful to the original game, while also homaging Atari’s other franchises. Yars Rising brings Yars’ Revenge into the modern era with style and class.
Yars Rising Launch Trailer
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