Yars’ Revenge (Atari 2600)

When I first got a look at the gameplay of Yars’ Revenge many years ago, I had figured I had seen some sort of glitch. A little to the left of center screen, a rainbow-colored column rapidly shifts color almost like static, but since this column seemed to be a crucial part of the gameplay, I later figured it might have been a deliberate use of a glitch for an interesting visual. What it truly was though is the game’s designer Howard Scott Warshaw showing off an impressive use of tech that hinted at the greater degree of creativity at the heart of this space shooter, because not only is that rainbow column a crucial mechanic, but it’s logically explained in a game with a surprising amount of story for an Atari title.

 

In fact, Yars’ Revenge so values its story that it includes an entire comic book with your purchase of the game. Yars’ Revenge actually has you play as that fearsome silver insect from the game’s box art, a Yar a rather unique type of alien since it is an advanced form of the housefly from Earth. A human-flown spaceship met an unfortunate end far in space, but the flies aboard were mutated by radioactive dust into an advanced intelligent race with incredible powers like chewing through matter with ease and flying through space unassisted. After they established populations on a few planets in the Razak system, the mysterious and malevolent Qotile obliterates one of their planets. Aiming to avenge their lost colony, the Yars send out soldier after soldier to try and break through the Qotile’s shield so they can fire their Zorlon Cannon superweapon at it, the player just the latest Yar suited up and looking for revenge. This does feel like a great deal of backstory for an Atari 2600 action game, but it also turns a lot of the visual noise on screen into something that can quickly be parsed. That rainbow column is a neutral zone between the two opposing sides, weapons not harming you while in it but you in turn can’t fire. However, the Qotile and Yar both have powerful weapons that are exceptions to this, and by reading the comic or manual, you know that you don’t just blast away the Qotile shield and try to take it on yourself. It’s a brisk read, a fun bit of context, and a useful tool for making sense of a game that works surprisingly well once you can assign the shapes on screen identities based on the sci-fi tale you just finished reading.

While the story already lays out much of how the action unfolds in Yars’ Revenge, the horizontal space shooter does have a rather nice flow to it and a few shake-ups. You start a round as the Yar, your laser not the fastest to fire because it needs its shot to hit a target or fly off-screen before you can fire another. The Qotile’s shield is a large red shape made up of smaller squares, the laser able to chew through it gradually, or you can literally chew through it if you’re feeling daring. Fly in and make contact with it and you can start biting out chunks, it sometimes requiring you to line up just so but it’s by no means a suicidal strategy. For the most part, the main danger to your Yar is a single floating missile that can move freely around the screen. It follows you pretty well, but it’s slow enough you can guide it around, and retreating into the neutral zone gives you a quick way to escape that risk if need be. The shield’s shape will change some between rounds, sometimes even having its parts shift in a consistent pattern so you can’t just shoot your way immediately to the Qotile, but if you do get close and don’t want to devour the shield, your laser will also be quicker to fire since it hits its target faster at close range. The Yar can be positioned to face any direction too and the upper and lower boundaries of the screen wrap around, meaning you can teleport to the other side in the hurry while the enemy attacks can’t.

 

You are given a good degree of freedom in your movement, but the Qotile is no sitting duck. It will move up and down along with its shield, again meaning a simple gap down the middle isn’t the obvious strategy, but the Qotile will start to change color before it eventually musters up a Swirl. Swirls ignore the neutral zone’s safety and are fired at you with great speed and decent accuracy. When a Spiral is winding up, a wise player will need to shift their game plan to accommodate, especially since the Qotile doesn’t just fire for right where you are. It might aim low or high, trying to anticipate your movement, the player asked to make decisions about where to be since being on the far left gives you more time to dodge but you’ll be doing less damage in exchange for greater safety. You have your own superweapon though, the Zorlon Cannon that true key to clearing a round of Yars’ Revenge. When active, the Zorlon Cannon will have a rectangular beam of energy appear on the far left, it following your body about space until you fire it. If the cannon hits you, that’s a death, but if it hits a Spiral or the Qotile itself, the round will be cleared in a big multicolored explosion, during which the game’s manual Helpful Hints section humorously urges you to concoct a victory dance. You’ll be thrown into another battle with the Qotile and a different shield pattern afterwards, but this makes up the gameplay loop of Yars’ Revenge and it is certainly an effective one. You start by breaking through the shield, you balance aggression with the dangerous elements of the destroyer missile and spiral, and then need to line up the cannon properly to hit your target, and while the exact flow of this can change across the game’s 7 variations, it actually becomes more enjoyable as you climb up through them.

While half of the game variations are instead a two player cooperative mode where you both have a Yar working to take down the Qotile, the first version is naturally the easiest and simplest even if you use the difficulty switches to make the Spiral a bit faster. Here, the Zorlon Cannon will come online when a Yar chomps a piece of the red shield or when it touches the Qotile itself, meaning you can try and open fire fairly early in the fight if you’re bold or carve that path through to the core. Game 2 starts to speed things up a bit and features the alternate shield type, Yars’ Revenge only featuring two unique shield arrangements but they do feel different enough due to the second utilizing the shifting pieces. Game 4 introduces a new bit of risk, the Zorlon Cannon now more important to aim properly as it will ricochet back off any shielding it hits rather than disappearing like in the previous game modes.

 

Game Mode 6 and 7 though, they are what the game calls the Ultimate Yars, and while some Atari games get a bit overboard in throwing new elements on the higher number the variation is, this truly feels like Yars’ Revenge at its finest. Now, summoning the cannon isn’t as simple as flying in and nibbling the Qotile or its shield a bit. You need to build up energy by doing so a few times, then fly back across the neutral zone and touch the far left side of the screen to make the cannon appear. Then you can fire it while it’s under the ricochet rules, and the missile and swirls are moving at their fastest speed. The action remains manageable but also the danger level is quite intense, the missile much harder to shake, the neutral zone much more useful because of that, but you’ll need to move across the entire screen a lot to get energy for the cannon, activate it, and then fire it safely. Every part of Yars’ Revenge is operating at its peak, the score challenge the game’s end goal with there being some hope for extra lives, but even if you don’t get far, the game presents a compelling test of your management, movement, and risk assessment. The jargon perhaps makes it sound more advanced than it actually is, but once you see the systems in action, it has a natural and kinetic flow that can suck you back in for repeated rounds not even just to hit the high score, but to just see how capable you can be if you hone your approach a little more.

THE VERDICT: While it felt it needed a full comic book to explain what was happening on screen, Yars’ Revenge is validated once you get into the action and realize how well it all holds together. The player manages their own vulnerability through the neutral zone, they need to take gambles to activate the cannon, and the rounds of play can be quick and exciting despite the flipping between offensive and defensive maneuvering. A few more shield variations would give you much more to shoot for than high scores, but Yars’ Revenge already works well as a kinetic survival challenge that only gets better the higher the difficulty, the action remaining fair and manageable but still drawing you back in as you feel you could do better next attempt.

 

And so, I give Yars’ Revenge for Atari 2600…

A GOOD rating. Throw in a few more shield arrangements for the Qotile as you press into deeper rounds and Yars’ Revenge would certainly cement itself as one of the best games on offer on the Atari 2600, although it might already have a good enough claim to standing beside games like Pitfall! and Pressure Cooker because of its impeccable sense of balance. Yars’ Revenge isn’t about constant aggression, nor does it tip things too strongly against the player. The destroyer missile can be a bit fast on Ultimate Yar settings, but the screen wraparound also gives you a nice way to shake it. The Zorlon Cannon always requiring you thrust yourself into danger in some form is a smart way of setting up your superweapon, it necessitating engaging with the deadliest part of the screen in order to set up your round winning tool, but even then you need to line it up well and account for things like the movement of the Qotile. You can do things like loiter in the neutral zone, but Yars’ Revenge still has a strong energy that usually encourages you to move and try to be effective and swift. If you hang around, that gives the Spirals more time to charge up, and even though the missile is harmless in the glittering rainbow column, it will be very close to you when you make your move if you let it catch up while you waited. The laser fire can feel a bit slow due to how its rules work, but they are ultimately for the best because you can get those satisfying shield-shearing barrages when you do take the risk of going in and bombarding it.

 

While I underestimated Yars’ Revenge based on its looks and also knew of its positive reputation, I still step away impressed and surprised. It’s easy for Atari 2600 games to get high praise simply because the offerings around them were unexceptional or people held heavy nostalgia for a game with a bit more meat to it than its predecessors, but Yars’ Revenge showcases solid game design principles. There is more action involved than just mashing the fire button, the most effective strategies come with appreciable risk, and there’s no trick to wipe you out when the game thinks you have played enough. If you’re going to look for something worth playing on the Atari 2600, Yars’ Revenge shows how creative a game designer could get both in the context of the game and outside of it.