The Yar Will Have Their Revenge in Anime Shooter Remake

Atari is reviving the classic Yars’ Revenge and giving it a massive makeover.

Remaking Atari 2600 games for the current generation takes some gumption, but Atari is apparently up to the task. A remake of the Atari 2600’s Star Raiders was revealed last month, the same console’s Haunted House has already been updated on various modern consoles, and now Atari has officially announced that Yars’ Revenge is making a comeback.

As you can see in the trailer, this isn’t your mother’s Yars’ Revenge. The remake of the Atari 2600 shooter has an anime-inspired art style that resembles Zone of the Enders. All we’ve been given so far is a cinematic, but the game is said to be an aerial shooter.

The original game, which you can play here, had players taking on the role of a member of the Yar that had to destroy the evil Qotile. Flying around on a single screen, you had to avoid a really annoying missile while beating down your enemy’s defenses.

The general theme is being brought back for the remake, which casts players as a nameless female Yar that was brainwashed by the Qotile, but after being rescued sets out on a mission of revenge on the Qotile’s bio-technological homeworld. Atari says it has a “captivating narrative that expands upon the original story.” I’m not sure “shoot the thing trying to shoot you” can be considered a story, but that’s PR for you.

Yars’ Revenge will feature local co-op gameplay and it’ll have multiple endings. It’s coming out of Killspace Entertainment, a studio made up of veterans from developers such as Obsidian and Pandemic. The Yar will finally get their revenge on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, and PC in early 2011.