Uploaded November 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
One of Atari's "Have You Played Atari Today?" series of commercials.
A fantastic reinvention of Star Castle, which Howard Scott Warshaw was originally assigned to port. Yars' Revenge ended up being Atari's best-selling original VCS game, and far more popular than Star Castle (a "cult classic at best) ever was. According to Warshaw, in order for his name choice to be selected by Marketing, he cleverly worked Ray Kassar's name into the title ("Yar" is "Ray" spelled backwards), as well as the storyline - the accompanying comic states the game is set in the Razak solar system. From HSW: "The working title was originally Time Freeze. I wanted an action game with a lot of colors and sounds – something I would enjoy playing. The concept was, at some point, time would “freeze” and there would be a countdown to a gigantic explosion. One of the things I wanted to do was have the first full-screen explosion." The copyright date both onscreen and on the packaging shows 1981, although the game was released in May 1982. Packaged with the game was a Yars' Revenge mini-comic, which was also written by HSW (although he's not credited for it). The artist who did the box art obviously used the artwork from Midway's 1979 Galaxian arcade game as inspiration.
See the Atari Compendium website for copies of the manual:
ataricompendium.com/archives/manuals/vcs/manuals.html
Check out the Easter egg page there as well, for everything the manual doesn't tell you!
ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/vcs/26yarsrevenge.html
Read my interview with Howard Scott Warshaw:
ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/howard_scott_warshaw/interview_howard_scott_warshaw.html
One of Atari's "Have You Played Atari Today?" series of commercials.
A fantastic reinvention of Star Castle, which Howard Scott Warshaw was originally assigned to port. Yars' Revenge ended up being Atari's best-selling original VCS game, and far more popular than Star Castle (a "cult classic at best) ever was. According to Warshaw, in order for his name choice to be selected by Marketing, he cleverly worked Ray Kassar's name into the title ("Yar" is "Ray" spelled backwards), as well as the storyline - the accompanying comic states the game is set in the Razak solar system. From HSW: "The working title was originally Time Freeze. I wanted an action game with a lot of colors and sounds – something I would enjoy playing. The concept was, at some point, time would “freeze” and there would be a countdown to a gigantic explosion. One of the things I wanted to do was have the first full-screen explosion." The copyright date both onscreen and on the packaging shows 1981, although the game was released in May 1982. Packaged with the game was a Yars' Revenge mini-comic, which was also written by HSW (although he's not credited for it). The artist who did the box art obviously used the artwork from Midway's 1979 Galaxian arcade game as inspiration.
See the Atari Compendium website for copies of the manual:
ataricompendium.com/archives/manuals/vcs/manuals.html
Check out the Easter egg page there as well, for everything the manual doesn't tell you!
ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/vcs/26yarsrevenge.html
Read my interview with Howard Scott Warshaw:
ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/howard_scott_warshaw/interview_howard_scott_warshaw.html
